Sebastian (saint)

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St. Sebastian , Andrea Mantegna , around 1457/59

Sebastian (* in Milan or Narbonne ; † around 288 in Rome ) was a Roman soldier . He has been venerated as a martyr and saint in the Catholic and Orthodox churches since the 4th century . The Evangelical Church in Germany also remembers him.

Life

Sebastian spent his youth in Milan and was appointed officer of the bodyguard of Emperors Diocletian and Maximian because of his good behavior . According to tradition, Sebastian, as captain of the Praetorian Guard at the imperial court, publicly confessed to Christianity and helped needy Christians, whereupon Diocletian sentenced him to death and had him shot by Numidian archers . Believing he was dead, he was left there afterwards. Sebastian was not dead, however, but was given to him by a pious widow, St. Irene , who actually wanted to prepare him for the funeral, was nursed back to health. After his recovery he returned to Diocletian and again professed Christianity. Diocletian then ordered him to be beaten to death with clubs in the circus . Sebastian's body was thrown into the Cloaca Maxima , an urban drainage ditch near the Tiber , from which it was salvaged by Christians after he is said to have shown them in a dream where he was staying. He was then buried in the Sebastian Catacomb . The church of San Sebastiano fuori le mura was built over his grave in the 4th century .

Remembrance day

Adoration

The bust reliquary with the skull of St. Sebastian in Ebersberg

Saint Sebastian is invoked against the plague , other epidemics and as the patron saint of the fountains , as his intercession was awarded to the so-called Justinian plague in 680 in Rome . His cult grew mainly since the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century. He is also the patron saint of the dying , iron merchants , potters , gardeners , tanners , brush binders , the police in Germany and Italy, soldiers and rifle brotherhoods , war invalids , gunsmiths , iron and pewter casters , stonecutters , hunters , corpse bearers, forest workers and is used against enemies of the Called church.

Sebastianus is one of the three patron saints of the city of Rome , patron saint of Rio de Janeiro and, together with St. Fabian , the cities of Selm in Westphalia and Furth in the forest in the Upper Palatinate . In Rio de Janeiro, actually Cidade de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro , a procession takes place on the day of the saint's remembrance .

The most important Sebastian pilgrimage site in the German-speaking area is the former abbey church of St. Sebastian in Ebersberg , Upper Bavaria , where the saint's skull is kept in a valuable late medieval reliquary . For other churches and places of worship see Sebastianskirche and Fabian-und-Sebastian-Kirche . The role assigned to Sebastian as an important plague saint of the first millennium is also explained by Stefan Winkle, according to the Frazer thesis, with a transfer of the Apollovian worship (whose arrows were associated with diseases) on the saint. The previous building, San Sebastiano al Palatino , according to tradition, the place of martyrdom, is not connected to Apollo, but to the Palladion .

In the Lower Franconian community of Lengfurt , every year on the weekend before or after Sebastian's Day, the citizens of Lengfurt take a vow to St. Sebastian redeemed. This vow is said to go back to the plague year 1632, whereby the plague should have disappeared from the place through the intercession of the saints. Because of this, the citizens vowed to pay homage to him every year on his feast day with military honors. The festive celebration of the day of remembrance was revived in Lengfurt in the middle of the 19th century, in 1866, when two deaths from cholera were to be lamented in Lengfurt within one day. The ancestors and help of the saint were remembered and the vow was solemnly renewed, after which the cholera subsided. The statutes of the Sebastiani-Verein Lengfurt, which are still in force today, go back to this period in the 19th century and since then the festival has been held annually by the, with the exception of the period of National Socialism and the US occupation in the post-war period (approx. 1943–1950) Committed by men of the Sebastianiwehr. The National Socialists forbade the festival not only because of the evidently Christian reference, but, like the American military administration, also because of the military habitus, the marching music and the (before 1945) sharp weapons. The highlight of the festival is the flag waving on the market square on Sunday lunchtime, during which the ensign, one of the high officers of the association, to the song "Über den Wellen" (1868) by Juventino Rosas, the consecrated flag within what is now almost 80 men strong parade formed squares in honor of St. Sebastian pans.

Due to a vow made in 1610, the vigilantes march in the town of Oberschwarzach every year on the day of the saint's remembrance.

iconography

Saint Sebastian, emulator of Perugino , around 1500
Representation in the church consecrated to him in Mannheim
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, painted by François-Guillaume Ménageot .

The saint's attributes include arrows piercing his chest. The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian was represented in the visual arts as early as the 5th century. The portrayal of a warrior in (often contemporary) armor with a shield and sword is typical. In German and Dutch depictions from the Gothic period onwards, the thin body covered by wounds is mostly emphasized. The entire bombardment scene is also often shown, for example with Hans Memling . In such depictions the saint is usually tied to a tree, as is the case in Corregio's Madonna of St. Sebastian (1524). Representations such as that by Matthias Grünewald on the Isenheim Altarpiece deliberately deviate from this in order to underline a special picture message. What stands out is Georges de la Tours' depiction of St. Sebastian in the arms of St. Irene , who has strong echoes of a Pietà .

