BRIANT, ALEXANDER, Blessed. - English martyr, b. in 1551 or 1553 in Somersetshire. Converted while studying at Oxford, he entered the English College at Douai (then at Reims), was ordained priest there in 1578, and returned the following year to England. His apostolate was brief: betrayed and arrested in April 1581, he was soon after taken to the Tower of London and barbarously tortured. He then asked for and obtained admission into the Society of Jesus (his statement, included in Fr. R. Persons' pamphlet: *De persecutione anglicana libellus*, Rome 1582, was often reprinted). After further torture he was condemned to death and martyred in London with Blessed Edmund Campion on 1 December 1581. They were beatified together in 1886 and their feast is celebrated on 1 December.
BRIANT, ALEXANDER, BEATO
Bibl.: D. Bartoli, *Dell'Inghilterra*, Turin 1825, I, II, ch. 13; III, ch. 7; H. Foley, *Records of the English Province S. I.*, IV, London 1878, pp. 343-61; B. Camm, *Lives of the English Martyrs*, II, ibid. 1902, pp. 397-423; C. Tesiore, *I Martiri Gesuiti d'Inghilterra e di Scozia*, Isola del Liri 1934, pp. 179-89. Edmondo Lamalle