This year marks the fifth centenary of the arrival of the Relic of the arm of Sant Sebasti\u00e0 in Mallorca. To celebrate it, the Cathedral of Mallorca has announced that it will organise various events and activities to raise awareness of the cult of Sant Sebasti\u00e0 in Palma, and especially in La Seu, during the patron saint festivities that will take place around the 20th of January 2024.<\/p>\n
The piece, which is kept in the Baroque Chapterhouse of the Cathedral’s Cathedral Museum, arrived on the island in September 1523 thanks to the Ardiaca of the city of Rhodes, Manuel Surianesgui. In 1523 the city of Rhodes had been besieged by Turkish troops for a year, a siege that would end with the presence of the military orders that had emerged from the Crusades. To protect the Relic of Sant Sebasti\u00e0, Manuel Surianesgui, archdeacon of the city, took it with him on his flight to the Iberian Peninsula.<\/p>\n
In September of that year, his ship arrived in the port of Palma. The city and the island were suffering from a plague epidemic, and a few months earlier the agermanados – groups of artisans who tried to raise up the people against the knights and the urban elites – had surrendered to the viceroy Miguel de Gurrea. After a few days’ stopover in Mallorca, Surianesgui wanted to leave, taking the Relic with him, but a heavy storm prevented his departure. At that moment, the decision was taken to leave it in the Cathedral, as recorded in the minutes that are preserved in the Archive of the Kingdom of Mallorca, under the power of the notary Antoni Carles, and which was signed on 3rd September 1523 by the archdeacon, the Cathedral Chapter and the jurors of Palma.<\/p>\n
Popular tradition states that, thanks to the decision to leave the Relic of the arm of Sant Sebasti\u00e0 in Palma, the plague epidemic subsided, and the saint became the patron saint of the city.<\/p>\n
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