The full account of his martyrdom comes from the Passio Sancti Sebastiani, a 5th-century text written by an anonymous author, possibly Arnobius the Younger.

[6] According to Sebastian's 18th-century entry in Acta Sanctorum,[7] still attributed to Ambrose by the 17th-century hagiographer Jean Bolland, and the briefer account in the 14th-century Legenda Aurea, he was a man of Gallia Narbonensis who was taught in Mediolanum (Milan).

Diocletian reproached him for his supposed betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake so that the chosen archers from Mauretania would shoot arrows at him.

This freedom of speech, and from a person whom he supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for Sebastian to be seized and beaten to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer.

A holy lady named Lucina, admonished by the martyr in a vision, privately removed the body and buried it in the catacombs at the entrance of the cemetery of Calixtus,[9] where now stands the Basilica of St.

[2] Remains reputed to be those of Sebastian are housed in Rome in the Basilica Apostolorum, built by Pope Damasus I in 367 on the site of the provisional tomb of Saints Peter and Paul.

Ado, Eginard, Sigebert, and other contemporary authors relate that, in the reign of Louis Debonnair, Pope Eugenius II gave the body of Sebastian to Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denys, who brought it into France, and it was deposited at Saint Medard Abbey, at Soissons, on 8 December, in 826.

[16] The belief that Saint Sebastian was a defense against the plague was a medieval addition to his reputation, which largely accounts for the enormous increase in his importance in the Late Middle Ages.

The Golden Legend transmits the episode of a great plague that afflicted the Lombards in the time of King Gumburt, which was stopped by the erection of an altar in honor of Sebastian in the Church of Saint Peter in the Province of Pavia.

[21] The right lateral wall of the basilica contains large mosaics representing a procession of 26 martyrs, led by Saint Martin and including Sebastian.

Among many others, Botticelli, Perugino, Titian, Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Bellini, Guido Reni (who painted the subject seven times), Mantegna (three times), Hans Memling, Gerrit van Honthorst, Luca Signorelli, El Greco, Honoré Daumier, John Singer Sargent and Louise Bourgeois all painted Saint Sebastians.

Hans Holbein the Elder created a statuette of Saint Sebastian "in silver and parcel-gilt", now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

[30] The Baroque artists usually treated it as a nocturnal chiaroscuro scene, illuminated by a single candle, torch or lantern, in the style fashionable in the first half of the 17th century.

This allusion to Sebastian's suffering, associated with the writerly professionalism of the novella's protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, provides a model for the "heroism born of weakness", which characterizes poise amidst agonizing torment and plain acceptance of one's fate as, beyond mere patience and passivity, a stylized achievement and artistic triumph.

[34] In 1976, the British director Derek Jarman made a film, Sebastiane, which caused controversy in its treatment of the martyr as a "homosexual icon", according to a number of critics reflecting a subtext perceptible in the imagery since the Renaissance.

[35] Boxer Muhammad Ali was pictured in the iconography of a bound Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows, in the April 1968 issue of Esquire Magazine.

A depiction of Saint Sebastian in a fresco restoration in an isolated Italian village is the central motif and cryptic mystery of the 1976 giallo horror film The House with Laughing Windows.

[36] In her 1965 story "Everything That Rises Must Converge", Flannery O'Connor's character Julian feels as if he were the martyr while taking his mother to "reducing" classes at the Y.

[38] British pop band Alt-J's video for "Hunger of the Pine" contains references to the story of Saint Sebastian's death, adapted to fit the lyrics of the song.

song "Losing My Religion" makes use of imagery of Saint Sebastian, drawing particular inspiration from paintings by Guido Reni[39] and Caravaggio.

Madonna's song "I'm a Sinner" from her 2012 album MDNA has a segment resembling a litany, with one line saying, "St. Sebastian, don't you cry; let those poisoned arrows fly."

[43] The family del Valle in Isabel Allende's novel "House of the Spirits" attends Sunday mass in the Church of Saint Sebastian.

Informally, in the tradition of the Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion Umbanda, Sebastian is often associated with Oxossi, especially in the state of Rio de Janeiro itself.

Sebastian is the patron of Knights of Columbus Council #4926 in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose in California, serving the cities of Mountain View and Los Altos.

In 1996, American author Richard A. Kaye wrote that "Contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire (indeed, a homoerotic ideal), and a prototypical portrait of tortured closet case.

[55] A combination of his strong, shirtless physique, the symbolism of the arrows penetrating his body, and the countenance of rapturous pain have intrigued artists (gay or otherwise) for centuries.

[56] Other homosexual poets and artists like Federico García Lorca or Pier Paolo Pasolini highlighted the importance of Saint Sebastian imagery in their work.

[57] In Yukio Mishima's novel Confessions of a Mask, the protagonist Kochan has his first gay sexual experience while looking at a reproduction of Guido Reni's Saint Sebastian.