Saint Alban - Life

Life

According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, I.vii and xviii, Alban was a pagan living at Verulamium (now St Albans), who converted to Christianity, and was executed by decapitation on a hill above the Roman settlement of Verulamium. St Albans Abbey was later founded near this site.

The date of Alban's execution has never been firmly established. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles lists the year 283. According to the Venerable Bede: "when the cruel Emperors first published their edicts against the Christians". In other words, sometime after the publication of the edicts by Eastern Roman Emperor Diocletian in 303 and before the proclamation of the toleration Edict of Milan by co-ruling Roman Emperors Constantine I and Licinius in 313. The year 304 has been suggested.

In 1968, English historian John Morris suggested that St Alban's martyrdom took place during the persecutions under Emperor Septimius Severus in 209. Morris bases his claims on earlier manuscript sources, unknown to Bede, especially an 8th-century copy of a 3rd century manuscript found in Turin which states, "Alban received a fugitive cleric and put on his garment and his cloak (habitu et caracalla) that he was wearing and delivered himself up to be killed instead of the priest… and was delivered immediately to the evil Caesar Severus." St Gildas knew this source, but mistranslated the name "Severus" as an adjective, and wrongly identified the emperor as Diocletian. Bede accepted this identification as fact, and dated St Alban's martyrdom to this later period. As Morris points out, Diocletian reigned only in the East, and would not have been involved in British affairs in 304; Severus, however, was in Britain from 208 to 211. Morris thus dates Alban's death to 209. Subsequent scholars (W. H. C. Frend and Charles Thomas for example) have argued that such a single, localised British martyrdom in 209 would have been unusual, and have suggested the period of 251–59 (under the persecutors Decius or Valerian) as more likely.

Alban sheltered a Christian priest (Geoffrey of Monmouth's later interpolation giving his name as "Amphibalus", the name for the cloak) in his home, and was converted and baptised by him. When the "impious prince", as Bede has called him, sent Roman soldiers to Alban's house to look for the priest, Alban exchanged cloaks with the priest and was arrested in his stead at Chantry Island. Alban was taken before the magistrate, who was furious at the deception and ordered that Alban be given the punishment due to the priest if he had indeed become a Christian. Alban declared, "I worship and adore the true and living God who created all things." These words are still used in prayer at St Albans Abbey. St Alban was eventually sacrificed to the Roman gods and was condemned to death. He was taken out of the town across the River Ver. St Alban, keen for matrydom and with the Bridge blocked with people is helped by God to cross by the parting of the River, he proceeds to the top of the hill opposite. The reputed place of his beheading is where St Albans Cathedral now stands. However, Gildas places the crossing of the River as at the 'great River Thames' and does not state that Alban was martyred in Verulamium; Bede is the first person to document the execution and burial of Alban as happening in Verulamium.