A Cult Between Cultures:

Reading St Alban as an Anglo-Saxon Hero

Kyle D. Potter

Presented for Martyrs and Martyrdom

Dr. Candida Moss

10 December 2012

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A Cult Between Cultures: Reading Alban as an Anglo-Saxon Warrior Hero Kyle D. Potter

The passion and cult of Britain’s St Alban presents a number of interesting questions for the

reader of martyrdom accounts. His is the only passion narrative passed down from Roman Britain, and

the only continuing cult after the Anglo-Saxon invasion regressed both civilization and the fledgling

influence of the Christian faith on the island. I will posit here that since the story and the shrine survived

the change in dominant cultures, there must have been some particular value expressed by the saint’s

story where it was preserved, and some particular appeal to Anglo-Saxon culture that enabled him to

make the transition from a British martyr to an English patron. In exploring this, I will offer background

on Alban’s textual traditions, and discuss his representation in Gildas and Bede in light of common

tropes in passion literature and particular themes in Anglo-Saxon spirituality.

Alban is traditionally called the Protomartyr of Britain, because his is the oldest martyrdom

account transmitted by the historical record. His shrine, found at the town that bears his name on the

site of the Roman town of Verulamium, may be the oldest site of continuous Christian devotion in

Britain because it persists from the time of the Romans. James Campbell has suggested that it may be

the "oldest institution on the island."1 The earliest detailed accounts of Alban’s martyrdom come from

Gildas’ mid 6th century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis

Anglorum. Bede enlarges the narrative, likely drawing upon at least one more source than GIldas

possessed. The tradition generally holds that a Briton named Alban shelters a man fleeing persecution

by the local authorities due to his Christian profession. Alban disguises himself in the man’s clothes and

offers himself in his place. He is executed before a throng on a hill outside of Verulamium, next to the

Thames.

1 James Campbell, "Britain AD 500," History Today 50.2 (February 2000), 33. For discussion on the history

and development of the site, see Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape (London: J.M. Dent, 1989) and E.L. Roberts, Hill of the Martyr: an Architectural History of St. Albans Abbey (Dunstable: The Book Castle, 1993).

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For the greatest part, scholarly readings of this tradition have sought to determine the likely

date of Alban’s martyrdom, and carefully examined the manuscript traditions behind the account.

Following recent discussions of the dating problems by T.D. Barnes and Richard Sharpe, I will offer an

overview here.2 The earliest record of the cult comes from the Vita S. Germani, 16, 18, in which the

bishop visits the shrine of the martyr to give thanks for aid against the Arians, and who subsequently

protected the travelers from storms on their home. Barnes considers this an authentic part of the

account, since it was from Germanicus' city of Auxerre that devotion to Albanus spread through

continental Europe.3 Gildas provides the earliest account of his martyrdom, and Barnes notes the

tradition that places him at Verulamium as “unanimous and secure.” While Gildas places the martyrs

under the reign of Diocletian, Barnes favors Lactantius’ claim that Constantius (who ruled Britain while

Diocletian ruled in Rome) did not kill British Christians. Barnes prefers to place the persecution under

Decius or Valerian, joining Sharpe in discarding the textual interpretations that suggest the earlier 209

date.4

Sharpe presents three textual traditions for the Passio Albanus, and argues for a different order

of primacy between them than did W. Meyer or W. Levison. This allows him to discard a date of 209 for

Alban’s death, associated with the rule of Septimus Severus in Britain.5 The Turin manuscript (T) offers

2 See Richard Sharpe, “The Late Antique Passion of St Alban,” Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval

Architecture, Art and Archeology, 30-37, edited by Martin Henig and Phillip Lindley, British Archeological Association Transactions XXIV (Leeds: Maney, 2001) for a thorough discussion work on manuscript traditions behind Gildas and Bede, and T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 307-310 for an overview.

3 Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 307, citing Delehaye Hippolyte, Les origines du culte des martyrs

Bruxelles Soci t des Bollandistes, 1933), 362; I. Wood, Gildas: New Approaches, ed. M. Lapidge and D. Dumbille (Woodbridge and Dover, NH, 1984), 12-13.

4 Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 307-08.

5 W. Meyer, “Die Legend des h. Albanus des Protomartyr Angliae in Texten vor Beda,” Abhandlungen der

Gellschaft (Akademie) der Wissenschaften zu Gottengen, NS 8.1 (1904), 3-81; W. Levison, “St Alban and St Albans,” Antiquity 15 (1941), 337-59.

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“the earliest direct texual witness” to the story, and is a collection of martyrdom accounts from Roman

Gaul.6 The Paris manuscript (P) was catalogued by the Bollandists as being from the 9th or 10th century.

