Sebastian, Saint

   A Roman soldier during the reign of Diocletian who converted to Christianity and miraculously cured several individuals, including the deaf-mute Zoé and the prefect Chromatius who suffered from gout. He was shot with arrows and left for dead for professing his faith, his martyrdom depicted by Antonello da Messina in 1476-1477 (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). St. Irene nursed him back to health, which is the scene George de La Tour presented in 1650 (Paris, Louvre), but, when Sebastian denounced the emperor for the cruelty he directed at Christians, he was beaten to death and his body thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, the main sewer line in Rome. His beating is the subject of Albrecht Altdorfer's painting for the Monastery of Sankt-Florian (1515), and the disposal of his body was rendered by Ludovico Carracci in c. 1613 (St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima; Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum). St. Sebastian is the patron saint of archers and soldiers. Because of the cures he effected, and the fact that St. Irene nursed him back to health, he is usually invoked during illness and the plague.