SAINT ALBAN. – An ancient Benedictine abbey in Hertfordshire, England, not far from London. It was founded ca. 793, as an act of expiation, by Offa, king of Mercia, near the church dedicated to the martyr Alban; it is already mentioned by Bede the Venerable at the beginning of the 8th century (Hist. eccl., I, 7). At the beginning of the 11th century, the abbots Aldredo and Edmer sought materials for repairing the church among the ruins of the Roman city of Verulanum. The present building dates from 1077, in the time of Abbot Paul of Caen, and constitutes the most imposing Romanesque-Gothic church in England. Pope Adrian IV declared the abbey exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and granted it precedence over all the other English abbeys; it underwent further restorations in the 13th and 14th centuries, when it flourished especially. Roger of Wendover, Matthew of Paris, and John of Tynemouth belonged to the scriptorium of St. A. St-A. was granted in commendam to Cardinal Wolsey in 1521 and was suppressed by Henry VIII in 1540. In 1553 the abbey was redeemed by the local authorities and transformed into a parish church; it underwent a poor restoration in the last century. Since 1877 it has served as the cathedral of the Anglican diocese of St. A.
Wallingford, an inquiry into the charges made against him and its monks, London 1912; C. Jenkins, The monastie chronicles and the early school of St. A., there 1928; W. Lowe – E. Jacob, Illustration to the life of st. A., Oxford 1924; Cottineau, II, cols. 2578-79. Enrico Josi