St. Sebastian, having sent so many martyrs to heaven before him, was himself impeached before the emperor Dioclesian; who, having grievously reproached him with ingratitude, delivered him over to certain archers of Mauritania, to be shot to death. His body was covered with arrows, and he left for dead. Irene, the widow of St. Castulus, going to bury him, found him still alive, and took him to her lodgings, where, by care, he recovered of his wounds, but refused to fly, and even placed himself one day by a staircase where the emperor was to pass, whom he first accosted, reproaching {185} him for his unjust cruelties against the Christians. This freedom of speech, and from a person, too, whom he supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for his being seized and beat to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer. A pious lady called Lucina, admonished by the martyr in a vision, got it privately removed, and buried it in the catacombs,[3] at the entrance of the cemetery of Calixtus. A church was afterwards built over his relies by pope Damasus, which is one of the seven ancient stationary churches at Rome, but not one of the seven principal churches of that city, as some moderns mistake; it neither being one of the five patriarchal churches, nor one of the seventy-two old churches which give titles to cardinals. Vandelbert, St. Ado, Eginard, Sigebert, and other contemporary authors relate, that in the reign of Louis Debonnaire, pope Eugenius II. gave the body of St. Sebastian to Hilduin, abbot of St. Denys, who brought it into France, and it was deposited at St. Medard's, at Soissons, on the 9th of December, in 826; with it is said to have been brought a considerable portion of the relics of St. Gregory the Great. The rich shrines of SS. Sebastian, Gregory, and Medard, were plundered by the Calvinists, in 1564, and the sacred bones thrown into a ditch, in which there was water. Upon the declaration of two eye-witnesses, they were afterwards found by the Catholics; and in 1578, enclosed in three new shrines, though the bones of the three saints could not be distinguished from each other.[4] The head of this martyr, which was given to St. Willibrord by pope Sergius, is kept at Esternach, in the duchy of Luxemburg. Portions of his relics are shown in the cathedral at St. Victor's; the Theatins and Minims at Paris; in four churches at Mantua; at Malaca, Seville, Toulouse, Munich in the ducal palace, Tournay in the cathedral, Antwerp in the church of the Jesuits, and at Brussels, in the chapel of the court, not at St. Gudula's, as some have mistaken.[5] St. Sebastian has been always honored by the church, as one of her most illustrious martyrs. We read in Paul the deacon, in what manner, in the year 680, Rome was freed from a raging pestilence, by the patronage of this saint. Milan, in 1575, Lisbon, in 1599, and other places, have experienced, in like calamities, the