... This was the name of a martyr-saint, a soldier at Rome, who, when other Christians fled, remained there to encourage the flock in the first outburst of the last persecution.  He endured a double martyrdom; first, by the well-known shower of arrows directed against him; and next, after his recovery under the care of a pious widow, who had carried away his supposed corpse to bury it, he defied the emperor again, and was beaten to death in the arena by clubs.
     Devout women buried him in the catacombs, and his name slept for at least a hundred years till Pope Damascus built a church over his catacomb, which has ever since been called after him, and subsequent popes made presents of his relics to Tuscany, France, and other countries.  A notion arose, Mrs. Jameson thinks, from his arrows reminding the classical world of the darts of Apollo, that he was connected with pestilence.  His name is thus found all over Europe, though less commonly in England and the Protestant parts of Germany than farther south.  Indeed its especial home is Portugal, where it must have been specially cherished in memory of the rash Don Sebastião, the last of the glorious House of Avis, for whose return from the fatal African campaign his country so long looked and longed. (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884)