A third manuscript (E) is much shorter than the others, attested by four extant copies. Tradition E can be

found in its entirety in both P and T, and everything shared by the latter two can be found in E. Meyer

judged T to be earlier, because it named the emperor, where the “ruthless abbreviator” E removed the

reference, and was later used by P, neither of the latter two seeming to know the name of the emperor

and replacing him with an iudex. This is problematic because in each tradition, the Caesar or iudex “acts

without orders,” which is nonsensical in the case of the former. Sharpe solves the problem by

positioning E as the source material for both T and P, each being an elaboration upon the first. This

allows the reader to understand T’s insertion of the emperor as an influence of the passio genre overall:

all the best martyrs get their trials before the emperor.7

Interestingly, John Morris found additional confusion entering the story via the Turin

manuscript where in T Alban takes on the priest’s “habitu et caracalla,” the redactor did not know the

latter to be an epithet for co-emperor Antonius Severus. Later copies would replace caracalla with

amphibalon, which at one point in the twelfth century was taken to be the name of the fleeing man,

whom Bede calls a priest. Later the caretakers of the shrine of St. Alban “found” the relics of Amphibalus

and set up a shrine for him as well.8

Situating Alban in the British Christian tradition is difficult, because early all evidence of early

British Christianity is archeological. Historians believe that merchants from the Roman Empire brought

6 Sharpe, “Late Antique Passion,” Alban and St Albans, 32.

7 Ibid., 34f.

8 J. Robert Wright. A Companion to Bede A Reader’s Commentary on the Ecclesiastical History of the

English People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 17-18; John Morris, “The Date of Saint Alban,” Hertfordshire Archeology 1 (1968): 1-8.

In the twelfth century, Roger of Wendover related the story of a man who had a dream in which he found the grave of this priest. Afterward, a group of monks set out to excavate the relics from a barrow, and they did find a body. Richard Morris sees this “discovery” of St Amphibalus’ relics as a way of starting new cults or enriching old ones that became common by the early medieval period. Multiple burials in barrows were common. Morris, Churches in the Landscape, 41.

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the faith to Britannia as early as the second century. Tertullian referred in “the haunts of the Britons —

inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ,”9 and there is record of three British bishops

attending the Council of Arles in 314, and also at Rimini in 359.10 The imperial cult was in evidence as

well, with some Roman temples being erected on the island in the first century, and tales of Boadicea

burning one in Colchester around 61. It is unclear to what extent Christianity was confined to the cities

as was normal in much of the Empire, and how deeply it might have penetrated into the countryside. It

cannot be clearly shown that Christianity in Britain was particularly rural or urban; the apparent

presence of Christians in the cemeteries of smaller towns as well as a wide dispersal of artifacts

throughout Britain suggests that the faith took root in the countryside as well.11 If Britain’s Christian

minority saw themselves as “country people” as much as city dwellers, it could have been as important

to supplant the wood nymphs and water gods that dwelt in rural areas as much as the Roman deities

that were venerated in the larger towns. Apparent popularity of water cults (based upon place-names

kept through the years) for both the Britons and the Anglo-Saxons would have made the water-based

miracles particularly attractive, and important as a cultural subversion.

This paper will read the Passion of Saint Alban as it is related by Gildas and Bede in light of their

apparent rhetorical purposes, because the literary traditions they create both respond to the realities of

the Anglo-Saxon invasions, and then move that culture forward. One cannot similarly identify a clearly

Roman British textual tradition for the story. Bede and Gildas each wrote their accounts as the Anglo-

Saxon peoples settled along the eastern shores of Britain. These settlements are thought to have begun

around the 450s, when the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other tribes were according to the island’s

traditions) hired by the Britons to protect them from Vikings. Finding the island to be more hospitable

9 Tertullian, Against the Jews, 7.4.

10 Henry Chadwick, “The Route from Gallilee,” in Not Angels but Anglicans: A History of Christianity in the

British Isles, 1-8, ed. Henry Chadwick (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010), 5. 11

Kenneth Hylson-Smith, Christianity in England from Roman Times to the Reformation, Vol. 1: From Roman Times to 1066 (London: SCM, 1999), 67-69.

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than the European coastlands, they stayed in increasing numbers. Facing gradual invasion, the native

Britons are thought to have moved to the south and west of the island as they lost engagements.12

Anglo-Saxon culture is difficult to discern because the Anglo-Saxons did not leave many religious

artifacts: “they did not build or carve in stone, … write in Roman script, [and] rarely produced

naturalistic art, preferring abstract patterns.”13 Evidence for Anglo-Saxon paganism is therefore rare;

because it was initially a minimally literate culture, only limited conclusions can be drawn from

archeological evidence. The names of Tiw, Wodwn, Tunor, and Frig can be found in place names,

especially when combined with the names of objects. Many place names seem to historians to be

evocative of idols or supernatural creatures, and some diseases were even named for elves. No

conclusions about an organized cult can be drawn, especially since any shrines are likely to have been in

the open air; evidence of any temples is sparse.14

I will consider aspects of Alban’s story as it may have opposed some of these cultic pagan

elements, demonstrated some common themes of martyrdom stories in the broader tradition of the

ancient Christians, and appealed to Anglo-Saxon traits of Anglo-Saxon culture and (what we would call)

spirituality. This latter task is also complicated by the dearth of literary cultural in this society. Where

they exist, Anglo-Saxon cultural artifacts such as poems, stories, and songs cannot be said to be

untouched by Christian influence. It is possible that some cultural themes could be shaped by Scripture

and the lives of the saints, just as well as it could be supposed that relating the stories of the saints has

been colored by the values peculiar to the culture. Indeed, as Gordon Mursell points out, most surviving

