Medieval interest in Joseph centered on two themes, that of Joseph as the founder of
British Christianity (even before it had taken hold in Rome), and that of Joseph as the original guardian of the Holy Grail.
Britain 's Illustration
Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion in its second state after Blake's 1773 original, engraved circa 1809 Many legends about the arrival of Christianity in Britain abounded during the Middle Ages. Early writers do not connect Joseph to this activity.
Tertullian wrote in
Adversus Judaeos that Britain had already received and accepted the Gospel in his lifetime, writing, "all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons—inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ." Tertullian does not say how the Gospel came to Britain before AD 222.
Eusebius of Caesaria wrote of Christ's disciples in
Demonstratio Evangelica, saying that "some have crossed the Ocean and reached the Isles of Britain."
Hilary of Poitiers also wrote that the Apostles had built churches and that the Gospel had passed into Britain. The writings of Pseudo-Hippolytus include a list of the seventy disciples whom Jesus sent forth in Luke 10, one of which is
Aristobulus of Romans 16:10, called "bishop of Britain". In none of these earliest references to Christianity's arrival in Britain is Joseph of Arimathea mentioned.
William of Malmesbury's ('On the Antiquity of the
Church of Glastonbury', circa 1125) has not survived in its original edition, and the stories involving Joseph of Arimathea are contained in subsequent editions that abound in interpolations placed by the Glastonbury monks "in order to increase the Abbey's prestige – and thus its pilgrim trade and prosperity" In his (
History of The Kings of England, finished in 1125), William of Malmesbury wrote that Glastonbury Abbey was built by preachers sent by
Pope Eleuterus to Britain, however also adding: "Moreover there are documents of no small credit, which have been discovered in certain places to the following effect: 'No other hands than those of the disciples of Christ erected the church of Glastonbury'", but here William did not explicitly link Glastonbury with Joseph of Arimathea, but instead emphasizes the possible role of
Philip the Apostle: "if Philip, the Apostle, preached to the Gauls, as Freculphus relates in the fourth chapter of his second book, it may be believed that he also planted the word on this side of the channel also.". The first appearance of Joseph in the Glastonbury records can be pinpointed with surprising accuracy to 1247, when the story of his voyage was added as a margin-note to Malmesbury's chronicle. , ca. 1535 In 1989, folklore scholar A. W. Smith critically examined the accretion of legends around Joseph of Arimathea. Often associated with
William Blake's poem "
And did those feet in ancient time" and its musical setting, widely known as the hymn "Jerusalem", the legend is commonly held as "an almost secret yet passionately held article of faith among certain otherwise quite orthodox Christians" and Smith concluded "that there was little reason to believe that an oral tradition concerning a visit made by Jesus to Britain existed before the early part of the twentieth century".
Sabine Baring-Gould recounted a Cornish story how "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
wolfram. This story possibly grew out of the fact that the Jews under the Angevin kings farmed the tin of Cornwall." In its most developed version, Joseph, a tin merchant, visited Cornwall, accompanied by his nephew, the boy Jesus. Reverend C.C. Dobson (1879–1960) made a case for the authenticity of the Glastonbury
legenda. The case was argued more recently by the Church of Scotland minister
Gordon Strachan (1934–2010) and by the former archaeologist Dennis Price.
Holy Grail The legend that Joseph was given the responsibility of keeping the Holy Grail was the product of
Robert de Boron, who essentially expanded upon stories from
Acts of Pilate. In Boron's , Joseph is imprisoned much as in the
Acts of Pilate, but it is the Grail that sustains him during his captivity. Upon his release he founds his company of followers, who take the Grail to the "Vale of Avaron" (identified with
Avalon), though Joseph does not go. The origin of the association between Joseph and Britain, where Avalon is presumed to be located, is not entirely clear, though in subsequent romances such as
Perlesvaus, Joseph travels to Britain, bringing relics with him. In the
Lancelot-Grail cycle, a vast Arthurian composition that took much from Robert, it is not Joseph but his son
Josephus who is considered the primary holy man of Britain. Later authors sometimes mistakenly or deliberately treated the Grail story as truth. Such stories were inspired by the account of
John of Glastonbury, who assembled a chronicle of the history of Glastonbury Abbey around 1350 and who wrote that Joseph, when he came to Britain, brought with him vessels containing the blood and sweat of Christ (without using the word Grail). This account inspired the future claims of the Grail, including the claim involving the
Nanteos Cup on display in the museum in
Aberystwyth. There is no reference to this tradition in ancient or medieval text. John of Glastonbury further claims that King Arthur was descended from Joseph, listing the following imaginative pedigree through King Arthur's mother: Joseph's alleged early arrival in Britain was used for political point-scoring by English theologians and diplomats during the late Middle Ages, and
Richard Beere, Abbot of Glastonbury from 1493 to 1524, put the cult of Joseph at the heart of the abbey's legendary traditions. He was probably responsible for the drastic remodelling of the Lady Chapel at
Glastonbury Abbey. A series of miraculous cures took place in 1502 which were attributed to the saint, and in 1520 the printer
Richard Pynson published a
Lyfe of Joseph of Armathia, in which the
Glastonbury Thorn is mentioned for the first time. Joseph's importance increased exponentially with the
English Reformation, since his alleged early arrival far predated the Catholic conversion of AD 597. In the new post-Catholic world, Joseph stood for Christianity pure and Protestant. In 1546,
John Bale, a prominent Protestant writer, claimed that the early date of Joseph's mission meant that original British Christianity was purer than that of Rome, an idea which was understandably popular with English Protestants, notably Queen
Elizabeth I herself, who cited Joseph's missionary work in England when she told Roman Catholic bishops that the Church of England pre-dated the Roman Church in England.
Other legends According to one of England's best-known legends, when Joseph and his followers arrived, weary, on Wearyall Hill outside Glastonbury, he set his walking staff on the ground and it miraculously took root and blossomed as the "
Glastonbury Thorn". The
mytheme of the staff that Joseph of Arimathea set in the ground at Glastonbury, which broke into leaf and flower as the
Glastonbury Thorn is a common miracle in
hagiography. Such a miracle is told of the Anglo-Saxon saint
Etheldreda: Medieval interest in genealogy raised claims that Joseph was a relative of Jesus; specifically,
Mary's uncle, or according to some genealogies, Joseph's uncle. A genealogy for the family of Joseph of Arimathea and the history of his further adventures in the east provide material for the
Estoire del Saint Graal and the
Queste del Saint Graal of the Lancelot-Grail cycle and
Perlesvaus. Another legend, as recorded in
Flores Historiarum, is that Joseph is in fact the
Wandering Jew, a man cursed by Jesus to walk the Earth until the
Second Coming. ==Arimathea==