Sanctuary (Saint Seiya)

Sanctuary (聖域(サンクチュアリ), Sankuchuari) is a fictional location from the manga series Saint Seiya, authored by Masami Kurumada, later adapted to anime. It is also the residence of an organization with the same name.

The leader of the Sanctuary is Athena in her human reincarnation. But since Athena only descends down from Olympus as a human incarnation only once every roughly two hundred years, the charge was left mainly to the Pope, the highest rank of the Sanctuary, and her second in command, followed by 88 Saints and more soldiers.

The goal of the Sanctuary is to protect Athena and maintain peace of the world in secret, with least to no interference on most of the affairs around the world in which most of the world population can solve problems on their own. Sanctuary will intervene only when the things that threaten to destroy peace of the world cannot be handled by any other means but the power of Cosmo, most of them cataclysmic and are of divine forces. An example of these is the melt down of the Nuclear Plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, USA.

In the beginning of the Saint Seiya original series, battles are fought to win back the control of the Sanctuary from Gemini Saga, the impersonator of the former Pope. This Sanctuary arc is but a prelude in order to control the Sanctuary, the only place from which Athena and her Saints can protect the world against the yet greater threats.

It appears later in the series that Sanctuary is not the only organization in the world that know about Cosmo. In the second arc of the series, the Poseidon arc, the Sanctuary faces a great threat from the cataclysmic Flood, summoned forth by Poseidon to "cleanse the world of evil". His armies and Mariners too know how to utilize the power of Cosmo. The strongest of these are the Marine Generals. And Sanctuary is again on the move.

The biggest threat is later revealed in the next arc of the series, the Hades arc. It is said that the very existence all the Saints within the Sanctuary was to protect the world from this threat: Hades and his Specters. Hades and his army, unlike Athena and hers, do not share the same ideology of leaving the world in peace and unite them with love. They seek to unite them under their power, and thus, protecting the earth by imposing one domination. They even think that the peaceful world such as this one will weaken human. And so they try to change the world filled with love like in Athena's ideology into the lifeless one like in Hades'. And, like Poseidon and his army, Hades and his too possess the power of Cosmo. The destruction of the Sanctuary, along with Athena's life, is their primary goal. In Saint Seiya prequel and sequel official : Saint Seiya: Next Dimension Myth of Hades, Hades and his armies also aim for this. Several times in this manga is shown the structure and the formation of the sanctuary.

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