Anglo-Saxon literature comes to us because of its preservation in monasteries, after passing across the

desk of the monastic copyist, who was charged with the evangelization of a pagan people.15 With this in

12

Gale R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons (London: David & Charles, 1981), 6-7. 13

Ibid., 7. 14

For an overview of archeological evidence, see David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (London: Routledge, 1992).

15 Gordon Mursell, English Spirituality: From Earliest Times to 1700 (London: SPCK, 2001), 34.

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mind, I do not attempt to argue that the Alban story influenced these values, or that the Alban story was

necessarily re-written to include them. I do argue rather that the story must have had some particular

resonance with Anglo-Saxon culture as it existed from the Roman period and then through its

republication at the hands of Gildas and Bede. If this were not the case, surely the cult of Alban would

have faded, just as did the other cults of saints and martyrs to which Gildas alludes. With this in mind, I

will read the accounts provided by Gildas and Bede as outlines of the oral tradition that would have

surrounded the shrine and followed the relics, considering elements of these accounts as they converge

with broader themes in Anglo-Saxon life as discerned by other writers.

Let us consider first a selection of standard martyrdom themes often found in this type of

literature. The imitatio Christi motif was commonly used in martyrdom accounts as an apologia for the

martyr’s death. Appealing to common sense, one’s God is surely not so impressive if the worship of that

God leaves a series of unhappy, senseless deaths in its wake. Jesus offers the central example of a death

accepted quietly and with determination because of that death’s deep meaning and redemptive value.

The martyr appears to be alone and forsaken, but he is not, because Jesus was not. The martyr’s death

might appear to be a tragic result of hubris, but it is shown to be an act of humility to be rewarded with

victory, because God raised Jesus from the grave. The martyr, then, is not mourned as a victim, but

celebrated as a victor. This imitation could take various forms. In Irenaus’ account of Blandina, she is

“hung on a tree” in fighting a “cosmic battle,” a central theme in the former’s Christology.16 In Polycarp,

his arrest and the timing of his trial mimic the experience of Jesus in the Gospels.17 In Gildas’ account of

Alban, the martyr’s self-sacrifice makes him like the Good Shepherd. The martyrs imitate Christ on a

basic level by the fact of their suffering itself, and the motif deepens in any store in which the martyr can

be seen as taking on a mission like Jesus, imitating particular patterns of behavior, or speaking in words

16

Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 119.

17 Ibid., 63.

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reminiscent of Jesus in the Gospels. Not only does the martyr who dies like Jesus suffer in anticipation of

God’s vindication, but that martyr also partakes in Jesus’ holiness, allowing her to communicate that

holiness to others, particularly through relics.

In a broader sense, finding meaning in the martyr’s suffering allows the community that

generates and listens to the story to find meaning in their own. The expectation of suffering was a key

component of Christian identity in the Roman period, and discourse regarding martyrs gave the nascent

church a compelling vehicle for discussing its own pain.18 The martyr serves as a bridge between the

suffering of Christ and the suffering of the community that wants to see itself formed after the image of

Christ in turn: where Christ came from God and returned to God after their suffering, the martyrs came

a broken creation, became like Christ in their suffering, and returned to God just as Jesus did. To these

ends, both the Christ-like holiness of the martyr and the miracles that often accompanied her passion

offered a twofold authentication: first for the martyr herself, who by supernatural occurrences is proven

to be accepted by God, and to the regional church that produced her. In the stories, we learn that on

one level, the martyr is like Jesus because of some part of the imitates his passion. However, surely

anyone could be unfairly tried and unjustly killed by the Empire. The accompaniment of miracles adds an

additional layer of authentication, a clear mark that tells hearers that God did indeed accept the Christ-

like sacrifice of a martyr in the community member’s suffering. Such suffering gave authority to the local

church, as well. Just as the apostles “rejoic[ed] that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the

name” Acts 5.41), so churches could mark it as an honor, and even a source of enhanced regional

authority, when God counted them worthy of producing martyrs. Those illustrious churches that

produced many martyrs and confessor could claim more authority for their fervor and orthodoxy, in

contrast to those churches who had not yet been tested or produced many “stillborn” martyrs.19 As

18

Candida R. Moss, Lecture for “Martyrs and Martyrdom,” 17 September 2012. 19

See Candida R. Moss, Martyrs and Martyrdom, 57 for a discussion on how Ignatius’ “liminal position” as a martyr-to-be placed him in a position of speaking for God to the Christian communities.

