Monday, August 07, 2006

The Various Deaths of St. Sebastian

To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Roman martyr; little more than the fact of his martyrdom can be proved about St. Sebastian. In the "Depositio martyrum" of the chronologer of 354 it is mentioned that Sebastian was buried on the Via Appia. St. Ambrose ("In Psalmum cxviii"; "Sermo", XX, no. sliv in PL, XV, 1497) states that Sebastian came from Milan and even in the time of St. Ambrose was venerated there. The Acts, probably written at the beginning of the fifth century and formerly ascribed erroneously to Ambrose, relate that he was an officer in the imperial bodyguard and had secretly done many acts of love and charity for his brethren in the Faith. When he was finally discovered to be a Christian, in 286, he was handed over to the Mauretanian archers, who pierced him with arrows; he was healed, however, by the widowed St. Irene. He was finally killed by the blows of a club. These stories are unhistorical and not worthy of belief. The earliest mosaic picture of St. Sebastian, which probably belongs to the year 682, shows a grown, bearded man in court dress but contains no trace of an arrow. It was the art of the Renaissance that first portrayed him as a youth pierced by arrows. In 367 a basilica which was one of the seven chief churches of Rome was built over his grave. The present church was completed in 1611 by Scipio Cardinal Borghese. His relics in part were taken in the year 826 to St. Medard at Soissons. Sebastian is considered a protector against the plague. Celebrated answers to prayer for his protection against the plague are related of Rome in 680, Milan in 1575, and Lisbon in 1599. His feast day is 20 January.

Anonymous Fresco (Twelfth Century)

Anonymous Fresco (Fourteenth Century)


Anonymous (Fourteenth Century)

Anonymous Tritych (Fourteenth Century)


Hans Paur (1472)

Sandro Boticelli (1474)

Andrea da Murano (1475)


Andrea Mantegna (1480)

Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (Fifteenth Century)

Vittore Carpaccio (Late Fifteenth to Early Sixteenth Century)

Anonymous (Fifteenth Century)


Alonso Sedano (Fifteenth Century)


Albrecht Dürer (1505)

Andrea Boscoli (Sixteenth Century)

Anonymous (Mid-Sixteenth Century)


Domenicos Theotokopoulos detto el Greco (1580)


Tanzio da Varallo (1620s)

José Leonardo (1635)

George de La Tour (Late Seventeenth Century)

François Guillaume Ménageot (Eighteenth Century)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1850s)

Gustave Moreau (1869)

Gabriele Smargiassi (1892)

Adolphe Marie Timothee Beaufrere (Late Nineteenth/Early Twentieth Century)


Odilon Redon (1910)

Egon Schiele (1915)

1968


James Belton Bonsall (1975)

Keith Haring (1984)

Xavier Cortada (2000)


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