Join Eric Huang – writer and producer of the Saint Podcast – for a 4-part series, this is Lecture 2 of 4
According to legend, Saint Sebastian was a citizen of ancient Rome who distinguished himself in battle and rose quickly to become the trusted right hand of the Emperor. Outwardly, he embodied imperial power, military discipline, and masculine virtue. Beneath this polished exterior lay a forbidden truth: Sebastian was a closeted Christian, devoted to an illegal cult practiced in the shadows of empire. This illustrated talk returns to the earliest legends of this ancient martyr to explore how a middle?aged military commander—once venerated as a protector against plague and pandemics—was gradually remade, through centuries of art, devotion, and desire, into a barely legal queer icon. CAPTION FOR IMAGE: Saint Sebastian, St Joseph Church, Meenachil, Kottayam, Kerala. Image by Jinesh8100, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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