ead Alban and
also professed himself a Christian. When the band reached the hill Alban
craved water to quench his thirst, for it was a hot summer day, June
22,[1] and at once a spring burst forth at his feet. One of the soldiers
struck off the martyr's head, but his own eyes fell on the ground
together with it; the executioner who had refused to do his duty was
beheaded at the same time. These miracles are said to have so much
impressed the judge that he ordered the persecution to cease. The
traditional site of the martyrdom is covered by the north arm of the
transept of the present church, and this site is in accordance with
Beda's account, which states that St. Alban was martyred about five
hundred paces from the summit of the hill. When persecution had entirely
ceased, a few years after Alban's death, a church was built over the
spot hallowed by his blood. Beda, writing at the beginning of the eighth
century, speaks of the original church as existing, and describes it as
being a church of wonderful workmanship and worthy of the martrydom it
commemorated. But in all probability the church standing in Beda's time
was not the original one; this no doubt had been swept away during the
time of the English invasion of Britain, when, as Matthew Paris tells
us, the body of Alban was moved for safety from within the church to
some other spot, whence it was afterwards brought back and replaced in
the original grave.

[1] It must be remembered that June 22 in the year 303 A.D.
would be, as now, close to the longest day, as the alteration of
the calendar known as the new style simply made the equinox
occur on the same day of the month as in 325 A.D.

That the spot was held in some reverence as early as the fifth century
is proved by the conduct of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre. A synod was
held at Verulamium in the year 429 A.D. to condemn the "Pelagian heresy"
which had budded forth anew in the island, having had its origin in the
teaching of the British monk Pelagius towards the end of the fourth
century. Germanus and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, attended this Council and
refuted the followers of Pelagius. It is said that Germanus opened the
coffin of the martyr and deposited in it some precious relics, receiving
in return for them some relics from the coffin, and a piece of turf cut
from the site of the martyrdom.

From this time we hear nothing for several centuries of the church or
the neighbouring