04 — The Sources
The witnesses to Alban, layer by layer: Constantius of Lyon’s Life of Germanus (c. 480), whose account of the 429 shrine visit is the earliest witness of all; the Passio Albani, surviving in the Turin and Paris recensions whose relationships Wilhelm Meyer first sorted and Richard Sharpe re-established; Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae (c. 540s); Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica I.7 (731); and the medieval elaborations — Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Amphibalus,” William of St Albans’s expanded passion, Matthew Paris’s illustrated life. Each layer is dated, and what each adds — or invents — is stated.
Tradition: Western (pre-Schism, Roman Britain)
This section is the collection’s documentary core. The first file treats the late antique witnesses: Constantius and the 429 anchor, and the Passio Albani with its recensions, stemma, date, and the pregnant “Severus” reading. The second follows the tradition’s growth through Gildas and Bede — the two texts that fixed the insular memory — and then through the high medieval St Albans industry that gave the story a named priest, a second shrine, and a richly illustrated legend. The rule throughout is METHODOLOGY §3.5: each text is an artifact with a date, and what it can bear is stated with it.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| the-earliest-witnesses.md | Constantius of Lyon, Vita Germani 16 (written c. 480, of the visit of 429) — the earliest witness; the Passio Albani: Meyer’s 1904 edition, the Turin/Paris recensions, Sharpe’s stemma and fifth-century dating, the “Severus” reading, and what the Passio can bear. |
| gildas-bede-and-the-medieval-legend.md | Gildas c. 540s (Verulamium named; ut conicimus); Bede HE I.7 (731) — the canonical narrative; then the medieval layers: Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1136, “Amphibalus”), William of St Albans (1170s), the 1177 Redbourn invention, Matthew Paris (13th c.). |
See Also
- The Evidence — the dating problem these texts generate
- The Attestation Ledger — the same sources as a graded inventory
- The Visit of Germanus — the 429 event behind the earliest witness
References
- Constantius of Lyon. Vita Germani, trans. F. R. Hoare, The Western Fathers (London: Sheed and Ward, 1954).
- Meyer, Wilhelm (ed.). Die Legende des h. Albanus des Protomartyr Angliae in Texten vor Beda. Göttingen, 1904.
- Sharpe, Richard. “The Late Antique Passion of St Alban.” In Henig and Lindley (eds.), Alban and St Albans (Leeds: Maney, 2001), 30–37.
- Gildas, ed. Winterbottom (Phillimore, 1978); Bede, ed. Colgrave and Mynors (Oxford, 1969).
- Levison, Wilhelm. “St Alban and St Albans.” Antiquity 15 (1941): 337–359.
- Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, and Thelma S. Fenster (trans.). The Life of St Alban by Matthew Paris. Tempe: ACMRS, 2010.