Today we remember St Alban.
It makes me pause and ask how did the Gospel came to this island. I’ve been re-writing my lectures and so here’s some of what I’ve been working on.
Its hard to say when it started but there was a rather nasty bit of persecution that happened in 177AD in Lyons and its likely that some Christians fled further west. We know that the Romans having invaded in 49AD had settled down and started putting in some fancy mosaics like the sort you see in Lullingstone, and some of what’s called the SATOR square has been found. Never mind what that is, what it means is that the Christian faith was nice and tidily settled here.
But dating St Alban is really difficult. The story goes that there was a priest who was fleeing persecution and Alban gave him shelter and during this time the priest shared with him the grace of God so that when the Romans came for him, Alban dressed up as the priest and got martyred instead. So we have the first British martyr.
I note that my Saints books like putting this at 250ad during the Decian persecution. Maybe, but I like the idea of 209ad during the persecution of Caesar Severus (and you thought JK Rowling thought that name up by herself)
By 314 we have a list of three bishops who travelled to the Synod at Arles. But shortly after the Romans left in 409, they seemed to have left and taken everything with them. Whereas in other places in Europe no matter who invaded, the names of the week stayed with a Latin-base – so think French Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi – named after Roman gods Mars, Mercury, Jupiter – but in Britain we now have days named after the Germanic gods Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Frig. It would seem that there was so little Latin culture left. This also explains why almost the rest of the world called Easter something like Pasha (from Passover). But it might suggest that Easter had been called Pasha during the period of Roman occupation but reverted to Easter when the Saxons, and then the Vikings, later, invaded.
This meant that whilst Saints remained behind, like David, Patrick, Columba, that they were doing great stuff in Wales, Ireland and Iona, and not so much in England.
Ethelbert king of Kent had married a French woman, Bertha, who came over with her priest thereby showing that ‘flirt to convert’ has been used for a while. It did at least mean that when Augustine arrived in 597, he found a small Christian welcome, and he found that God had gone ahead before him. 1000s got baptised including the king by 601 but then he died in 616 and the next king was a pagan and so lots of the others gave up.
Bertha’s daughter married Edwin up in York and so took her faith and her priest and so begun some northern mission there. But there’s more death and fighting resulting a pagan king, then a Christian king in Oswald, the start up of Lindisfarne and the mission south from there by Cedd into East Anglia. St Wilfrid pops up during all this and does a tremendous job of encouraging faith all over the place including Sussex.
And that brings us to the Synod of Whitby in 664 which was pivotally important but I’ll tell you about that another time as I’m impressed you’re still reading. Anyway, the point was Happy St Alban’s Day.
(Photo shows my hand in the 5th Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem – no this isn’t where Jesus stumbled as he carried the cross. Yes he probably did stumble and so here’s as good a place as any)