English Saints and Myths of the Sceptred Isle
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England’s Protomartyr.

Albanum egregium fecunda Britannia profert (Lo! fruitful Britain vaunts great Alban’s name.)
(Carmina, VII, iii, 155)..

England thinks of itself as dedicated to St George who famously slew a dragon. It is the red cross of St George which lies over the white background of England’s flag. It is a flag whose origins are as complicated as the patronal primacy of St George is relatively late.

crusaders' colours for England before St George

crusaders’ colours for England before St George

The use of ‘national’ flags originated in the crusades when the pope designated “nations” to have a cross of particular colour. In England’s case it was a red background with a white cross; France had the white background with a red cross. Sometime after the return of Richard I they become reversed as England adopted the cross of St George’s bannerette as its flag. It may in fact have been as late as the reign of Edward III and with the promotion of St George to patron with the creation of the Order of the Garter when the patronal blazon of red on white of the saint’s traditional bannerette became imprinted upon England and St George. It certainly is a component of the England of Shakespeare’s histories –  cry God for Harry! England and St George!

Earlier English kings had patronised saints with of a more peaceable character; saints by the by who were actually English – St Edward the Confessor;  Saint Cuthbert and St Alban. In the medieval millenium the largely oral tradition conveyed much knowledge between generations through the medium of story-telling. In a world where the relatively local might be considered relatively exotic it was natural for the exploits of these heroic figures to become embellished with the tracery of exaggeration much as the churches in which these men and women worshipped were brightly coloured and to the modern eye over-decorated. But the human eye perceives little more than the mind allows. These exaggerations and inventions we are inclined to disparage but, like Picasso’s brush, they may paint a picture which, through distorting to effect can, nonetheless, reflect reality.

Stories are always told to entertain and to educate. They present in exotic disguise the vivid reality of lessons learned by hard experience. The history of the Trojan Wars as told by Homer is a sad tale: it owns many heroes but no real victors. It warns against our tendency to resolve our problems by use of force. Despite our repeated recourse to violence, to violent protest and ultimately to war in order to win arguments, it is an extraordinary fact that history teaches us most often humanity has achieved most, against the most overwhelming odds and, most overwhelming injustice, through  peaceful protest and passive resistance.

As we wait on news of Nelson Mandela we tend to regard these political tools as if of relatively modern invention. In thinking of Mandela we are wont to think of him in the company of other recent exemplars of non-violent active engagement: Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King and of the others like Aung San Suu Kyi who have followed in their remarkable footsteps.

fisher and More who faced the same way at the end but often were at odds in life

fisher and More who faced the same way at the end but often were at odds in life

Yet, the idea of  passive resistance is much older. It is very prominent and pronounced in the philosophy of Asian cultures and of many Eastern religions. It is perhaps for us in the West supremely  that part of the story of Jesus Christ described as ‘the Passion’ and as narrated in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet in the most profound sense Christianity’s history both as a religious and political movement in Imperial Roman times was a tale of passive resistance. The martyrs we revere in the Roman and English calendars of saints share a lot in common with our modern secular saints and martyrs who have through the twentieth century taken-up the cross of non-violent protest; and oftentimes died in service to its calling.  Indeed it is not over fanciful to argue that the early Christian martyrs were trailblazers. Indeed by the time of Alban the very term ‘Christian’ was derogative – perhaps as ‘Irish’ or ‘Jew’; or, indeed, ‘queer’ or ‘homo’ have been employed in my short life’s experience. And for much of my life ‘Catholic’ or ‘Roman Catholic’ have been at best equivocal epithets in England.

Each year, for English Roman Catholics the last few days of June are always of special significance. They end on the Roman blast of the Solemnities first of John the Baptist and then of Saints Peter and Paul. Although the combination of the feast of Peter with that of Paul is ancient and Roman, in England in the later middle ages the Feast was usually known as Peter’s Day or Petertide. The Anglican collect for the day echoes that practice in only  making mention only St Peter. St Paul’s major feast for much of the later medieval period in England was kept on 25th January – the feast of the Conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus.