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esteem for martyrs increased over the first centuries of the faith, this would prove a mixed blessing for

churches with many confessors, as particularly in North Africa, lay confessor would usurp authority for

binding and loosing that was understood to be the purview of priests and bishops alone.20

Another important trope for martyrdom accounts saw the holy person relativize the claims of

family or tribal identity. This is dramatized Perpetua’s passion when she denies her father’s request to

deny her Christian identity, but refuses. This often occurs through the subversion of gender or family

roles for women through the refusal of marriage (as in the case of Thecla) or exhibition of traditionally

masculine behavior as when Perpetua guides the executioner’s sword to her own throat.21

Liturgical concerns and hints at ritual elements in the cult of saints are quite common in

martyrdom stories. Witnesses to a martyrs passion are sometimes depicted as forming a great line, even

marching together to the site of the execution, as was noted in the martyrdom of Cyprian. This is

evocative of processions of relics and of the procession of worship itself that Christians would develop

when the began to use public buildings for worship in some places in the late third century and more

widely after the Edict of Milan in the early 4th. It further develops the imitatio Christi trope, as Christ was

said to be followed by a crowd, and Pauline language depicts his victory as leading his church and his

enemies in a “triumphal procession” 2 Cor 2.14).

Finally, martyr stories could be useful for the construction of orthodoxy, as seen in the writings

of Justin Martyr, who insisted that only orthodox Christianity could, properly speaking, produce

martyrs.22 Martyrs were further used as “mouthpieces for orthodoxy,” as when Eusebius details a letter

of recommendation sent by the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons supporting Irenaus’ assumption of

20

See Allen Brent, “Cyprian's reconstruction of the martyr tradition,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53.2 (2002): 241-268, for an argument that Cyprian had to reconstruct the martyr tradition in order to reassert the authority of the orders of ministry in the Church.

21 Moss, Martyrs and Martyrdom, 129, 141.

22 Ibid., 26.

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episcopal office, and by extension, his teachings against the Gnostics.23 Each of these motifs are to some

extent developed in Gildas’ or Bede’s account of Alban’s passion.

Scholars of Anglo-Saxon history and literature highlight several themes with which these

accounts interface, as well. While the Romans had suppressed the Druids, they allowed the veneration

of local deities to continue along with the Roman religion imported to the island, often merging the

classical pantheon with local deities, most notably at Bath in the cult of Sulis, whose veneration was

mingled with that of Minerva.24 Some of these cults, such as Mithraism, continued through the fourth

century. The presence of Woden, Friga, and Thunor in some poetry, cemetaries, allusions in Bede, and

warnings from the church suggest ongoing interest in these cults well into Bede’s time. Anglo-Saxon

pagans honored Wodin and Thunor, but there is no written evidence that the stories of these gods are

the same as those developed in the Norse traditions whose written sources are later.25 They kept

shrines on isolated hills or in wooded areas, and gave honor to “stones, wood, trees, and wells,” as

suggested by the later prohibitions of the Church on the island, as was the case with the earlier Britons.

Many place names were derived from a combination of pagan deity and the word for “clearing”

and “wood.”26 Many of the deities whose names are linked to these places appear to have been nymphs

or water goddesses, suggesting a particular interest in water-cults.27 The name of Woden survives in

many place names as well as the genealogies of Anglo-Saxon kings.28 Woden’s family, the Aesir, are

referenced in scattered lines from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Gale Owen argues that references to

stabbing and hanging may be holdovers from cultic memory of Woden as well, who was stabbed and

hung from a tree for nine days and survived; in a more distant Germanic past (there is no evidence of

23

Historia Ecclesiae, 5.4.1-2, in Moss, Martyrs and Martyrdom, 116. 24

Hylson-Smith, Christianity in England, 28f. 25

Paul Cavill and Michael Jackson, “From Rome to Augustine Britain Before 597,” Not Angels but Anglicans, 9-16, ed. Henry Chadwick (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010), 10; Owen, Rites and Religions, 8.

26 John Blair, The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 6;

Cavill, “From Rome to Augustine,” 11; Owen, Rites and Religions, 8. 27

Hylson-Smith, Christianity in England, 12-13. See also Miranda Green, The Gods of the Celts (Gloucester, 1986), 148-49, 156-57.

28 Owen, Rites and Religions, 8.

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this occurring in Anglo-Saxon England), human sacrifices were said to have been offered to Woden in

this fashion.29 Hilda E. Davidson has argued that Bede’s account of the converted Northumbrian priest

