Saint Joseph of Arimathæa
The thirty-first of July is one of two feast days of the Orthodox Church given to Saint Joseph of Arimathæa, a secret disciple of Jesus who held a position of some power and authority in the religion of the Second Temple. The Gospel of Saint Matthew describes him merely as ‘a rich man of Arimathæa’ (a town which has been traditionally identified with the birthplace of the Prophet Samuel: the Jerusalem suburb of Ramah in Palestine, nowadays Nabi Samu‘îl) and ‘Jesus’ disciple’. The Gospel of Saint John affirms as much, and adds that he was a follower in secret ‘for fear of the Jews’.
However, the Gospel of Saint Mark describes him as ‘an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God’. This implies that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. It also implies that ideologically, he would have aligned with the Perushim (who affirmed an afterlife) rather than the Seduqim (who did not). The Gospel of Saint Luke tells us also that Saint Joseph did not assent to the Sanhedrin’s condemnation of Jesus. All four Gospel accounts tell of how he pled to Pilate for the body of our Lord, and having received him, had him decently buried in his own tomb, in a white linen shroud, in the presence of the Holy Theotokos and the Myrrh-Bearing Women. Christ was buried somewhat in haste, however (so the Gospels inform us), as the Passover Sabbath was drawing near.
No one, least of all Joseph, was given to expect the eucatastrophe that happened on the third day. When the Myrrh-Bearing Women went to the tomb of Christ they found the stone rolled away and the tomb – empty. Christ had risen from the dead. The young man they found at the tomb told them that Christ was no longer there, and to tell the disciples that Christ had gone before them into Galilee. The women did not speak, for they were afraid.
A certain story about Joseph that had some currency in the ancient Church, held that once he was finished burying Christ, some among the scribes and lawyers of the Temple came and confronted him. They asked him why they had begged the body of Christ from Pilate, seized him as a sympathiser, and had him cast into gaol. They placed a seal over the door of his cell, and left him there. On that same third day, the Temple elders came by his cell, and they found that though the seal was still affixed to his door, Joseph himself was not within. He had gone back to Arimathæa.
The elders of the Temple sent an apology and conciliatory message to Joseph with several of his friends, and Joseph took up their invitation to speak with them. He told them that on that third day after he had been cast into gaol, a blinding apparition appeared to him, which lifted up the four corners of his cell from off the ground. As he lay prostrated in terror, the apparition bathed him in water and fragrant essences, and spoke gently to him. Joseph, fearing that it was a phantom or an angel who appeared before him, asked if he were Elijah. The man answered back to him that He was no phantom, nor angel, nor Elijah, but Christ – the same whom Joseph had taken from Pilate and wrapped in linens and lain in the tomb. Christ led him by the hand out of the cell and out of the city gate, though both were shut, and back to his home; then He kissed him and bade him farewell, for He was on His way back to Galilee. The elders of the Temple, it appears, did not fully credit his story, for they asked to cross-interview several of his relatives and neighbours as to what had happened.
Joseph of Arimathæa withdrew into the wilderness for six months, after which he presented himself to Saint Peter and asked to be allowed to preach the risen Christ, in whom he wholeheartedly believed. He was so admitted, and he went to preach Christ diligently among his countrymen, as well as in Rome and Libya. One popular legend has it that he got aboard a ship from Jaffa and made his way across the Mediterranean, and made land at Worbarrow Bay in Roman Britain. Mediæval tales of Saint Joseph in England abound like ivy, and are thick on the ground particularly around Glastonbury, which was said to have been his dwelling-place and the centre of his preaching.
It was said that Joseph of Arimathæa walked all the way from Worbarrow Bay up to Wirral Hill, where he rested the end of his staff in the ground, leaning on it. Beneath it he and his twelve followers rested. There overnight it took root, and began to branch out and blossom with new life. This became the Glastonbury Thorn, which bloomed twice every year – once at Paschaltide, and once around the Nativity. Joseph of Arimathæa settled in Glastonbury together with these twelve followers of his, and there, by tradition, established the first church and proto-monastic community in Britain, for which he was given the land by a local governor. He lived there for forty-two years, the latter half of his life.
The Thorn associated with Saint Joseph was cut down in the seventeenth century, by those drab grey-souled Puritans who could not abide anything colourful or green or living in England’s public space. However, local folks hid cuttings from Saint Joseph’s Thorn from the Puritan soldiery and replanted them after they left: these are still growing in Glastonbury. A spray from Saint Joseph’s Thorn is sent each Christmas to the reigning English monarch; this custom dates to the reign of the decidedly unpuritanical Queen Anne.)
Additional legends associate Saint Joseph and Glastonbury with the fictional isle of Avalon and the ultimate fate of King Arthur. A Cornish tale has it that Saint Joseph was originally a tin-worker who visited Britain together with Jesus as a child, who taught him how to purify the tin there.
We can see from some of these latter stories that the connexions of Glastonbury to Saint Joseph of Arimathæa have largely drifted from the realm of history into that of legend, even within the long and persisting memory of the Church. However, legends are more often than not formed around kernels of truth. The Christian presence in Glastonbury assuredly predates the arrival of the Saxons, who were previously thought to have founded Glastonbury Abbey. A Christian community – an established one with significant connexions in trade to the Levant – was present and apparently flourishing in Glastonbury in the fifth century, while most of the residents of Somerset were still pagan. The association of this community with Saint Joseph of Arimathæa may not be accidental. Righteous Joseph, caretaker of the body of Christ, pray unto Him for us sinners that we may share in His Resurrection!
The noble Joseph, when he had taken down Your most pure Body from the Tree,
Wrapped it in fine linen and anointed it with spices, and placed it in a new tomb.
But You rose on the third day, O Lord, granting the world great mercy!
Glastonbury Abbey
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