St. Alban had voluntarily declared himself a Christian to the Roman persecutors of the faith and was undaunted by the princely threats. Instead he put on the armor of spiritual warfare, publicly declaring that he would disobey any command to sacrifice to the Roman gods: “I am a Christian, and carry out Christian rites . . . and I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”1 In these words, England’s earliest great historian, a Northumbrian monk called the Venerable Bede, recorded the courageous witness of Britain’s first known Christian martyr, one of the many victims in the last wave of Roman persecution launched against the Church at the beginning of the fourth century.2

Alban was a rich, popular, young, and Romanized Briton, educated in Rome and a veteran of the Roman army. He lived in a beautiful villa in his hometown of Verulamium (today’s St. Albans in Hertfordshire), one of the finest in Roman Britain. Though a pagan, he had a reputation for generosity toward the poor. He might have gone on living a peaceful life, unknown to history, had it not been for the Diocletian persecution which reached the shores of Britain in 305. In that year, the decree went out that all Christians in Britain had to sacrifice to the Roman gods or die. Those who refused to compromise their faith were either killed or forced into hiding. Alban chose to shelter one of these Christian fugitives and so took the first step down the road to martyrdom.

The story is poignant: Arriving home one day after visiting some friends, he found a feeble old man, faint with weariness and hunger, resting in his porch. On taking him into his house and asking him who he was, the old man said he was a Christian priest called Amphibalus.3 He had come to Alban’s home looking for sustenance and shelter, because he knew he could be trusted. Filled with compassion, Alban took the old priest into his room, giving him food, drink, and his own bed to lie on.

In the many days that followed, Alban watched the habits of his fugitive guest—his hours of prayer, his faith and piety, and the hidden joy that filled his life of trouble and danger. He asked him questions about the invisible God to whom he prayed, and Amphibalus responded by telling him the story of Jesus, His teachings, and the message of the gospel. Deeply moved, Alban decided to commit his life to Christ, though he had been warned of the potentially lethal consequences. Eventually, the inevitable happened. On a tip-off, Roman soldiers came to the villa searching for Amphibalus and found instead Alban disguised in the priest’s garb so that he himself would be taken captive.

The furious Roman governor, knowing that Alban was a Roman citizen of noble birth, would only spare his life if he agreed to do penance by sacrificing to the Roman gods. When Alban refused, he was scourged and then taken to the place of execution on a hill outside Verulamium. Tradition has it that the soldier charged with his execution threw down his sword, refusing to kill “a holy man,” so that the fatal blow had to be struck by the officer in command.4

Today, throughout the world, remembrances of his name are plentiful, whether associated with churches, towns, schools, a publishing house, or a cathedral. But on an English hillside early in the 4th century, the martyr cared not for notoriety, but only for fidelity to his Savior, whom he had known for only a little while, but whom he had known so well that he would serve Him with courage unto death.
Footnotes:
1

Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. R. E. Latham (London: Penguin Classics, 1976), 45.
2

There is some evidence that the martyrdom occurred under Emperor Septimius Severus in about 209.
3

Modern historians suspect that this name is a mistranslation of amphibalus, which is a clerical cloak.
4

Martin Biddle writes that “When he came to the place where he was to die (the arena), the executioner ran up to him with drawn sword begging to take his place, and throwing away his sword cast himself at Alban’s feet. While the (other) executioners were delaying, Alban and the crowd climbed a gentle flower-covered hill almost five hundred paces from the arena. At the top Alban asked for water and immediately a living spring (fons perennis) rose at his feet and having done its duty disappeared (second miracle). An executioner beheaded Alban but the executioner’s eyes fell to the ground (third miracle) together with the martyr’s head. The first executioner was then put to the sword. Amazed by these wonders and without waiting for the command of the emperors (iniussu principum), the judge ordered the persecution to cease.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Alban.”

Though the miraculous aspects of Alban’s execution as a new Christian are dubious, his death for the faith is well established: As historian Henry Mayr-Harting has written, “[T]he kinds of evidence which we have for Christianity in Romans times—and it does not amount to that much—is the attendance of the bishops from British cities at church councils in Gaul and Italy; the martyrdom of St. Alban at Verulamium [our italics]; the Christian word-wheel from the plaster of Cirencester house; the upper room of Lullingstone villa in Kent with its large Chi-Rho monogram and its wall paintings of well-dressed persons in the attitude of prayer (orantes); and above all the superb mosaic floor of the villa of Hinton St. Mary in Dorset, . . .” Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1991), 32.

For details, see: Caroline M. Duncan-Jones, “The Church Comes to Britain,” The Story of Christendom, (London: S.P.C.K, 1935), 59-60. See also: R. J. Unstead, “Saint Alban: The First British Martyr,” People in History (London & Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1958), 32-39.

article adopted from Kairos Journal

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