Coifi, who before setting his pagan temple alight throws his spear into it, is enacting a ritual opening of

battle found in the cult of Woden, as “traditionally he had brought about discord among the gods by

throwing a spear.”30 Additionally, both Thunor’s hammer, and the swastika often related to him, can be

found in sixth and seventh century graves in the form of amulets or carvings on sword hilts.31 All of this

suggests that paganism was more than a cultural memory by the time of Bede, and rather still a

competitor to the Christian religion, and even alongside it in a syncretic fashion, as Gordon Mursell finds

a recipe for a wound dressing that calls for “butter from a cow that should be of all one color, mixed

with sixty herbs, and stirred with a four-pronged stick with the names of the four evangelists carved on

each prong; a blend of Christian and gibberish chants was to be sung over the result to which spittle had

been added, before the salve, blessed by a mass-priest, was applied.”32

Readers in Anglo-Saxon literature have discerned a number of themes in Anglo-Saxon spirituality

relevant to readings of Alban’s story. Mursell identifies a strong motif in the literature that places the

hero on a journey, one begun because he chose exile from his hearth “for the sake of his true home

beyond.”33 In “The seafarer,” the narrator forsakes his images of comfort – the warm hall, and drinking

mead surrounded by his friends – in order to explore the world beyond, which, by the end of the poem,

is understood to be his “heavenly home.”34 Particularly in the harsh climate of Britain, home represents

warmth and safety in contrast to the dangerous journeys that the protagonist must undertake, set upon

by storms and snow, or mythological creatures. Where Roman poets could praise natural beauty, Anglo-

29

Ibid., 12-28. 30

Ibid., 12-13. See Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Baltimore, Md: Penguin Books, 1964), 50-51.

31 Owen, Rites and Religions, 25.

32 Mursell, English Spirituality, 33.

33 Ibid., 36.

34 Ibid., 31, 35-36.

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Saxon writers feared the natural world and its chilly terrors.35 Mursell also sees this motif in Beowulf and

the poem, “Christ and Satan,” as exiled protagonists fight demons or monsters for the sake of a better

home. He suggests that Beowulf’s struggle against Grendel will echo through later Anglo-Saxon

hagiographies, as the saints battle demons.36 The protagonist in these stories is considered a hero

because he chooses to brave the world outside and its dangers for the sake of defending his home.

This motif of exile and battle is given a richer layer by the Anglo-Saxon interest in the

supernatural, and as is suggested by the examples above, battles with demons. In guiding this martial

culture in the spiritual life, monastic writers would often use battle metaphors to describe Christian

obedience, as in the case of St Cuthlac who journeys to Crowland in the Fen country to battle demons

upon his commitment to the life of a hermit. According to his hagiographer, Aldhelm of Malmesbury,

Cuthlac readies himself for battle, following the metaphors of Ephesians 6, but still is nearly

overwhelmed by the demons, which are only beaten back by the help of the (departed) St Bartholomew.

Merrifield has argued that depicting local and Roman deities as demons became a common motif of

Christian rhetoric, enough that some aspects of their religious iconography, such as Pan’s hooves or the

horns of Celtic deities were carried over into medieval representations of the devil; even “the pitch-forks

they used to propel damned souls into hell may well have originated from a misrepresentation of the

caduceus carried by Mercury, guide of the pagan dead.”37

Benedicta Ward has argued that Anglo-Saxon spirituality was particularly focused upon the idea

of ongoing friendship with the saints in the present life, in anticipation of the life to come. This focus is

already suggested by St Cuthlac’s rescue by St Bartholemew.38 Ward cites the interest of Edwin, King of

Northumbria, in a parable offered by the missionary Paulinus, when he suggests that the Christian faith

35

Ibid., 31-32. 36

Ibid., 36. 37

Ralph Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (New York: New Amsterdam, 1988), 83. 38

Mursell, English Spirituality, 42.

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offers intelligence on the life to come, where his paganism offered nothing.39 She also notes early, rich

evidence of the cult of saints, from the visit of Germanicus with relics to the shrine of Alban, to Pope

Gregory's ongoing gifts of relics with the missionaries he sent.40

The British Christian Gildas wrote De Excidio Britanniae in the fifth century. More specific dating

is difficult. He wrote to chronicle and explain the devastations that befell the people of Britain in the

twilight of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement. He offered a firm view of

divine providence, in which the cowardly, disobedient Britons are punished by God for their impiety,

moral laxity, and refusal to preach the Gospel to the Saxons. He argued that if the Britons turned

around, God would restore his relationship to the Britons and cause the land and its people to flourish

again.41 It is in the context of this wider agenda that we read Gildas’ account of St Alban’s martyrdom,

anticipating that his offering of a British martyr will appeal to the values of the Anglo-Saxons as well.

Gildas casts the martyrs as God's "free gift" to the people of Britain, as "lamps" against the

"darkness of black night" as imperial order and the culture of Roman Britain receded and the pagan

Anglo-Saxons took root on the island (10.1). The persecution itself is framed as an act of divine

providence right along with the miracles that would attend the martyrdom. He speaks here to the

Anglo-Saxon desire for a heavenly community, friends who lived with God who could help their lives in

the present. Gildas encourages visitation of their shrines and relics were possible (and not prevented by

"unhappy partition"). Where British and Anglo-Saxon pagans might be accustomed to visiting shrines for

any manner of divine favors, Gildas encourages his readers to visit the shrines of martyrs instead, in

hope of their "effect in instilling the blaze divine charity." The metaphor of flame spreads the love of

God from the lamps of the martyrs to Gildas’ contemporaries, who could burn in the same way.

