page_title: Saint Alban
section_title: Dating controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Alban / Dating controversy
context_page_description: Saint Alban is venerated as the first-recorded British Christian martyr, for which reason he is considered to be the British protomartyr. Along with fellow Saints Julius and Aaron, Alban is one of three named martyrs recorded at an early date from Roman Britain. He is traditionally believed to have been beheaded in the Roman city of Verulamium sometime during the 3rd or 4th century, and his cult has been celebrated there since ancient times.
context_section_description: The date of Alban's execution has never been firmly established. Original sources and modern historians indicate a range of dates between 209 and 313.
  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lists the year 283, but Bede places it in 305, "when the cruel Emperors first published their edicts against the Christians." In other words, it was sometime after the publication of the edicts by Eastern Roman Emperor Diocletian in 303 and before the proclamation of toleration in the Edict of Milan by co-ruling Roman Emperors Constantine I and Licinius, in 313. Bede was probably following Gildas.
  English historian John Morris suggests that Alban's martyrdom took place during the persecutions of Emperor Septimius Severus in 209. Morris bases his claims on the Turin version of the Passio Albani, unknown to Bede, which states, "Alban received a fugitive cleric and put on his garment and his cloak (habitu et caracalla) that he was wearing and delivered himself up to be killed instead of the priest… and was delivered immediately to the evil Caesar Severus." According to Morris St Gildas knew the source but mistranslated the name "Severus" as an adjective, wrongly identifying the emperor as Diocletian. Bede accepted the identification as fact and dates St Alban's martyrdom to this later period.  As Morris points out, Diocletian reigned only in the East and would not have been involved in British affairs in 304; Emperor Severus, however, was in Britain from 208 to 211. Morris thus dates Alban's death to 209. However, the mention of Severus in the Turin version has been shown to be an interpolation into an original text, which mentioned only a iudex  or 'judge'. Subsequent scholars (William Hugh Clifford Frend and Charles Thomas for example) have argued that such a single, localised British martyrdom in 209 would have been unusual, and they have suggested the period of 251–259 (under the persecutors Decius or Valerian) are more likely.
caption: Eastern Orthdodox icon of Saint Alban
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