St. Sebastian

St. Sebastian was an early Roman martyr whose veneration is very ancient, though the dramatic details of his passion come from a later account and cannot all be verified. According to tradition, he was a soldier, even an officer of the imperial guard, who secretly encouraged and strengthened his fellow Christians during the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian at the close of the third century.

When his faith was discovered, the tradition relates, he was bound and shot with arrows and left for dead, only to be nursed back to health by a devout woman; recovering, he boldly confronted the emperor to reproach him for his cruelty and was thereupon clubbed to death, about the year 288. Because he was thought to have survived the arrows, and because plague was likened to a rain of arrows, he was invoked from the Middle Ages as a protector against pestilence. The scene of his martyrdom made him a favorite subject of Christian art. He is a patron of soldiers, athletes, and archers, and is celebrated on 20 January.