39

Benedicta Ward, High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality (London: Mowbray, 1999), 50-51.

40 Ibid., 44-45.

41 N.J. Higham, The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (New York: Manchester

University Press, 1994), 7-11.

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Gildas casts these British martyrs as warrior heroes, praising Alban and the otherwise unknown Aaron

and Julius for showing "the highest spirit in the battle-line of Christ." These martyrs stand at the front

lines of a battle against demons, their heroism perhaps evoking images of the great warriors of old.

Alban is all the more a hero at this point, because as the unnamed confessor flees the determined

servants of demons, he steps forward to embrace the danger and bear punishment from wicked men,

just as Christ did. He did this "for charity's sake," the same charity that Gildas wishes kindled within the

hearts of his readers and those who hear the tales. Gildas is able to frame talk about Christian love as

palatable for a martial culture because the expression of Christian love is heroism and self sacrifice. This

has a clear catechetical purpose as well, given Gildas’ fury at the Britons for their failure to evangelize.

He does not see the Britons as a people willing to lay down their lives for Christ, never mind anyone else.

Alban appears as a hero to whose works they could aspire.

If the monsters in pursuit of the confessor had seen so little of him so as to be confounded by a

change of clothes, we suspect that he had evaded them for the moment, making Alban's choice more

clearly voluntary. "Hiding him in his house and then changing clothes with him, he gladly exposed

himself to danger and pursuit in the other's habit." The image of further pursuit suggests a quest,

though in a reversed pattern. Alban puts on special clothes, equipping himself with the colors of a

condemned man, so that he may leave the safety of his hearth and face the demons. The exile motif is

subverted with a comedic element, because for the ruse to work, Alban must run away from his goal, so

that he can be captured and compelled, so that he will be permitted to face the death meant for the

confessor. The catechetical aspect seems clear: those who are inflamed by divine love are not weak, but

heroes who set out on quests to do battle with demons, and sacrifice themselves for the good of others.

Gildas portrays the occasion of Alban's martyrdom as the imitation of Christ. Just as Jesus was the good

shepherd "who laid down his life for the sheep," Alban protects a "confessor" fleeing his persecutors.

That Gildas gives the fleeing man this rank even as he runs away demonstrates a certain generosity: he

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is deserving of the name because he was willing to confess Christ; it was not required that he throw

himself upon the executioner's sword. This may indicate broad standards for courage on Gildas’ part he

is willing to honor the man who runs away, so long as he offers the Christian proclamation first.

Gildas' mention of the Roman standards suggests their representation of dark spiritual power:

they appear to "most horrid effect," though Gildas does not suggest what this might be, apart from the

understated trial of Alban. In the imaginative world of the English, one thinks of banners and

processions that evoke the presences that they signify. Perhaps the processions of martyrs’ relics, with

their banners, are set here as having parity with those of the Romans: if Christian processions evoke

their saints, so Roman standards evoke the demons. This is clearly a spiritual combat, warfare against

the demonic powers that sought to extinguish the true worship of God from the land.

Gildas' narrative does set up a procession that presages later feasts of Alban: in response to his

prayer, God allows the new believer to cross the Thames on dry ground, which Gilgas connects explicitly

to the crossing of the Israelites through the Jordan with "the ark of the testament." This creates a

parallel between the ark, a symbol of God's promise, power, and presence among the people, with

Alban, who as a martyr is specifically a "lamp" that offers those same things to the contemporary

inhabitants of the island. In this image, the Old Testament stories of how God used the ark to protect

and accompany his people are transposed into the person of Alban and the site of his martyrdom. This

image could take on particular power as oral tradition, particularly when the narrator can point to the

spot the waters fled, and trace the path of Alban to the hill where he bled. Gildas places a thousand men

in the processional throng. These people form an assembly around Alban like the host of Israel around

the Ark, and thereby constituting themselves as a church around the martyr as a symbol of God's

presence and power.

As happens in many stories, the executioner is converted by the display of faith and power, and

another executioner must be found. Such persons would be helpful as models for stark and immediate

Potter 15

obedience to the Gospel, in the same pattern as the disciples who left their boats to follow Jesus.

Higham notes the implication that if the Britons will stand firm in their proclamation of the faith, the

barbarian Saxons would be converted as well.42 Gildas closes the section by noting that other martyrs

were tortured and were the sources of any number of relics. They were "so torn with unheard of

rending of limbs, that there was no delay in their fixing the trophies of their glorious martyrdom on the

splendid gates of Jerusalem" (11.2). The new, heavenly Jerusalem is decorated with the evidence of the

martyrs, just as the churches on earth are built upon their relics. With this flourish, Gildas associates the

presence of the relics in their shrines and churches with the presence of the worshippers in the courts of

the heavenly city. For Gildas, it is in the heroism of self-sacrifice in the service of the Christian

proclamation that will restore the church in Britain to health and a right relationship with God. It is in

the offering of martyrs to the barbarians that they will receive again their ecclesial identity in its fullness.

