St. Sebastian

Sources

• Roman Martyrology, 20 January.
• Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbermann, 1907-1913), 'St. Sebastian' — gives the feast as 20 January and the burial on the Via Appia, and states the surviving Acts are 'unhistorical and not worthy of belief'. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13668a.htm
• DEMOTED FROM TIER 1. The Catholic Encyclopedia opens 'little more than the fact of his martyrdom can be proved about St. Sebastian', and nothing he did for another person is on record in any source held here. A holiness line and a 200-320 word summary could only have been padded out of the Acts the same article rejects, so the record was converted to Tier 2 rather than invented. Revisit if a source turns up that says what he did.
• DATING, carried over from the Tier 1 date_note, which Tier 2 cannot store: traditionally martyred at Rome under Diocletian; sources give c. 286-288 and the year is not secure. The Acts date his discovery as a Christian to 286, but they are the same Acts the Catholic Encyclopedia calls unhistorical. Do not take a death year from this record without reading that caveat first.
• PATRONAGES, carried over from Tier 1, which Tier 2 cannot store as fields: soldiers (traditional — arises from the account of his military service, itself from the rejected Acts; no formal papal designation located); protection against plague (traditional — widespread medieval cultus, particularly from the plague years, with celebrated answers to prayer recorded at Rome in 680, Milan in 1575 and Lisbon in 1599; never formally promulgated); athletes (popular — modern folk attribution drawn from his depiction in art; no ecclesiastical designation located). Dropping these costs real findability, since soldiers and plague are what he is actually invoked for. The loss is deliberate and recorded here so it is not mistaken for an oversight.