Sebastian of Rome

Origins and early life

The received Passion places Sebastian's birth at Narbonne in Gaul and his upbringing and schooling at Mediolanum (Milan) — whence the Slavonic books style him "Sebastian of Mediolanum," while the Greek and Latin traditions name him from the city of his death, Rome. Entering the army, he rose under the co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian (284–305) to command of the praetorian guard. He was esteemed for courage, sound judgement, and fidelity, and stood high in the favour of the court; and precisely this standing he turned to the secret service of the Church, keeping his faith hidden "not out of fear, but so that he might help the brethren in the time of persecution."

Encourager of the martyrs

The heart of Sebastian's Passion is not his own death but his ministry to others. Two brothers, Marcellinus and Mark, imprisoned and condemned for the faith, began to give way under the weeping of their pagan parents, Tranquillinus and Marcia, and of their own wives and children. Sebastian came to the house of the treasurer where they were held and exhorted them not to trade their crowns for their kinsfolk's tears — bidding them keep their feet on the necks of the enemies who lay prostrate, and raise their standard above every earthly affection. As he spoke, the tradition relates, his face shone as an angel's; and Zoe, the mute wife of the jailer Nicostratus, cast herself at his feet and was healed of a six-year loss of speech when he signed her with the Cross, whereupon she declared that she had seen an angel holding an open book in which all his words were written.

The miracle broke open the prison. Nicostratus and Zoe sought baptism; the priest Polycarp was summoned and prepared the household, the prisoners, and their kin; the deputy Claudius brought his sick sons Symphorian and Felix, and they too were healed. Brought before the city eparch (prefect) Chromatius, Nicostratus so recounted these things that Chromatius himself, with his son Tiburtius, believed and was baptised, resigned his office, and — blessed by Gaius, bishop of Rome — withdrew to safety in southern Italy with Polycarp and those unable to face martyrdom. The Passion swells the number of the converted to many hundreds. Of those who remained in Rome, Gaius ordained Tranquillinus priest and his sons Marcellinus and Mark deacons.

Martyrdom

The companions were taken in a short and terrible sequence. Zoe was seized first, at prayer by the tomb of the Apostle Peter, and died suffocated in the smoke of a foul fire, her body cast into the Tiber; she appeared afterwards in a vision to Sebastian to tell of her end. Tranquillinus the priest was stoned at the same tomb and likewise thrown into the river. Nicostratus, Castorius, Claudius, Victorinus, and Symphorian, seized while searching the bank for the martyrs' bodies and refusing to sacrifice, were drowned in the sea with stones about their necks. Tiburtius, betrayed by the false Christian Torquatus, walked unharmed over burning coals and was then beheaded; Castulus was buried alive in a pit; the deacons Marcellinus and Mark had their feet nailed to a stump and, having stood the night in prayer, were run through with spears.

Sebastian was the last. Diocletian himself questioned him, and, meeting only constancy, ordered him led outside the city, bound to a stake, and shot with arrows until he was left for dead. Irene, widow of the martyr Castulus, came by night to bury him and found him yet living; she took him to her house, where he recovered. Urged to flee Rome, he refused, and instead placed himself where the emperors would pass and openly denounced their impiety. This time Diocletian had him taken to the Circus Maximus and beaten to death with clubs, his body flung into the great sewer (the cloaca). He appeared in a vision to a devout woman, Lucina, directing her to recover his body and lay it in the catacombs on the Via Appia — where, the tradition concludes, his basilica stands to this day.

Veneration and later cultus

Sebastian is among the most anciently and widely venerated of the Roman martyrs. His grave on the Via Appia gave its name to one of the catacomb complexes and to the basilica San Sebastiano fuori le mura, one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome; his cult was firmly established there by the fourth century, when Bishop Damasus honoured the martyrs of the city. Belonging to the age before the schism, he was received throughout the Christian East as well as the West, and kept his place in the Byzantine synaxaria on December 18. In the medieval and early-modern West he became, with Roch, one of the two great protectors invoked against plague — the arrows of his martyrdom read as the arrows of pestilence turned aside — which accounts for the flood of Western images of the arrow-pierced saint; the Orthodox iconographic tradition, by contrast, keeps to the fuller narrative of the arrows and the clubbing.