The heavenly Jerusalem, the church to come, moves into the present, and the touch point for this

identification and reception is that the very relics housed in their altars, shrines, and churches are built

into the architecture of the great city of God. In this image Gildas invites his readers and hearers to take

courage, that just as God transformed the grotesque and bloody displays of imperial power to his glory

in the person of Alban, so the depredations of the barbarians will be badges of honor in the life to come,

if only the Britons would cease their flight and fulfill their calling.

Gildas presents Alban as a paragon of courage and faithfulness to the flagging Briton, and in so

doing builds a tradition around the martyr that would both shape and appeal to the cultural values of

the Anglo-Saxons, particularly as he steps away from his hearth to make spiritual combat against the

demons.

42

Ibid.

Potter 16

Bede also wrote of the invasions as evidence of God’s judgment upon the Britons.43 His Historia

ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is understood generally to have been finished by 731,44 and presents a

story of God’s ongoing work of conversion on the island, thereby through martyrs and miracles

establishing the legitimacy of English church. Where Gildas would only imply Alban’s sudden conversion,

in Book I, Chapter VII, Bede draws out the narrative to make additional points, and offers a substantially

longer account of the martyrdom. In his version, Alban has time to spend with the cleric, before offering

himself in a pre-meditated fashion. Giving Alban time to observe the confessor, now a priest, fits Bede's

emphasis on piety, as we will see.

Bede begins with a line of verse from Venatius Fortunatus, written about 580 in his poem, Praise

of the Virgins: Albanum egregium fecunda Britannia profert, which Colgrave and Mynors translate,

“Illustrious Alban, fruitful Britain’s child.”45 This situates Alban’s story in a wider discourse seeking to

demonstrate the legitimacy of the English church, because like the Christian communities around the

world, God had judged it worthy of producing martyrs.46

Bede presents Alban impersonating his guest as Gildas did, but in the later narrative, that

“confessor” becomes a priest fleeing imperial persecution. The encounter is drawn out, and the priest

seems to stay with Alban for a number of days. This removes the element of sudden obedience from the

narrative, but enriches the point about the converting power of piety. Because the pagan Alban has time

to observe the prayers and vigils of this priest, he accepts instruction in the faith. This offers a lesson for

the clergy of the day: however terrible and aggressive they find the heathen to be, they will be

converted at the sight of the Christian’s thoroughgoing and unfeigned piety, if he will but teach them

"little by little" – especially on the part of priests.

43

Paul Cavill and Michael Jackson, “From Rome to Augustine,” Not Angels but Anglicans, 9. 44

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited by Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), xvii.

45 Ibid., 29n.1

46 Wright, Companion to Bede, 16.

Potter 17

Highlighting the heroic aspects of Alban's story could have helped Bede alleviate two tensions in

his work. The first tension is found in telling the story of a legitimate but diminished local church. Like

Gildas, Bede presents this as divine judgment upon unfaithfulness, so that he can tell the story of a true

Church in the true Faith, even among the ruins of Roman British society. The second tension is found in

the way the Anglo-Saxons would have seen the peoples whom they were displacing. The Old English

word wealh (today “Welsh,” as many Britons are understood to have fallen back to Wales and Cornwall

in the face of Anglo-Saxon settlement) is thought to have meant “foreigner,” and often “foreigner of

British origin,” and later in the southwest, “slave.”47 This is suggestive of the disdain in which the

receding Britons were held. This places Bede in the embarrassing situation of recommending the religion

of the weak, conquered Britons to the victorious and manful Anglo-Saxons. Any part of the story that

might commend a martyr as courageous and virtuous – not because he was a Briton, but because was a

Christian – to the new dominant culture would have served his agenda.

Bede introduces a trial narrative for Alban, and depicts the judge in the very act of sacrificing to

the “devils' altars,” heightening the sense of spiritual battle that was taking place. Gildas may not have

had these details, but giving the would-be martyr the opportunity to sacrifice was common in narratives

from the broader Empire. As the suspense increases under the judge's examination, Alban courageously

despises the torturers and their punishments by rejecting the offer and stands before the judge in full-

throated defiance. Bede's phrase Christianisque officiis vacare could be translated “Know that I am now

a Christian, and am ready to do a Christian's duty,” as in the Oxford translation, or “carry out Christian

rites,” as in the Penguin.48 Translating officiis as "rites" here could have given a particularly cultic thrust

to Alban's response, fitting with Bede's focus on ordained men in his story, and creates an even clearer

contrast for the Christian faith against pagan practice in a land filled with shrines.

47

David A.E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval England: From the Reign of Alfred Until the Twelfth Century, (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), 43.

