Early History
In the very year of his consulate, Acilius Glabrio was compelled by Domitian to fight, unarmed, in the amphitheatre at Albano, a Numidian bear, according to Juvenal: an enormous lion, according to Dio Cassius. This same Acilius Glabrio is later included in a Christian group of the Flavian family as a molitor rerum novarum. The Liber Pontificalis under the name Silvester says:
- fecit basilicam Augustus Constantinus in civitate Albanensis, videlicet S. Joannis Baptistae.
This basilica of the time of Constantine was destroyed by fire toward the end of the 8th century or in the beginning of the ninth Franconi has established the identity of this basilica with the present Albano Cathedral, which still contains some remains of the edifice dedicated by Pope Leo III to Saint Pancras. Under the basilica there was a crypt, or confessio, from which bodies were transferred to the cemetery nearby.
The foundation of the episcopal see of Albano is very probably contemporaneous with the erection of the Constantinian basilica. However, the first bishop of the see of whom we have any knowledge is Dionysius (d. 355). It is more than a century later (463) that we meet with another Bishop of Albano, Romanus. To these is to be added Ursinus, whose name is found on an inscription in the Catacomb of Domitilla. The consular date is either 345 or 395. The importance of this early Christian community is apparent from its cemetery, discovered in 1720 by Marangoni. It differs but little from the Christian cemeteries found in Rome. Its plan, clearly mapped out in the Epitome de locis ss. martyrum quae sunt foris civitatis Romae, is considered by Giovanni Battista de Rossi as the synopsis of an ancient description of the cemeteries, written before the end of the 6th century:
- per eandem vere viam (Appiam) pervenitur ad Albanam civitatem et per eandem civitatem ad ecclesiam S. Senatoris ubi et Perpetua jacet corpore et innumeri sancti et magna mirabilia ibidem geruntur.
The saints here named are not known. Saint Senator of Albano is inserted without further explanation in the martyrology for 26 September (et in Albano Senatoris). From this he passed to the Roman martyrology, where he is commemorated on the same day. But the first account of the martyrs of Albano is found in the Almanac of Philocalus (4th century) on 8 August:
- VI Idus aug. Carpophori, Victorini et Severiani, Albano, et Ostense septimo ballistaria, Cyriaci, Largi, Crescentiani, Memmiae, Julianae, et Smaragdi.
The cemetery has frescoes, painted at various times by unknown artists, which show the progress of Christian art from the fourth to the 9th century.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholic Suburbicarian Diocese Of Albano
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