(ABOUT A.D. 549.)
[S. Albinus seems to have enjoyed an amount of popularity as a
saint which it is difficult to account for. Besides receiving great
veneration at Angers, where his feast is a double, and in Brittany,
where it is a semi-double, in Gnesen, in Poland, it was observed as a
double. His name appears in most Martyrologies, as those of Usuardus,
Hrabanus, Wandelbert, &c. Authority:--His life written by Fortunatus,
a priest, his contemporary.]
S. Albinus, or _S. Aubin_, as he is called in France, belonged to an
ancient family at Vannes, in Brittany. He embraced the religious life
in the abbey of Cincillac, called afterwards Tintillant, near Angers.
At the age of thirty-five, in the year 504, he was chosen abbot, and
twenty-five years afterwards, bishop of Angers. In the 3rd Council
of Orleans, in 538, he caused the thirtieth canon of the Epaone to
be revived, which declared excommunication to those who contracted
marriage within the first or second degree of consanguinity. His life
is singularly devoid of incident which could mark it off from that of
many another abbot and bishop, and it is therefore difficult to account
for his undoubted popularity in France in ancient times.