At least since the Renaissance , St. Sebastian is depicted as a steadfast icon of male, adonis- like beauty. One of the reasons for the renewal of the veneration of saints after the medieval period was the successful invocation during a plague outbreak in Rome after 1348. More recent depictions of the saint with homoerotic allusions such as Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien , a stage work by Claude Debussy with text by Gabriele D'Annunzio , or Derek Jarman's 1976 film Sebastiane caused scandals. They also play a role in Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice and Mann's Nobel Prize Speech or the confession of a mask by Yukio Mishima (1925).

Farmer rules

On the day of remembrance of the saint, at the same time the day of remembrance of St. Fabian, refer to numerous pawn rules :

  • The real winter begins for Fabian and Sebastian.
  • The juice is supposed to pour into the trees on Fabian and Sebastian.
  • Storm and frost on Fabian are good for all crops.
  • Fabian in the fog hat is not doing the plants any good.
  • Sebastian the colder and lighter - then the barrels and barrels become fuller.
  • Sunshine around Fabian and Sebastian, he lets the animals run out of food.
  • About Fabian and Sebastian, the deaf also accepts the dove.

Reception in film, theater and literature

  • Saint Sebastian , novel by Erica Pedretti
  • Sankt Sebastian vom Wedding . A legend by Franz Herwig
  • Sebastian. The Holy Soldier of Rome , story by Georg Weber
  • Suddenly last summer , film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1959), adaptation of Tennessee Williams ' play of the same name; In the house of Violet Venable (played by Katharine Hepburn ), where she lived with her late homosexual son Sebastian, hangs a large mural of Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows. The figure of Sebastian Venable was designed as an analogy to Saint Sebastian.
  • In the horror film Carrie (1976) a character of Saint Sebastian can be seen several times; his martyrdom is also quoted in the death scene by Margaret White.
  • Sebastiane , directed by Derek Jarman (1976)
  • Sebastian , story by Hanna Leybrand from Das Nest (2011)

See also

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Jason Hartford: Forgotten Plurality - A Cultural Analysis of Representations of St. Sebastian in the West. In: Michael Marten and Katja Neumann (eds.): Saints and Cultural Trans- / Mission = Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 45. Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 2013, pp. 83–118. ISBN 978-3-89665-621-6
  • Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg : The artist as a martyr. Saint Sebastian in 20th century art . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1989, ISBN 3-88462-073-8 .
  • Clemens Jöckle: The great lexicon of saints . Parkland Verlag, Cologne 2003. S. 401 ff.
  • Christof Kerber: Heiliger Sebastian or A Splendid Readiness for Death. Vienna 2003, Kunsthalle Wien.
  • Wolfgang KuhoffSebastianus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 9, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-058-1 , Sp. 1268-1271.
  • Sebastianus, S. (2) . In: Johann E. Stadler , Franz Joseph Heim, Johann N. Ginal (eds.): Complete Lexicon of Saints ... , Volume 5 (Q-Z), B. Schmid'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung (A. Manz), Augsburg 1882, pp.  229-231 .
  • Anton Lichtenstern: The Landsberg cult of Sebastian. In: Landsberger history sheets. Landsberg am Lech 1992, p. 60 ff.
  • Klemens LöfflerSt. Sebastian . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Volume 13, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1912.
  • Erwin In het Panhuis, Herbert Potthoff: Sankt Sebastian or The gay art of suffering . Center for Gay History, Cologne 1999.
  • Hans Reinhard Seeliger: Sebastian, St. In: Lexicon for Theology and Church (LThK) 9 ( 3 2000), p. 60 f.

Web links

Commons : Saint Sebastian  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Dinzelbacher : Sebastian, hl .; † around 300 AD. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1313.
  2. ^ Peter Dinzelbacher: Sebastian. 2005, p. 1313.
  3. IPA current. Journal of the International Police Association - German Section eV, Volume 51, No. 2, June 15, 2006 PDF document ( Memento of August 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). As of January 2, 2009.
  4. cf. for example the medal of the Schützenbrüder Eslohe [1] .
  5. ^ Patron saint of Rome, see Wolfgang KuhoffSebastianus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 9, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-058-1 , Sp. 1268-1271.
  6. Stefan Winkle : Scourges of mankind - cultural history of epidemics. Artemis & Winkler Verlag, 3rd expanded edition, 2005, ISBN 3-538-07159-4 .
  7. ^ History . In: Sebastiani Lengfurt . ( sebastiani-lengfurt.de [accessed January 17, 2018]).
  8. ^ Sebastiani Lengfurt . In: Sebastiani Lengfurt . ( sebastiani-lengfurt.de [accessed January 17, 2018]).
  9. Course of the festival . In: Sebastiani Lengfurt . ( sebastiani-lengfurt.de [accessed January 17, 2018]).
  10. ranks and functions . In: Sebastiani Lengfurt . ( sebastiani-lengfurt.de [accessed January 17, 2018]).
  11. Saint Sebastian - A Splendid Readiness For Death - Kerber Verlag. In: www.kerberverlag.com. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015 ; accessed on November 13, 2015 .
  12. a b c Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic Icon? In: The Independent. Retrieved November 13, 2015 (UK English).
  13. Gerigk: Tarzan and St. Sebastian: To the iconology of the naked man . In Tebben (ed.): Farewell to the myth of man: cultural concepts of modernity 2002, p. 131.
  14. Carrie: Satan's Youngest Daughter (1976) - IMDb. Accessed August 6, 2019 .