Fossato di Vico

The story
This festivity is held to celebrate the famous martyr shot to death with arrows in 228 AD, a Saint of Italian and French origins and worshipped by the Catholic and the Orthodox Church. In the past, St. Sebastian was often invoked as a protector against the plague, while today his intervention is sought against all epidemics along with St. Rocco; he is also the patron of the municipal police.
According to the legend, the Saint lived in a period when the Roman Empire was led by Diocletian. After becoming a high-rank officer of the Roman army, Sebastian was appointed Commander of the first cohort of the first legion, based in Rome and in charge of the security of the Emperor. When Diocletian, who strongly persecuted Christians, found out that Sebastian was one of them, he said: “I have always kept you here as one of the guardians of my home and you have worked in the shadow against me”. Sebastian was then sentenced to death and shot with arrows. Always according to the legend, his body was abandoned there because his killers thought he was dead, but he was not, and he was healed and managed to survive. Seeking the martyrdom, he went back to confront Diocletian; the latter ordered him to be scourged to death and his body dropped in the Cloaca Maxima (main sewer). In his commentary on Psalm 118, Ambrose wrote that Sebastian was born in Milan and subsequently he moved to Rome. Information and legends on his life are told in the “Legenda Aurea” written by Jacopo da Varagine and, specifically, in the “Passio Sancti Sebastiani” (The Passion of Saint Sebastian), a work by Arnobius the Younger, a monk who lived in the fifth century. One of the few true historical data is that his cult began in the first centuries AD and his name was included in the Deposito martyrum (Hall of Martyrs), the oldest calendar of the Church of Rome, dating back to 354 AD.
Legends and biographies telling about his service for Diocletian in Rome and the intervention of the Emperor Ivo in his martyrdom, including those told by Saint Ambrose shortly after, are spurious because Diocletian simply never lived in Rome.
Sebastian was martyred under Diocletian and is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post or tree and shot with arrows. His body was recovered by some pious soul and buried in the catacombs that today bear his name.
According to the legend, St. Sebastian was martyred on gradus helagabali (stairs of Elagabalo). In such place a church was built to honor him. The stairs of Elagabalo are thought to be those of a Roman temple on the eastern side of the Palatino hill.

St. Sebastian in Fossato di Vico
As Luigi Galassi wrote in his “Fifty churches of the history of Fossato di Vico”, we know that “...St. Sebastian became the patron of Fossato in the second half of the fifth century... as that is when people started to worship him, since he was regarded as an effective protector against the plague, characterized by wounds; although the plague was often spread by the armies crossing those areas, medieval historians missed the link between the disease and the soldiers, instead they regarded it as a God’s punishment; that is why, to cure it, rather than seeking the help of physicians, they would more likely invoke St. Sebastian as their protector against the epidemic. The Church in San Fossato – whose size is different from the original – was thus built against the plague and is still owned by the Municipality itself”.