48 Wright, Companion to Bede, 18.

Potter 18

When the judge asks his family and race – clan being a key identifier for Anglo-Saxon men, and

the five races now on the island a concern for Bede – he calls himself only a Christian.49 This fits Bede's

agenda for narrating an ethnically unified and therefore more legitimate English church. The cultic

significance of the call to sacrifice would not have been lost on Anglo-Saxons who still visited sacred

woods or shrines to gods or nymphs. Alban stands compelled under threat of death to do the sort of

thing that they might still do to ensure a good harvest, and he refused for the sake of Christ. Though he

suffers, this refusal brings divine favor where the sacrifice to demons had failed “The sacrifices which

you offer to devils cannot help their votaries nor fulfil the desires and petitions of their supplicants.”

Where for Gildas, Alban and his relics were a miraculous sign of God's presence among the people, Bede

enlarges the story to provide exhortation against idolatry among the Christians. Here the martyr calls

the hearers to reject a mixing of the new faith with the old rites, and associates the powers they fear

and venerate with demons. He continues: “On the contrary, he who has offered sacrifices to these

images will receive eternal punishment in hell as his reward.” Alban then is subjected to torture, but to

no avail: whatever the Anglo-Saxons might think of the Britons, this Christian is a hero. A crowd - nearly

the whole town! - assembles by divine inspiration to witness the power of God, just as they would

assemble later at Alban’s shrine. As related in Gildas’ version, they observe as God dries the river before

Alban, heightening the connection to the congregation of Israel, guided by God.

Bede proceeds to describe the site of Alban's execution, noting the beauty of the hill - not

“steep or precipitous” - covered with flowers. Here in contrast to the suspicion against nature in Anglo-

Saxon literature, Bede emphasizes as he begins his miracle narrative that the natural world is subject to

God’s control, and that the beauty of that world serves to adorn the greater beauty of his martyrs. Once

upon the hill, another miracle occurs. Alban asks for a drink, and a stream of water appears at his feet.

Bede explains that this served to authenticate his martyrdom, “that even the stream rendered service to

49

Ibid., 19.

Potter 19

the martyr.” For the Anglo-Saxons, who are thought to have favored water cults, this would have had

resonance as a fertility symbol. Alban's favor (and ultimately, that of the Christian God) can bring fresh

water and give life. It suggests that some of the favors they might otherwise ask at sacred springs would

instead be pled at Alban's shrine. Accordingly, Bede notes the healings that occur there. As in Gildas, the

first executioner is converted, and a second must be found to dispatch the first – thus retaining the

thread of sudden conversion in the saint’s tradition. A final miracle occurs, when God has his vengeance

against the killer of Alban his eyes fall to the ground at the same time as Alban’s head. Sometimes the

saints find their vindication sooner rather than later.

Richard Morris reads Alban as anti-Pelagian because of the “emphasis upon the necessity for

divine intervention and downplaying good works.”50 While Bede was concerned that his readers see

Britain as recovered from its bout with Pelagianism, one finds nothing in the narrative or on the lips of

the martyr that argues for a particular soteriology. If one wishes to make inferences about the place of

good works, one could easily interpret in the other direction. While the would-be executioner is

converted by a miracle, Alban himself is converted by the piety of the priest – the vision of someone

else’s good works and duty to God presses Alban to turn toward God as well. Even the conversion of the

soldier could be open to charges of Pelagianism, as Bede emphasizes that he was “cleansed by the

washing of his own blood and made worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven.” This “baptism by blood”

trope is common in early martyrdom literature, and to read the debates of Pelagius and Augustine into

it is anachronistic. In this account, divine intervention is a sign of divine favor that authenticates the

martyr, his cult, and his local church, not a call to rely upon grace for salvation. The only direct

relationship to the Pelagian controversy here is in Book I, Chapter XVIII, where Bede follows the Vita S.

Germani and depicts the anti-Pelagian teacher visiting the shrine of Alban to thank him for his patronage

in a successful preaching mission to the island. While there, Germanicus takes soil from the site of the

50

Morris, Churches in the Landscape, 36.

Potter 20

execution, still miraculously containing the martyr’s blood to spread the cult on the continent. While

there, he deposits some of the relics he had carried. This exchange serves to universalize the cult of

Alban, and to shore up the English church’s claims to catholicity alongside the other churches of Europe,

with the support of apostolic relics and a noted crusader for orthodoxy.

Where Gildas used Alban a sign of God’s presence to shore up the courage of fleeing Britons and

return their trust to divine care, Bede enlarged on this by making him a champion for purity of

profession and an object lesson for clerical piety. Both writers construct his narrative in a way that

intersects with tropes in later Anglo-Saxon literature: the friendship of a heavenly community for help

into the afterlife, a hero that leaves home to do spiritual battle, and who represents a decisive turning

from the pagan past toward a heavenly home. These constructions are likely built upon now-

inaccessible literary and oral traditions, and doubtless enriched them to present Alban as a hero of the

Faith whose particular qualities could have commended him to the Anglo-Saxons, overcoming his

heritage with the conquered Britons. This could suggest why his cult continued into the medieval period

rather than fading into obscurity like that of other British martyrs.

Potter 21

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