As well as the last prophet, John the Baptist and these two primary apostles the calendar also contain a few days earlier the feasts of St Alban, St John Fisher and St Thomas More. We know a deal of history about John Fisher and Thomas More and of their heroic resistance. They truly died for something in which they believed; something in their view worth dying for. Theirs is particularly a story of heroic passive resistance to a political power and it therefore strongly resonates with the passive resistance of Dr King and Nelson Mandela and others. More and Fisher died with resignation and without rancour. It is what makes their story so compelling and to us attuned to life’s many pleasures, so perplexing.  The political dimension of course also makes their resistance more readily accessible to the modern mind.

Yet, if the modern mind of man is revealed by his heroes so too is the mind of medieval men illumined by the heroes they revered. An historian can therefore gather much about the world he wishes to imagine from the from the stories and characters of those loved by the people he studies. John Fisher and Thomas More both grew-up in an age attuned to the rhythms of another world – the world of medieval piety. As modern men and modern scholars they were impatient of the shackles of their old fashioned past but their eagerness to embrace new ideas did not as it turned out mean they were willing to jettison an entire world of faith. Fisher was executed on a most particular day in the medieval calendar, the feast of St Alban.

 

ST. ALBAN AND ST. AMPHIBALUS

 

St Alban stylised as late Roman dress with his cross

St Alban stylised as late Roman dress with his cross

As a little boy I lived in Redbourn. I was not much more than five or six.  My unremarkable memories are unremarkably a mixture of happy and unhappy. They are, however, vivid.  As I was about six I was also at the starting point of what might best be termed continuous memory. I have only fleeting remembrances of Cashel; of Harlow and of Tiptree places where we had lived before we reached Redbourn. I had started school in Tiptree. It was not a happy beginning. That’s another story.

Redbourn was then still a quiet anonymous village outside St Albans. I do not think we were told that we were living on the site of some of the reputed first great Christian martyrdoms in England – that of St Amphibalus and his followers who were stoned to death in Redbourn.

Who you ask?

“Amphibalus” is the name given to the priest whom Alban hid in his house and for whom Alban went to his death.

Amphibalus is Latin for ‘cloak’; the story of Alban revolves around him swapping his cloak with that of the priest in order to allow the priest to escape arrest and execution. Amphibalus is a synonym in the Gallican rite for chasuble –  the coloured over-garment worn by a priest over the white alb when saying Mass. The chasuble originally was a simply worn over the Roman tunic. Traditionally it was the clothing of the poor. It was a bit like like ‘Sunday best’ since it was not worn whilst working or at home, and therefore tended to be the garment in best condition. It may be supposed by the story of Alban that in the later Empire the ‘chasuble’  had become associated as significantly the garb worn by a ‘Christian’ priest, perhaps because it was emblazoned by a cross or some such sign. By that time it was certainly the garment in which a priest said Mass. In later records like those of Geoffrey of Monmouth the word Amphibalus becomes synonymous with the nameless priest in the original story of St Alban. In English medieval religious art St Amphibalus was usually portrayed wearing a chasuble or holding out a cloak whilst St Alban was most usually portrayed holding a large cross. In some versions of the story Alban is portrayed as a soldier and often also appears dressed as a soldier in artistic representations.

Alban as a Roman soldier the later medieval image of the saint

Alban as a Roman soldier the later medieval image of the saint

Briefly stated the story of is of Alban a pagan hiding a Christian priest during a time of persecution. The exact time is uncertain. Bede places the events sometime between 303-313 – under the persecution of Diocletian. The Anglo Saxon chronicles place his martyrdom earlier in 283.  In 1968 Charles Morris suggested 209 on the basis of a mistranslation in one of the documents Bede had used –  where Severus was identified but the name was not capitalised and was therefore translated as cruel – the nickname given to Diocletian.  More recent scholars suggest the reigns of Decius or of Valerian in the middle of the third century. These persecutions of Christians in the late Empire were akin to the pogroms of the nineteenth century; witch hunts in the seventeenth century; and massacres of Jews, Moslems ( and even non-western Christians) in the middle ages.  Safest to say that during one of the periodic outbursts of civic-sponsored violence Alban took in a priest. During the time hiding the priest Alban was converted to Christianity.

