Christopher Duffin
London, England

As is true for the legends of many medieval saints, details of the life of Saint Sebastian (died c. 286) rely heavily on the account of Jacobus da Varagine (also Jacopo de Fazio; c. 1230–1298). Born in Varagine (now Varezza), around 30 km west of Genoa in Liguria, Italy, Jacobus rose to become Archbishop of Genoa in 1292, a position which he held until his death. Around 1260, he collected the hagiographies of the main or greater medieval saints into a volume entitled the Legenda aurea or Legenda sanctorum (Golden Legend, or Legends of the Saints). Extremely popular in late medieval Europe, this work is known from over 1,000 extant manuscript copies and was one of the first incunabular texts, running to more editions even than the Bible.¹ One of William Caxton’s earliest publications in English (1483), he produced a further eight editions by 1527.

Sebastian served as head of the palace guard for the Roman Emperor Diocletian (244–311; reigned 284–305). Very active amongst the community of persecuted Christians, the evangelical Sebastian managed to convert certain Roman high officials. Diocletian accused Sebastian of treason: “All this time you have been acting secretly against my welfare and offending the gods.” Despite his protestations of praying for both the emperor and the empire, Sebastian was condemned to be tied to a post in the center of the camp and shot with arrows by the imperial soldiers: “They shot so many arrows in his body that he looked like a porcupine.” Left for dead, Sebastian was revived through the ministrations of a Christian widow, Saint Irene. A few days later he stood before the emperor once again, reproaching him for his treatment of the Christians: “The Lord deigned to revive me so that I could meet you and rebuke you for the evils you inflict on the servants of Christ!”² The emperor ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with cudgels and, to avoid his being honored as a martyr, had his body dumped in the sewers. However, that night, Sebastian appeared to St. Lucina and revealed to her the whereabouts of his body, begging her to bury him close to the Apostles, which was duly done.

De Voragine goes on to explain that during the reign of the Lombardy King Gumbert (665– after 700), Rome and the whole of Italy experienced an outbreak of plague “so virulent that there was hardly anyone left to bury the dead.” Things were especially bad in Pavia, around 35 km south of Milan. As de Voragine relates:

At this time there appeared to some a good angel followed by a bad angel carrying a spear. When the good angel gave the command, the bad one struck and killed. And when he struck a house, all the people in it were carried out dead. Then it was divinely revealed, that the plague would never cease until an altar was raised in Pavia in honour of St. Sebastian. An altar was built in the church of St. Peter in Chains and at once the pestilence ceased. Relics of St. Sebastian were brought to Pavia.³

The story of St. Sebastian and the plague at Pavia captured the imagination (Fig. 1) of the south Netherlandish painter Josse Lieferinxe (fl. 1493–1508), once known as the “Master of St. Sebastian,” having fulfilled a commission for the church of Nôtre Dame des Accoulés in Marseille in 1497 for eight paintings concerning the miracles of St. Sebastian and St. Roche, both of whom were esteemed as protectors against plague. Many other artworks depict events focused on the demise of Sebastian.^4,5 The image of the saint tied to a tree and pierced by arrows also became a popular theme in Catholic statuary, and at least one of his reliquaries is modeled on the same motif (Fig. 2).

Having been martyred before AD 300, Sebastian was acknowledged as a saint through tradition, rather than through the formal legal and investigative processes of canonization and beatification. Unsurprisingly, the attribute or symbol of St. Sebastian is the arrow. The origins of his recognition as a plague saint are not at all clear. One explanation is that Sebastian’s initial suffering, death, and divinely engineered “resurrection” parallels that of Jesus Christ. If the arrows represent the plague, Sebastian could be seen as interposing himself between mankind and God’s punitive wrath, accepting the penetrative divine arrows of disease in his own body in place of the community.⁶

The rise of personal piety following the Catholic Counter-Reformation, especially in southern Germany and Austria, meant that a number of saints’ attributes were appropriated for personal amuletic protection against bad luck and ill health. Sebastian’s arrow or Sebastienspfeil furnish one such example. Mostly made of pewter (but also tin and silver), these amuletic arrows were available from the Benedictine Abbey and Wallfahrtskirche (Pilgrimage Church) of St. Sebastian at Ebersberg in Upper Bavaria. The church was given a relic of St. Sebastian from Rome in 934. The relic consists of a skullcap (calvaria), later (1450) housed in a silver bust reliquary for which a dedicated side chapel was built in 1668. Ebersberg was a popular medieval pilgrimage site; pilgrim visitors sought to touch the reliquary for healing and especially for protection against the plague. Indeed, the Sebastienslied (Sebastian’s Song) of 1707 contains the stanza “Die solche Pfeile tragen / Nicht nach der Peste fragen” (“Those who bear such arrows / Need not fear the plague”).⁷ The metal arrows were consecrated by touching the relic. They were then touched to the forehead at the outbreak of plague or immersed in wine that was later given to the sick to drink.

The arrows were also incorporated into the polyamuletic chains known as Fraisenkette. These were either worn across the body or hung over the bedstead in the nursery to protect young children from a range of conditions, especially convulsions, epilepsy, and plague.⁹ An example bearing a central roundel on which is engraved the Christogram IHS, representing the name of Jesus Christ, is provided in Fig. 3. “S.S.” (“Sanctissima” or “Most Holy”) appears on the reverse.

References

1. Sherry L. Reames. The Legenda Aurea: a reexamination of its paradoxical history. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985: 4.
2. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on Saints. Translated by W. Granger Ryan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993: 100.
3. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on Saints: 101.
4. Werner Roemer. Sankt Sebastian. Patron der Schützen und Fürsprecher in Pestnot. Langwaden: Bernardus-Verlag, 2003.
5. Sally Metzler. “Saint Sebastian nursed by Saint Irene.” Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, 2015.
6. Louise Marshall. “Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy.” Renaissance Quarterly, 1994: 495.
7. Josef Benzinger. Raritäten aus Baiern. Eine Sammlung von merkwürdigen Pfennigen, wundertätigen Kreuzlein und kuriosen Galanterieamuletten. München: Zaunkönigverlag, 1956: 88.
8. Ellen Ettlinger. “The Hildburgh Collection of Austrian and Bavarian Amulets in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum.” Folklore, 1965; 76: 104-117.
9. Christopher Duffin. “Convulsion Chains.” Jewellery History Today, Issue No. 41 (Spring 2021): 6-7.