Joseph of Arimathea: Difference between revisions

When [[Jesus]] dies on the cross, the Gospels suddenly introduce an individual who has never been mentioned before: Joseph of Arimathea. We are told he was a secret disciple of Jesus who lived in the hope of seeing the kingdom of God. He also was a prominent member of the council who did not consent to the conspiracy to cause Jesus’ death.

<blockquote>The Latin from whence this history was drawn into Romance was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenievre lie, according to the witness of the good men religious that are therein, that have the whole history thereof, true from the beginning  even to the end.<ref>Sebastian Evans, trans., ''The High History of the Holy Grail'' (London: J.M. Dent & Co., 1903), p. 379.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>A British hermit of unknown name, born in Wales and living there, who after the manner of the bards of that region had devoted his entire life to the study of the science of the stars and of history, assembled the notable events that had taken place in his fatherland and wrote them down with no mean labour. He wrote chiefly of the famous British King Arthur and his Round Table. He also had much to tell of Lancelot, Morgan, Percival, Gauvain, Bertram and other valiant men.... The work is known in a language unknown to me. ''The Holy Grail, Book I''. I have seen fragments of the work. According to Vincent it was famous in the time of Ina, King of the West Saxons, somewhere around 720.<ref>Ibid., p. 30.</ref></blockquote>  

According to Hardyng’s ''Chronicle'' (a fifteenth-century document based on a much earlier work), Arviragus granted “twelve hides” of land—somewhere around 1,900 acres—tax-free to Joseph and his company in a place called Yniswitrin, a marshy tract later called the Isle of Avalon.<ref>Ibid., p. 39, 41.</ref>

<blockquote>After the first persecution, when St. James was slain by the sword, those who had followed him were thrust into a boat, without oars or sails, on the coast of Palestine somewhere near to Mount Carmel, and so got rid of. In the boat were: St. Mary, wife of Cleopas, St. Salome (often called St. Mary Salome also), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha, and with the two latter was their maid Marcella. They were accompanied by the following men: Lazarus, Joseph of Arimathea, Trophimius, Maximin, Cleon, Eutropius, Sidonius (Restitutus, “the man born blind”), Martial, and Saturnius.<ref>Ibid., p. 126.</ref></blockquote>  

There is additional evidence of the saints’ ministry in France. According to the Acts of Magdalen, Lazarus stayed in Marseilles, Mary Magdalene went to Aix-en-Provence with St. Maximin, and Martha went to Tarascon. This is corroborated by local tradition. Beneath the old church of St. Victor in Marseilles is a natural cave which is reputed to be Lazarus’ refuge. Near Aix, a relic of Mary is preserved in the Basilica of Mary Magdalene at Saint–Maximin.

From Diodorus’ description, the island of Ictis is almost certainly St. Michael’s Mount, an island near Land’s End in Cornwall. Siculus continues:  

Joseph could have even been more than a merchant—a Roman official in the trade. Gildas the Wise, a British monk who lived <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. c. 500–570, refers to him as “nobilis decurio.”<ref>''De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae'', a religious polemic by Gildas, is the only existing written source for the early Christian history of Britain written close to that time.<ref> According to Capt, the title “‘decurio’ denoted an important Roman office, usually connected with the general management of a mining district. The implication is that Joseph was a provincial ... Roman Senator and in charge of Rome’s mining interests in Britain.”<ref>Capt, ''Traditions of Glastonbury'', p. 22.</ref>

<blockquote>[During] the nine years’ persecution by the tyrant Diocletian,... the Churches throughout the whole world were overthrown. All the copies of the Holy Scriptures which could be found were burned in the streets, and the chosen pastors of God’s flock butchered, together with their innocent sheep, in order that (if possible) not a vestige might remain in some provinces of Christ’s religion.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Now the most eminent of the primitive disciples ... was St. Joseph of Arimathea, and eleven of his companions with him, among whom is reckoned his son of his own name. These toward the latter end of Nero’s reign [it ended about <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 68], and before St. Peter and St. Paul were consummated by a glorious martyrdom [about <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 64 and 67], are by the testimony of ancient records said to have entered this island, as a place for the retiredness of it, the benignity to the British Princes, and the freedom from Roman tyranny, more, opportune, and better prepared for entertaining the Gospel of Peace, than almost any country, under the Romans.<ref>Capt, ''Traditions of Glastonbury'', p. 22.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Britain, partly [because of] Joseph of Arimathea,... was of all kingdoms, first, that received the Gospel.</blockquote>

