Feast day of Saint Sebastian

Sebastian, the patron saint of archers, was an officer in the Roman army and a favourite of the Emperor Diocletian. He was martyred in 288, by being bound to a tree, shot at with arrows then beaten to death. He is thus also the patron saint of pin makers.

When Irish playwright Oscar Wilde went to live in exile in France after his humiliating prison term in England, he adopted the alias Sebastian Melmonth. The surname Melmonth was a family name; Sebastian he took from the saint in a rather pungent reflection on the prison uniform covered in arrows that was used by Britain in those days.

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