Church of St. Sebastian

The former Church of St. Sebastian in Toffia is sited on the right bank of the Rio (a small river) between the new bridge and the old one on the Roma road, and, as traditionally reported, it is named so for having hosted the Saint’s relics.

In the year 824, Ilduino of Saint-Denis, Archichaplain of the Emperor Ludovico il Pio, accompanied Lothario, Ludovico’s son, to the controversiale election of Pope Eugene II in Rome, bringing back the St. Sebastian’s relics and keeping them in the Saint-Médard Abbey.

It is traditionally reported what happened when “Ludovico il Pio took from Eugene II the body of St. Sebastian […] the Pope had reluctantly to acquiesce when Ingoaldo [then Abbot of Farfa] managed to steal the precious relics of the martyr and replaced them so easily during those difficult days ..”

Should this hypothesis be concrete, the real bones of the saint would have been hidden in the Church – in fact – of St. Sebastian.

The Church of St. Sebastian is certainly attested as a rural church in the documents of the year 1715, but it is also mentioned in the 1616 pastoral visit, stating that there was a company dedicated to the saint who had “an annuity of two annual shields to buy the wax, the result of a field site at Moricone said Prato of St. Sebastian ” and in the Archives of State in Rieti (1690), you can find a map and documents relating to the restoration of the nearby ” St. Sebastian Bridge”.

The Church of St. Sebastian belonged to the Confraternita delle Stimmate (Brotherhood of the Stigmata) since 1776, was officiated until 1900, when a Mass sung was celebrated on January 20, with a devouts procession preceded by a silver statuette called the Stack, as thanking for the plague stopping in 1653. Once deconsecrated, the Church of St. Sebastiano was sold to privates in 1629.