Albano, Saint, Martyr (ALBANO, SANTO, MARTIRE) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 405

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

ALBANO, saint, martyr. - Proto-martyr of England, beheaded according to the Passio under Severus (c. 200), according to later writers under Diocletian. The manuscripts of the second recension of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum commemorate him on 22 June, the date of his present liturgical feast. The first testimony concerning A. is contained in the biography of Germano d'Auxerre (d. after 444), written by his contemporary Costanzo; Venanzio Fortunato attests the antiquity of his cult. The Passio, probably dating from the sixth century, is not without value.

At Verulamium (north of S. Albans), the place of A.’s martyrdom, there stood in the early centuries of the Middle Ages an abbey greatly renowned in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whose church is still preserved.

BIBL.: Martyr. Hieronymianum, pp. 330-31; Costanzo, Vita s. Germani Antissiodorensis, ed. Levison-Krusch, in MGH, Script. Merovingicarum, VII, Hannover 1920, pp. 262, 265; Gilda, De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, 10-11, ed. Th. Mommsen, in MGH, Anet. Antiquus., XIII, Berlino 1898, pp. 31-32; Venanzio Fortunato, Carmina, VIII, 3, V. 155; Beda, Hist. eccl., I, 7, 18; Acta SS. Iunii, IV, Parigi 1867, pp. 127-28; Martyr. Romanum, pp. 248, 250; H. Delchaye, Les origines du culte des Martyrs, 2ª ed., Bruxelles 1933, p. 362. Cesario van Hulst