(VENERABLE ALBAN).

English Benedictine martyr, b. in Suffolk, 1583; executed at Tyburn, 21 Jan., 1641. Educated in Suffolk and at Cambridge; he became converted through a visit to a Catholic prisoner at St. Albans which unsettled his religious views. He was admitted as a convictor into the English College at Douai, entered the English Benedictine monastery at Dieulward where he was professed in 1612, and, after ordination, went to the mission in 1615. From 1618 to 1623 he was imprisoned in the New Prison, Maiden Lane, whence he was banished and went to the English Benedictine house at Douai but returned to England after four months. He was again arrested in 1625, and was imprisoned for two months at St. Albans, then in the Fleet whence he was frequently liberated on parole, and finally in Newgate. He was condemned a few days before his execution under the statute 27 Eliz. e. 2, for being a priest. With him suffered Thomas Greene, aged eighty, who on the mission had taken the name of Reynolds. He was probably descended from the Greenes of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, and the Reynoldses of Old Stratford, Warwickshire, and was ordained deacon at Reims in 1590, and priest at Seville. He had lived under sentence of death for fourteen years, and was executed without fresh trial. They were drawn on the same hurdle, where they heard each other's confessions, and were hanged simultaneously on the same gibbet amidst great demonstrations of popular sympathy.

The Catholic Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource on Catholic teaching, history, and information ever gathered in all of human history. This easy-to-search online version was originally printed in fifteen hardcopy volumes.

Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional. In the determination of the truth the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed, and the results of the latest research in theology, philosophy, history, apologetics, archaeology, and other sciences are given careful consideration.

No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. In the past century the Church has grown both extensively and intensively among English-speaking peoples. Their living interests demand that they should have the means of informing themselves about this vast institution, which, whether they are Catholics or not, affects their fortunes and their destiny.

Copyright © Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company New York, NY. Volume 1: 1907; Volume 2: 1907; Volume 3: 1908; Volume 4: 1908; Volume 5: 1909; Volume 6: 1909; Volume 7: 1910; Volume 8: 1910; Volume 9: 1910; Volume 10: 1911; Volume 11: - 1911; Volume 12: - 1911; Volume 13: - 1912; Volume 14: 1912; Volume 15: 1912

Catholic Online Catholic Encyclopedia Digital version Compiled and Copyright © Catholic Online