143. Doña Sebastiana, La Carreta, Ángel de Muerte (The Death Cart)
Allegorical Ofical
No Feast Day
A reminder of death, not to be prayed to; used as a penitental instrument in Holy Week processions. All death carts date from after the middle of the nineteenth century. Arrows symbolize epidemic sickness (cf. Iliad 1). Death may bear the name “Sebastiana~’ because St. Sebastian was martyred with arrows.
An allegorical figure of death as a skeletal or corpselike woman with a bow and arrow or a club. Most often recognized as only a reminder, it was perhaps in some places superstitiously prayed to for longer life. Steele, Colorado Magazine 55 (1978), 1-14; Wroth, Images of Penance, Images of Mercy (1991), 149-59.
5 = 0, 0, 4, 1.