De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie was written by famous historian William of Malmesbury about 1135. He said he based it on “the writing of the ancients,” found in the Glastonbury library before it was destroyed. His chronicle says that St. Philip

<blockquote>... sent twelve of his disciples into Britain to teach the word of life. It is said that he appointed as their leader his very dear friend, Joseph of Arimathea, who had buried the Lord. They came to Britain in 63 AD, the fifteenth year after the assumption of the blessed Mary, and confidently began to preach the faith of Christ. The barbarian king and his people, hearing this new and unfamiliar preaching, refused absolutely to agree with it and would not alter the teachings of their forefathers; yet because they had come from afar, and because the sobriety of their life demanded it of him, the king granted them a certain island on the outskirts of his territory on which they could live, a place surrounded by woods, bramble bushes and marshes and called by its inhabitants Yniswitrin.</blockquote>

John Scott, editor of a William of Malmesbury translation, says that the monks were trying to enhance the prestige of their monastery by establishing an “ancient foundation and a saintly founder.” So they “boldly expanded William’s sober and guarded account. They gave names to the missionaries, who had been unknown to William, and invented a document in which Phagan and Deruvian [missionaries sent by Roman Church hierarch Elutherins in <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 166] recounted the story of the foundation of Glastonbury by the disciples of St. Philip. An even later embellishment ... brought Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury as the leader of the missionaries.”  

<blockquote>In the upshot I see no reason to doubt that by 1190 a Celtic Joseph legend, preserved in Wales, had returned to the Abbey, and that this was the common source for [Grail romancer] Robert de Borron and the ''De Antiquitate interpolator''.</blockquote>

If the passage about Joseph is indeed a forgery, a more reliable passage admits the early Christian settlement of Glastonbury, but leaves the settlers unnamed. William of Malmesbury wrote that “there are also letters worthy of belief to be found at St. Edmund’s to this effect: ‘the hands of other men did not make the church at Glastonbury, but the very disciples of Christ, namely those sent by St. Philip the apostle, built it.’”

::And did the Countenance Divine,<br/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shine forth upon our clouded hills?<br/>And was Jerusalem builded here,<br/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Among these dark Satanic Mills?  

The first of these is found in Cornwall. In his Book of Cornwall, Baring-Gould reports a “Cornish story ... to the effect that Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the Child Jesus with him, and the latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its [ore] wolfram[ite].... When the tin is flashed then the tinner shouts, ‘Joseph was in the tin trade.’”  

The second is a Somerset County tradition describing how Jesus and Joseph came to Summerland on a ship from Tarshish and stayed in Paradise (a place name for areas around Burnham and Glastonbury).  

The third says that Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea stayed in the mining village of Priddy, north of Glastonbury, in the Mendip Hills of Somerset County.  An old saying there is:  “As sure as Our Lord was at Priddy...”  

<blockquote>[Joseph] gained his wealth as an importer in the tin trade, which existed between Cornwall and Phoenicia. On one of his voyages he took Our Lord with him when a boy. Our Lord either remained in Britain or returned later as a young man, and stayed in quiet retirement at Glastonbury. Here he erected for himself a small house of mud and wattle. Later Joseph of Arimathea, fleeing from Palestine, settled in the same place and erected a mud and wattle church.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Isle of Avalon greedy of burials ... received thousands of sleepers, among whom Joseph de Marmore from Aramathea by name, entered his perpetual sleep. And he lies in a bifurcated line next the southern angle of the oratory made of circular wattles by 13 inhabitants of the place over the powerful adorable Virgin.</blockquote>

A reputed sarcophagus of Joseph does exist today in Glastonbury. A fourteenth-century monk, Roget of Boston, recorded an epitaph attached to it found after it was exhumed in 1345. It read in Latin, “To the Britons I came after I buried the Christ. I taught, I have entered my rest.”