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No 50 July 2002 RELIC RETURNS TO THE SHRINE OF ST ALBAN On Saturday 29th June the annual pilgrimage of the Fellowship to the shrine of St Alban was made as it has been for a number of years. The Orthodox Liturgy was celebrated in the Lady Chapel, and followed by a service of intercession at the (empty) reconstructed shrine. But later the same day, a momentous event was to occur within the church. A bone, believed to be the clavicle bone of St Alban, was presented to the Cathedral by Fr Peter von Steinitz, parish priest of the church of St Pantaleon, Cologne. Most of the relics of St Alban have been in the possession of St Pantaleon's since the dissolution of the monasteries (perhaps even before - see below). The relic has been placed inside the shrine at St Albans. The presentation of the relic by a Roman Catholic parish to an Anglican cathedral is an important gesture of friendship and may be regarded by many as a symbol of the way in which we should strive towards unity in Christ. Certainly if we see the saints, in particular the martyrs, as our pattern for unity we will do well, as they were united in the voluntary offering of their entire lives to God, albeit coming from diverse national and ethnic backgrounds and from different ecclesiastical traditions.
Alban was martyred for his faith on the hillside outside the Roman city of Verulamium where the cathedral now stands. The exact date of Alban's death is not known, but most experts now favour a date around 250AD when Christians suffered under the emperors Decius and Valerian. The earliest evidence suggests that Alban was buried on the hillside where he died, and that when persecution ended his grave became a place for Christian devotion. In due course a church was built on the site, and this shrine was visited in 429 by St Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, who had been sent to Britain to preach against heresy. St Germanus brought relics of the saints, including the apostles, which he left at the shrine of St Alban. In return, St Germanus was given relics of St Alban. The exchange of relics between churches was common practice at the time: an expression of the unity of Christian people across geographical and cultural boundaries and of the participation of each local church in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We do not know what St Germanus did with the relics he took away with him; probably he sent them to Rome, but since he founded a church in Auxerre dedicated to St Alban, he may have kept some of the relics there. In 793 Offa, King of Mercia, founded a monastic community at St Alban's shrine. We cannot be sure that the relics which Offa placed at the heart of his abbey church were actually the bones of St Alban, but certainly they were believed to be at the time and the evidence suggests that the site continued to be a place of Christian worship between 429 and 793. For the next 750 years the abbey church containing St Alban's relics continued to be a place of pilgrimage. In 1539 the great Benedictine abbey was closed by order of King Henry VIII. St Albans was not the first abbey to be closed by the king, and in other places shrines had been desecrated and relics destroyed. We do not know the fate of St Alban's bones; perhaps they too were burned, but it is perfectly possible that, forewarned by what had happened elsewhere, the relics were hidden or smuggled out of the country before the king's commissioners arrived. If the bones left the country, they may well have been taken on the relatively short journey up the Rhine to Cologne, where another Benedictine abbey church also had a shrine to St Alban containing relics believed to be authentic. In the tenth century the Pope had given Theophano, a Byzantine princess, relics of St Alban as a present when she was married in Rome to the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II. These may have been the same relics St Germanus took with him from Verulamium in 429. Following her husband's death in 972, Theophano returned to Germany and ruled in the name of her young son Otto III. The relics given to Theophano have remained ever since in the church of St Pantaleon in Cologne, where Theophano was herself buried in 991. Recently the relics in Cologne have been examined. They include a skull, bound with a golden band. King Offa is recorded as having put such a gold band around the skull of St Alban. So the relics that are in Cologne could have
reached there either through St Germanus (via Rome) or direct at
the time of the Dissolution, or both. Now, one of these bones of
St Alban is coming home to rest at the site of his martyrdom. (reproduced
from a leaflet distributed at St Albans Abbey) THE FELLOWSHIP AROUND THE WORLD 2002 has already seen the establishing of a branch of the Fellowship in Sofia, Bulgaria. A report on the launch events will appear in the forthcoming number of Sobornost/ECR. Also this year, an embryonic Fellowship oddice has been established in the crypt of St Andrew's Anglican Church, Moscow. This will receive its official opening on November 30th this year, DV. In October, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, one of our vice-presidents, will travel to Evvia, Greece with the general secretary to lead the annual retreat of the Fellowship's Athens branch. For some years, however, there has been no active Fellowship activity (at least to the knowledge of the general secretary) in any part of the USA or Canada, even though we have several hundred American members and numbers are growing constantly. If any member or members of the Fellowship are interested in forming a branch in any part of the US or Canada, they are urged to contact the Fellowship office.
LILIAN SIMPSON Please remember in your prayers the soul of Lilian Simpson who died recently following a stroke. Lilian had been, for many years, a faithful participant at Fellowship conferences, as well as holding together the Leicester branch of the Fellowship. She is listed as one of the founders, benefactors and companions of the House of St Gregory and St Macrina in Oxford, our sister organisation and the home of our office. May God grant rest to his newly-departed handmaiden. Notice is hereby given that the Annual General
Meeting of The Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius will be held
on Thursday August 22nd 2002 at 3.15 p.m. at The Friars, Aylesford,
Nr Maidstone, Kent for the following purposes: By order of the Council NOTICE Under the Companies Act 1985, section 249B, members are entitled to require the Fellowship Council to employ a professional firm of accountants to act as external auditors. The Council have decided, as in 2001, to carry out their own investigation to save the cost of a professional audit. However, if 10% in number of members feel that the accounts should be audited, then the council's decision is overruled. Those who wish to have a professional audit please write to the General Secretary before July 31st. An abbreviated form of accounts is included with this newsletter and the full accounts together with the report of the directors are available from the Fellowship's registered office (address below) on request. Copies of the report and accounts will be available at the Annual General Meeting at The Friars, Aylesford on Thursday 22nd August. FINANCIAL NEWS The Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities
and Balance Sheet for the year ended March 31st 2001 (overleaf)
were approved by the Independent Examiner and by the Fellowship
Council at its meeting on June 16th 2002. They will be presented
to members at the Annual General Meeting. The directors' report,
notes and narrative accompanying the accounts will be available
at the meeting and are available on request from the Fellowship
office. Fellowship Newsletter no. 49: January 2002
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