Albani, unknown to Bede, which states, "Alban received a fugitive cleric and put on his garment and his cloak (habitu et caracalla) that he was wearing and delivered himself up to be killed instead of the priest… and was delivered immediately to the evil Caesar Severus." According to Morris St Gildas knew the source but mistranslated the name "Severus" as an adjective, wrongly identifying the emperor as Diocletian. Bede accepted the identification as fact and dates St Alban's martyrdom to this later period. As Morris points out, Diocletian reigned only in the East and would not have been involved in British affairs in 304; Emperor Severus, however, was in Britain from 208 to 211. Morris thus dates Alban's death to 209. However, the mention of Severus in the Turin version has been shown to be an interpolation into an original text, which mentioned only a iudex or 'judge'. Subsequent scholars (William Hugh Clifford Frend and Charles Thomas for example) have argued that such a single, localised British martyrdom in 209 would have been unusual, and they have suggested the period of 251–259 (under the persecutors Decius or Valerian) are more likely. Location While it is certain that the cult devoted to Saint Alban was established in Verulamium, and his martyrdom was also alleged to have taken place there, the sources are unclear about where he was actually executed. Neither Victricius's De Laude Sanctorum nor the Passio Albani mentions where he was martyred other than that it was in Britain. In the Vita Germani, Germanus visits Alban's tomb and touches droplets of his blood still on the ground, but the text does not name the location of the tomb. It is not until Gildas that Alban was connected with Verulamium. Historicity Little is known about the real Alban (estimated to have died c. 209 – 305 AD, depending on interpretations), as there are no contemporaneous accounts of his martyrdom and the major sources on his life were written hundreds of years after his death, containing wondrous embellishments, which may or may not refer to real events. Saint Alban was long regarded as a genuine martyr saint, the protomartyr of Britain, and for much of the 20th century controversy centred on the date of his martyrdom (see further 'Dating controversy', above). More recently, however, some researchers have taken a more sceptical view about his historicity. In the view of Robin Lane Fox,