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The Lord is the king of martyrs: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Red.

St Alban (3rd century)

St Alban was the first British martyr. Almost nothing about him is known for certain – even the date of his martyrdom is unknown, and historians’ estimates vary between 209 and 314 A.D. (more recent historical research suggests the mid-3rd century).

Alban was a Roman who lived in Verulamium and sheltered a fleeing Christian during a persecution. He was converted, and was executed. Whether the persecution was that of the emperor Diocletian or the emperor Decius – whether Alban pretended to be the fleeing Christian, and so died – whether any of the miraculous circumstances of his martyrdom actually happened – all this is, by now, known only to God.

This does not mean that St Alban did not exist. His cult was already well established by the year 429, and on the hill where tradition said he was martyred, a great abbey grew up which eventually gave its name to the town. Such cults do not appear from nowhere; and the local people conserved in their tradition only what they needed to know – that there had been a martyr there. The fact that legends grew up around him is nothing unusual for the time, and does not cast any doubt on his existence, any more than the legends that gathered round Alexander the Great (who, as “Iskender,” became the hero of many oriental myths that had existed long before his birth) cast any doubt on his existence.

Scholarship has not dealt so kindly with the supposed companion of St Alban, St Amphibalus, who was at one time commemorated on 25th June. The trouble is that his name (derived from the Greek “amphibalos,” a thing thrown around something) means a cloak, and a cloak figures strongly in the later embroideries of St Alban’s story. St Amphibalus has not, therefore, been in the calendar for many centuries now. Science is not immune from this embarrassing phenomenon. In 1992, a letter to the prestigious science magazine “Nature” revealed the unusual biography of a biochemist named Chir, who had papers credited to him and appeared in all the right citation indexes. There turned out to have been a paper published in the 1960s, by [I am inventing the other names] K.J. Smith, M.Chir, and F. Williamson, Ph.D. Unfortunately, M.Chir is simply the abbreviation of the degree “Master of Surgery,” and so the second author of this paper turns out to be just a degree held by the first author!

All we know about Alban is all we need to know: that he was faced unexpectedly with a simple, straightforward decision, and he made the right choice. Easy, we think – obvious what to do – lucky man... except that when we envy him his opportunity, we would do well to remember that it was his entire life and character that were summed up in that single split-second decision. His life (of which we otherwise know nothing) made him the sort of man he was. We may imagine that we would do as he did, given the same chance, but given how idiotically most of us behave when taken by surprise, we may well be wrong. When we pray to be given, like St Alban, a simple opportunity to show what we are made of, we should perhaps add a second prayer – that the first prayer should not be answered.

See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Other saints: Saints Alban, Julius and Aaron

Wales

Veneration of Alban as Protomartyr of Britain depends on a cult of great antiquity at St Alban’s, known during the years of Roman occupation as Verulanium. Bede records in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation how, during a persecution by Diocletian, Alban surrendered himself in place of a Christian priest, and so unbaptised by water, attained a baptism of blood. In the same persecution Julius and Aaron, at Caerleon on Usk, are named among others who gave their lives for the faith.

Other saints: The Irish Martyrs

Ireland

Seventeen Irish Martyrs were put to death for the Catholic faith between 1579 and 1654 and were beatified in 1992. They include priests and lay people, men and women. Some were hanged, others were hanged, drawn and quartered. One or two died under torture. See the article in Wikipedia.

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: St Bede the Venerable (673 - 735)

Bede was born in the north of England, near the monastery of Wearmouth. He joined that monastery, and spent all his life there or at Jarrow, teaching and writing. He was the outstanding ecclesiastical author of his time. He wrote commentaries on Scripture; an ecclesiastical history of the English people, which is a unique and irreplaceable resource for much of early English history; and the first martyrology (collection of saints’ lives) to be compiled on historical principles. He was also the first known writer of English prose, though this has not survived. He died at Jarrow on 25 May 735, teaching and working until the last moments of his life. He is venerated as the “light of the Church” in the Dark Ages, and as a forerunner of the 8th and 9th century renaissance of the Western Church.

Liturgical colour: red

Red is the colour of fire and of blood. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate the fire of the Holy Spirit (for instance, at Pentecost) and the blood of the martyrs.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)	Romans 1:16-17
The power of God saves all who have faith – Jews first, but Greeks as well – since this is what reveals the justice of God to us: it shows how faith leads to faith, or as scripture says: The upright man finds life through faith.

Noon reading (Sext)	Romans 3:21-22
God’s justice that was made known through the Law and the Prophets has now been revealed outside the Law, since it is the same justice of God that comes through faith to everyone who believes.

Afternoon reading (None)	Ephesians 2:8-9
It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit.