ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



of God, which is man.''" Eusebius goes further and says that he did not 

 destroy the churches or devise any mischief against the Christians, and that 

 Christians of the Western Empire at this time enjoyed peace." 



There is much to be said for Dr. Williams's arguments in favour of the 

 date of the martyrdom being in the period of persecution under Decius or 

 that under Valerian. At the same time, it must be remembered that Eusebius 

 and Lactantius, upon whom he relies, were historians of the Church in the 

 Eastern Empire, who dwelt in Asia and Africa, and could have had little or 

 no knowledge of what was taking place in Gaul or Britain. Constantius 

 was much away from Britain. It is true he died at York in July 306, but 

 he had only arrived in Britain at the beginning of the year.'** There is 

 evidence, however, that in Spain, which was equally under the rule of Con- 

 stantius, there was persecution at this time by the local governor Dacianus, 

 and that St. Vincent there suffered martyrdom."' It is conceivable, therefore, 

 that during the absence of Constantius on the Continent in 304 or 305 there 

 may have been a slight persecution in Britain. Its slightness may perhaps 

 account for the prominence which Alban's name has maintained, and it 

 would seem that he, and possibly Aaron and Julius, were the only martyrs 

 who suffered at the time in Britain. Had there been more their names 

 would have been preserved to us, for martyrs were held in high estimation in 

 the early Church. The evidence of Gildas, probably relying upon an earlier 

 passio, and the statement of Bede cannot be lightly discarded in favour of 

 somewhat vague and negative evidence of historians nearer in date but far 

 distant in locality, and consequently in direct knowledge of the facts. 



With regard to the place of the martyrdom, as to which question has 

 been raised,'* Gildas describes Alban as of Verulamium, but gives the name 

 of the river he crossed on the way to execution as the Thames. This, how- 

 ever, is a pardonable error for one who was probably entirely ignorant of 

 eastern Britain, and to whom the name of the Thames was more familiar 

 than that of its tributary the Ver. Bede definitely states that the martyrdom 

 occurred at Verulamium. Whoever originally compiled the topographical 

 details of the passio, from which the stories in the Turin and Paris texts and 

 Bede were taken (for they are almost word for word the same) must have 

 known Verulamium and the site of the martyrdom where St. Albans Abbey 

 now stands, and had them in his mind when he wrote the passio. Anyone 

 acquainted with the neighbourhood of St. Albans cannot fail to be struck with 

 the accuracy of his description "' : the river (the Ver) outside the walls of the 

 Roman town and spanned by a bridge, probably on the site of the present 

 St. Michael's Bridge, which carried the Roman road to Colchester ; the 

 approach to the place of execution about 500 paces or half a mile distant up 

 a gentle incline to the summit of the hill, and the view from the hill, 'sloping 

 down to a beautiful plain,' can even now be enjoyed at the time of the com- 

 memoration of the saint's martyrdom in June. This description is carried 

 back by Professor Meyer to the beginning of the 6th century, some fifty 



^ 'De Morte Persecutorum,' 15, 6. 



21 Eusebius, loc. cit. See also the Appendix to bk. viii ; 'The Martyrs of Palestine,* cap. 13. 

 '2 Williams, op. cit. 115, citing Panegyricus, vii ; Eusebius, Vita Constantini, i, 21, and other sources. 

 2^ Prudentius, Peristephanon, Hymn v ; Acta Sanctorum (ed. Bollandist), iii, 7 ; Gibbon, Decline and 

 Fall ef the Roman Empire, cap. xvi. "^ Williams, op. cit. 103. 



2' The rapidity of the Ver is the only point of inaccuracy, and this may be poetic licence. 



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