Britain’s first named Christian martyr was, as far as anyone can tell, an ordinary man. Alban lived in Verulamium, a Roman town on the river Ver in what is now Hertfordshire. Tradition makes him a pagan and a townsman. By Bede’s account, written around 731, he died for sheltering a stranger. The story is old, partly documented and partly the stuff of saints’ lives, and the two strands are hard to pull apart.
The Horror
Bede places the story in a persecution of Christians. A cleric fleeing the persecutors came to Alban’s house and was taken in. Alban watched him pray, day and night, and was converted. When soldiers came looking for the fugitive, Alban put on the cleric’s long coat and gave himself up in his place, and was brought bound before the judge.
The judge was in the middle of offering sacrifice to the idols. Alban refused to join him. Asked about his family, he said only that he was a Christian. Asked his name, he answered that he was called Alban and worshipped the true and living God. The judge ordered him scourged, and when that did not shake him, ordered him beheaded.
That is the plain narrative. Everything Bede adds next belongs to legend. On the way to the place of execution Alban reached a river with the bridge removed and a crowd in the way, and the water dried up so that he could cross. The executioner who saw it threw down his sword, declared himself a Christian and asked to die in Alban’s place. On a hill, about five hundred paces from the river, Alban prayed for water and a spring rose at his feet. A second man beheaded him, and the executioner’s eyes are said to have fallen out onto the ground with the martyr’s head. The soldier who had refused to strike was beheaded too, and Bede says he was cleansed by his own blood.
The date is unsettled. Bede’s chapter heading gives A.D. 305, in the persecution under Diocletian. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives 283. Some scholars favour a persecution under Decius or Valerian, around 251 to 259, and John Morris proposed 209 under Septimius Severus, though the mention of Severus in the text he used is regarded as a later addition. The overall range is 209 to 313. This page uses Bede’s 305 as a label, not as a settled fact.
The Legend
The oldest written witnesses are thin. A text of about 396 may describe Alban without naming him. A life of Germanus of Auxerre, written about 480, does name him, and Gildas, writing about 570, names him as a martyr of Verulamium. Bede, the fullest source, wrote about 731. Germanus is said to have visited Alban’s tomb in 429, which would show a cult at the spot within living memory of Roman Britain, but the evidence is the later Life of Germanus, and it does not come from a contemporary of the martyr.
The historian Ian Wood argued that Germanus effectively invented the story. Nick Higham disputed that in 2014, and others argue for an earlier written account, so historians remain divided. Robin Lane Fox has gone further and questioned whether Alban existed at all.
The sheltered cleric was given the name Amphibalus much later. The word is Latin for a cloak, so the name appears to have grown out of the story itself. The dried-up river, the spring and the executioner’s eyes are the miracles and should be read as such.
Offa of Mercia is said to have founded a great double monastery on the hill in 793, but the claim rests on tradition and is unconfirmed by a firm early source.
The Modern Relic
St Albans Cathedral, the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban, stands near the supposed site of the execution. A memorial over the spot is thought to date from the mid-fourth century, possibly earlier. The Roman town below the hill supplied building material for the later abbey, and the medieval town that grew around the abbey took the martyr’s name.
The abbey was dissolved in 1539, and the shrine was broken up. The Victorian Web account says the shrine, dated to 1308, was reconstructed from the many pieces found scattered around, and calls the work rather crude. The date of that rebuilding is not given there. The shrine stands in the cathedral today.
Whatever happened on the hill, the memory has held in one place for a very long time. A man who owed a hunted stranger nothing put on the stranger’s cloak. That is the part of the story that is easiest to believe, and it is the part Bede himself placed first.
