St. Alban is the last figure on the north side of the Martyrs Portal, next to Stephen. While Stephen is the protomartyr for the entire Christian church, Alban, as the first recorded British martyr, is especially revered by the Anglican expression of the faith.
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed c. 731, is one of the earliest sources for the story of Alban and one that would have been familiar to sculptor John Angel. The basic narrative follows:
The time is the general persecution of Christians commenced by the emperor Diocletian in 303. The place is the Roman province of Brittania, where Alban, a Briton serving in the Roman army, is stationed in the town of Verulamium, now the city of St. Albans in the county of Hertfordshire to the north of London.
One night, a Christian priest fleeing persecution knocks on the door of Alban’s hut. Though duty-bound to turn the priest over to his superiors, Alban takes pity on the man and shelters him. As Bede recounts:
This man he [Alban] observed to be engaged in continual prayer and watching day and night; when on a sudden the Divine grace shining on him, he began to imitate the example of faith and piety which was set before him, and being gradually instructed by his wholesome admonitions, he cast off the darkness of idolatry, and became a Christian in all sincerity of heart.
When soldiers searching for the priest approach Alban’s hut, Alban exchanges his soldier’s cloak for the priest’s vestment, enabling the priest to escape in the guise of a soldier. Alban is arrested, court-martialed, and beheaded.
The pedestal relates the story of Alban’s martyrdom. Front and center, we see Alban being arrested and bound with ropes. On the pedestal’s left face, the priest makes his escape as Alban makes a gesture of farewell. On the right side, we see Alban’s executioner waiting with a broadsword at the ready. The Roman soldiers are anachronistically clad in the armor and mail of medieval knights.
Here John Angel again displays his gift for reducing a narrative to its essential elements. He evidently sees no need to crowd the pedestal with depictions of Alban’s conversion or his execution. Rather than distract us with excessive detail, he has his viewers focus on the image of Alban courageously facing death, arms bound but head held high. With the Christian priest behind him and two soldiers facing him, Alban stands on the spiritual frontier between the empire of Caesar and the Kingdom of Christ.
Above the pedestal, the full-length figure of Alban holds two objects – a sword and a bowl. His right elbow nestles the sword’s hilt. The sword refers to both his life as a Roman soldier and the manner of his death as a Christian martyr.
The bowl suggests the hospitality he extended to the fugitive priest but may also suggest something more, for a martyrdom is more than just another tragic death. The bowl may suggest a eucharistic chalice or a baptismal font, for there is something sanctified, even sacramental, about a martyr’s blood.
In addition to the basic narrative summarized above, various retellings of the story interject some supernatural interventions. A sixth century account by the Celtic monk Gildas, included in his On the Ruin of Britain, has Alban parting the waters of the River Thames à la Moses at the Red Sea:
[Alban] opened a path across the noble River Thames, whose waters stood abrupt like precipices on either side; and seeing this, the first of his executors was stricken with awe, and from a wolf became a lamb; so that he thirsted for martyrdom, and boldly underwent that for which he thirsted.
Bede recounts the fate of the executioner who struck the fatal blow: He who laid impious hands on the holy man’s neck was not permitted to rejoice over his dead body; for his eyes dropped upon the ground at the same moment as the blessed martyr’s head fell.
This gruesome detail proved irresistible to later illustrators. The Book of Saint Alban, a thirteenth century manuscript, contains a vivid example.
Angel disregards the fantastical tales, save for one story from Bede. As Alban approached the place of execution, a spring of water sprang up at his feet. Angel has the spring running across the figure’s right foot, perhaps suggesting baptism by martyrdom.
The spring also appears in a window at St. Alban’s Cathedral in England.
Within St John the Divine, there are four more images of Alban. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum included him among the British and Celtic saints lining the entrance to the Chapel of St. Columba. Alban appears in three stained glass windows – the aisle windows in Armed Forces and Historical Bays as well as a full-length lancet in the clerestory of the Historical Bay. And then there’s the Pilgrims Pavement medallion for St. Albans Cathedral in the south aisle of the nave.
Why the multiple images? There are approximately 150 individual saints represented in St. John the Divine’s sculpture, stained glass, and other works of art. Most of them appear only once. When a saint appears multiple times, one wonders why.
In the case of St. Alban, one might detect the hidden hand of Bishop William Thomas Manning, who oversaw the nave’s design, construction, and consecration. Manning was a proud Englishman by birth and a patriotic American citizen by naturalization. An ardent supporter of the military, he took a leave from his fashionable Manhattan parish to serve as an Army chaplain during the First World War. It is not surprising that he should have a special regard for a soldier saint like Alban. As the chairman of the Committee on Iconography, he was certainly positioned to play favorites among the saints. The Armed Forces and Historical Bays were particularly meaningful for Bishop Manning, as discussed in a previous Divine Stone article.
The Tomb of William Thomas Manning click to read
Two last notes:
In the stained glass images above, Alban is clean-shaven, as was standard for Roman legionnaires, while John Angel’s north portal figure sports full facial hair. Perhaps Angel was influenced by the image of Alban on the 19th century high altar screen of St. Alban’s Cathedral, which has a passing resemblance to the figure in the Martyrs Portal.
Finally, whatever became of the priest whose life Alban saved? Some accounts say that he was quickly captured and executed, while others have him safely making his way to Wales as a missionary. In later centuries he came to be known as Amphibalus. (Since this is also the Latin name for a cloak, there may have been some confusion between the garment and man who wore it.) St. Albans Cathedral houses a shrine for St. Amphibalus, originally built in the 12th century and badly damaged during the Reformation, but since restored and reconsecrated in 2021.
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Sources:
- Atwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints 2nd ed. (Penguin, 1983).
- Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, A.M. Sellar, translator. Dover Publications, 2011 reprint of the 1907 edition.
- Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2nd ed. (OUP, 1987).
- Gildas. On the Ruin of Britain, J.A. Giles, translator. Dodo Press, 2007 (accessed via Project Gutenberg).
- Low, Julia. “The restoration of the Amphibalus shrine,” St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society. https://www.stalbanshistory.org/