Julius and Aaron

Julius and Aaron (also Julian) were two Romano-British Christian saints who were martyred around the third century AD. Along with Saint Alban, they are the only named Christian martyrs from Roman Britain. Most historians place the martyrdom in Caerleon, although other suggestions have placed it in Chester or Leicester. Their feast day was traditionally celebrated on 1 July,^[1] but it is now observed together with Alban on 20 June by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches.^[3][4]

The earliest surviving account of Julius and Aaron comes from Gildas, a monk writing in Western Britain during the sixth century. How accurate his account of events that occurred three centuries before is remains unknown; Gildas' account was later repeated by the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon monk Bede. References to Julius and Aaron were included in the work of later medieval authors like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Giraldus Cambrensis.

Gildas implied that a martyrium dedicated to Julius and Aaron was present by the sixth century, and a chapel dedicated to the saints certainly in existence near Caerleon by the ninth century, when it was recorded in a land charter. In the early twelfth century, the church passed into the property of the new Goldcliff Priory, and by 1142 had been renamed in dedication to St Alban as well as Julius and Aaron, reflecting the growing popularity of the former's cult. In later centuries, the chapel's associations with Julius and Aaron were forgotten. By the time of the sixteenth-century English Reformation, when the chapel was abandoned and perhaps converted into a barn, it was solely referred to as a Church of Saint Alban. The building fell into dilapidation and no longer survives.