Saint Amphibalus

Amphibalus is a venerated early Christian priest said to have converted Saint Alban to Christianity. He occupied a place in British hagiography almost as revered as Alban himself. According to many hagiographical accounts, including those of Gildas, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Matthew of Paris, Amphibalus was a Roman Christian fleeing religious persecution under Emperor Diocletian. Amphibalus was offered shelter by Alban in the Roman city of Verulamium, in modern-day England. Alban was so impressed with the priest's faith and teaching that he began to emulate him in worship, and eventually became a Christian himself. When Roman soldiers came to seize Amphibalus, Alban put on Amphibalus' robes and was punished in his place. According to Matthew Paris, after Alban's martyrdom, the Romans eventually caught and martyred Amphibalus as well. Gildas (c. 570), Bede (c. 730) and the three texts of Alban's Passio, going back as far as the 5th century, do not name Amphibalus in their accounts of Alban. They refer to Amphibalus not as a saint but simply as a priest and do not report his martyrdom. Amphibalus gained his name and title when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) in the 12th century. It is possible that Geoffrey had been repeating a name for the priest that had come into common usage in his time, but it is also possible that Geoffrey misunderstood the Latin word used for the cloak, amphiboles, which was worn by Alban. Wilhelm Levison noted that the story of the name, which goes back to a 5th-century Passio Albani, is composed of borrowings from other lives of saints and it has, in his words, "no place in the ranks of Acta martyrum sincera; it is a legendary tale...." Geoffrey repeated the story of Alban's martyrdom as given by Bede in his famous Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), with the addition of the name of the confessor he shelters, Amphibalus.