**ALBERT of TRAPANI, Saint.** — Born in that city in the 13th century (probably in 1212), died near Messina on 7 August 1306 or 1307. Also called Albert degli Abbati, because he was descended from the noble Florentine family of that name. Still very young, he entered the Carmelite Order in the convent of Trapani. After being ordained a priest, he devoted himself with zeal to the apostolic ministry, not only in Messina, where he resided, but throughout Sicily, achieving numerous conversions even among the Jews. He was provincial of that religious order when, in 1301, he miraculously supplied the city of Messina, which was under siege and starving due to Robert, Duke of Calabria. Having retired to solitude near Messina, he died there in a holy manner. Immediately after his death he was venerated as a saint; in the Carmelite Order his feast was celebrated from 1411 by decree of the general chapter; his cult was permitted by “vivae vocis oraculo” by Callistus III in 1457, and approved by Sixtus IV with a bull of 31 May 1476. His feast is celebrated on 7 August.
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**ALBERT of Trent.** — A Carthusian of the 15th century, whose name is linked to a prophetic vision in which he foretold the disasters that were about to befall Italy with the descent of Charles VIII. The Latin text of the vision is found in Paris in the library of the Arsenal (cod. 828); an Italian translation, copied in 1512, is in Florence.
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**ALBERT, Bishop of Vercelli and Patriarch of Jerusalem, Saint.** — He was the first legislator of the Carmelite Order.
The necrology of the church of Vercelli, a primary source for his biography, states that he was descended “de castro Gualterii, Parmensis diocesis, nobili prosapia ortus.” The Castrum Gualterii of the 12th century may today refer either to the present-day Gualterii in the diocese of Guastalla or to Gualterio in the parish of Campegine, diocese of Reggio Emilia, both at that time belonging to the diocese of Parma (cf. *Rationes decimarum Italiae nei sec. XIII e XIV. Aemilia* [Studi e Testi, 60], Città del Vaticano 1933, pp. 363, 382). The attribution of A. to the Avogadro family cannot be critically sustained; however, the hypothesis of his descent from the counts of Sabbioneta is not without some probability.
A. was born around 1149; after completing his studies, he took the habit of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross in Mortara (province of Pavia), where around 1180 he was elected prior. Some years later he was called to the episcopal see of Bobbio (1184), but the following year he was transferred to that of Vercelli, where he governed with zeal and firmness for twenty years, also distinguishing himself for political skill and acumen: he mediated between the papacy and the empire and between discordant cities and communes; to his efforts are owed, for example, the peace concluded at Vercelli between Milan and Pavia on 12 January 1194 and the concord achieved in 1199 between Parma and Piacenza.
In 1191 he held a diocesan synod, whose decrees continued in part to be observed until modern times (cf. F. Savio, *Gli antichi vescovi d'Italia. Il Piemonte*, Torino 1899, p. 486).
Cardinal Legate Goffredo (Soffredus) having resigned the patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, with the favor of King Amalric II of Lusignan, elected A. in his place; Innocent III, in a letter of 17 February 1205 (Potthast, n. 2418), urged him to accept this appointment, conferring the pallium upon him and naming him his legate for Palestine. A. reached Palestine in 1206, but could not enter Jerusalem, as it was in Muslim hands; he established his residence in St. John of Acre (Acre), where he displayed prodigious apostolic activity. Between 1207 and 1209 he gave the hermits of Mount Carmel their first rule, addressed in the form of a letter to their prior, St. Brocard; this rule was approved in 1226 by Honorius III (cf. *Bullarium Romanum*, ed. Torino 1858, III, pp. 415-17). For this reason the Carmelites considered and venerated him as their first legislator.
On 14 September 1214, while taking part in a procession in St. John of Acre, he was treacherously attacked with a knife by a man whom the Vercelli necrology describes as originating from Caluso (diocese of Ivrea), master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, whom A. had had to depose from office because of his wicked life. “And so the glorious father,” concludes the cited necrology, “passed from this life to the next, winning the palm of martyrdom.”
The documents relating to the cult paid to A. date mainly from the early 17th century: indeed, his feast appears on 8 April, with the title of confessor and pope, in the proper of the Discalced Carmelites, approved by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on 20 June 1609; the same decree also authorizes the insertion of his elogium in the Martyrology of the Order. At present the Discalced Carmelites have transferred his feast to 25 September, and those of the Observance to the 16th of the same month. The 8th of April marked the day of the delivery of the rules. The Canons Regular of the Lateran admitted him into their proper from 1666 with the title of confessor and pope on 8 April. Recently the office of St. A. was also granted to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (26 September) and to the diocese of Vercelli (8 April).
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