The story continues that Alban and the priest and a number of Christians are gathered, presumably for Mass, at a copse outside the city of Verulam (St Albans) known now as Chantry Island. The magistrate of Verulam gets wind of where the priest is and dispatches soldiers to arrest him and the other Christians. Alerted by the noise of the soldiers approaching the Christians scatter into the night. Alban swaps his cloak for the chasuble of the priest and both head off in different directions. Alban presents himself to the soldiers in order to allow his confreres to escape. Thus we having again the living example of passive resistance – greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend. (John 15 v.13). It is interesting to me than St John alone records this motto of Jesus; John being the ‘beloved’ Apostle – the one for whom Christ was known to have the greatest affection.

Alban was taken before the magistrate and refused to abjure his faith and betray his friends. Alban was condemned to die in place of priest but on his way to execution –  on the hill outside the city – the site of the abbey –  his executioner was overwhelmed by Alban’s dignity and refused to carry out the execution. By tradition he was beheaded shortly after Alban becoming the second English martyr. Again by gory later tradition, the second executioner’s eyes spontaneously popped from his head.

An early medieval representation of the martyrdom

An early medieval representation of the martyrdom

The priest and his congregation had fled through the night and a few days later were caught in the nearby the village of Redbourn where, again according to tradition, they were stoned to death. They were lost to history and religion until in the best tradition of the Middle Ages an angel came in a dream to one of the community of benedictines in St Alban’s monastery and showed him where the priest (by now officially named as Amphibalus) and his companions were buried. The monk went the next day and following the angel’s precise instructions (angelic powers being akin to modern sat-nav and no less miraculous) he duly found the bones of Amphibalus and his followers. They were located in a small cave nearby Redbourn which had already been by oral tradition long associated as the place Amphibalus was arrested. It became another place of pilgrimage. The bones of Amphibalus and his companions were later transferred to the abbey where they were kept in a separate shrine to St Alban. The shrine and reliquary of Amphibalus were lost in a partial collapse of the abbey church in the fourteenth century. The shrine of  St Alban was finally destroyed in 1539. It was restored in 1993 with a true relic of St Alban long kept in Cologne.

St Amphibalus

St Amphibalus

By medieval tradition the feast of St Alban’s martyrdom was 22nd June and that day was kept as his feast. As England’s protomartyr his feast was a holiday or double feast in England (refraining from work and attending mass). The feast of St Amphibalus was kept on 25th June. Ampahabulus has disappeared from the calendar of saints. In the Roman rite the feast of Alban has been moved back to 20th June and the 22nd June is now reserved instead for More and Fisher.

It is an oddity in its way since St John Fisher was actually executed on the feast of St Alban and St Thomas More two weeks later on 6th July. Originally, after their canonisation, this latter day had been observed as theirs, More’s and Fisher’s, joint feast day.

It is an excellent example of how tidying up traditions often times makes things less tidy than they were. In the Anglican church the days are observed as they were: 22nd June for Alban; 6th July for More and Fisher.

We may now smile sagely, particularly over the story of Amphibalus, and wisely shake our heads in disbelief. Yet we are as prone today to believe the things we wish to be true as ever any who have gone before. In that foolishness we are no better than our forebears and no wiser than the foolish virgins.

Amphibalus may be a bit of tracery on the true story of Alban’s heroic martyrdom. Yet Alban died to preserve that nameless priest who had changed his life and changed his values. Alban’s life changing experience ended in his death. Alban discovered something in which to believe; something greater than himself; something worth the price of life itself. Is that so very different from Dr King or Nelson Mandela?

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