Patronage
3 saints are venerated as patrons of soldiers, led by Joan of Arc (feast day May 30).
1412 — 1431 · Feast day: May 30
Joan of Arc, a peasant girl from Domrémy, claimed the voices of saints commanded her to save France. At seventeen she led French forces to lift the Siege of Orléans in nine days, then escorted the Dauphin to his coronation at Reims. Captured in 1430 and burned for heresy in 1431, she died calling out the name of Jesus.
c. 255 AD — c. 288 AD · Feast day: January 20
Saint Sebastian concealed his Christianity while serving as captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian and Maximian, using that access to strengthen imprisoned Christians. Shot with arrows and left for dead on the Field of Mars, he survived — nursed back by Irene of Rome — and returned to rebuke Diocletian to his face. The emperor had him clubbed to death, earning Sebastian the name 'the twice-martyred saint.'
Approx. 316 AD — November 8, 397 AD · Feast day: November 11
A Roman cavalry officer who cut his military cloak in half to clothe a freezing beggar outside Amiens — and dreamed that night of Christ wearing the cloth — Martin of Tours became the Father of Monasticism in Gaul and patron of France. He died in 397 after thirty years as Bishop of Tours, an office the people of Gaul forced on a man who wanted only a monastery cell.