St Joseph of Arimathea
Rev L Smithett Lewis
from St Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, James Clarke & Co, London, 1955. Chapter One.
This book is now re-published by Lutterworth
It is not too much to say that the site of St. Mary’s Church in the Abbey grounds at Glastonbury is the site of the first known above-ground church in the world. The present ruined Norman church stands on the same site as the ancient Celtic wattle church which all tradition and history say was built by the Disciples of Christ. There was probably no other above-ground church in Rome than the Titulus till the time of Constantine the Great, when the Empire followed him in becoming Christian about AD 326.
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[FOOTNOTES: * This "most ample house" with its baths named after Timothy and Novatus, two of the children of Rufus and Claudia, built on Viminalis Hill, became first a place where their daughter Praxedes hid martyrs, then a hospice for pilgrims from the East, and under Pope Evaristus (AD 100-109) a church, and was called Pastor’s, probably after Pastor Hermas, who wrote to them. Baronius expressly calls St. Timothy a disciple of St. Peter and St. Paul (Baronius, Vol 2, Sec. 56, p47). Pastor Hermas says that all four children, Timotheus, Novatus, Praxedes and Pudentiana, were instructed by preaching of the Apostles (Baronius, Vol. 2, Sec. 8-148.) ** Bishop, AD 69, martyred AD 90 (Baronius, Vol. 1, p778). In p739, he quotes Epiphanius as saying that SS Peter and Paul were both Bishops in Rome (possibly the former presided over a Jewish, and the latter over a Gentile congregation) and that Linus succeeded them.] |
It is interesting to note the claim that this Titulus* – or Hospitium Apostolorum, or Palatium Britannicum – was the abode of Rufus Pudens, the Roman noble who married Claudia Britannica, the most cultured woman in Rome, apparently daughter of the British king, Caractacus, and sister of Linus, Bishop of Rome.**
On the site of this house where St. Paul probably lived with the British Royal Family in exile, and from which he was probably martyred, is now a church dedicated to St. Pudentiana, one of the martyred daughters of Pudens and Claudia. Pudens died, martyred, AD 96, and Claudia, who survived him one year, is said to have given the Titulus to be a Home for the Faithful, afterwards, between AD 100-109, to become a Christian church. This, as I shall show, is later than the date ascribed to the founding of St. Joseph of Arimathea’s wattle church at Glastonbury.
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In the Glastonbury Museum, from the Glastonbury Lake Village about 100 BC can be seen remains of mud and wattle housing. W. M. Mackenzie in his Pompeii (Cap 3, p41) writes: "The shepherds who came down from Alba Longa and founded Rome brought with them their type of dwelling-house of wood and wattled stubble which we see modelled in their burial urns." The Romans and the Britons claimed a common Trojan origin. Their facial resemblance is strong. |
It is not too much to say that the site of St. Mary’s, Glastonbury, is the site of the earliest known above-ground church in the world. It is very interesting to note how the ancient British Royal Family was intimately connected with the earliest Apostolic Church, both in exile at Rome, and in Britain, where they fostered it. And there is a most interesting relic of the friendship of St. Paul and the Caractacus family in the existence of contemporary portraits of St. Paul and Linus engraved in two glass paterae (in the Vatican Museum) depicted in Sir Wyke Bayliss’s Rex Regum (pp 60, 61). In the same Museum and the same book (pp. 73-75) there are contemporary portraits engraved on glass medallions with lines filled in with gold of (1) St. John, Damas, St. Peter and St. Paul; (2) St. Peter and St. Paul; (3) Justin and St. Timothy, which makes all these people live to us.
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Baronius’ Annales, Sec. 61, f.365. Those who wish to study more closely the question of Rufus Pudens, Claudia, Linus, St. Pudentiana, and St. Timothy, should refer to Ussher, Brit. Eccl. Antiq., p. 19; Archdeacon Williams’s Claudia and Pudens; the Rev. R. W. Morgan’s St. Paul in Britain, in which the matter is fully treated; and Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Epistles of St. Paul, Vol II, pp. 581, 582, 594, 595; and Baronius’s Annales Ecclesiastic, Vol. I, p. 228, re Vol 2, Sec. 56, p.64; Secs. IV and V, pp. 111-112; Secs. I and II, pp. 148 and 150. |
The Roman poet Martial shows that Claudia Rufina was British. He calls her "Claudia peregrina et edita Britannis" (Foreign Claudia native of the Britons) (Martial, 13B, XI, 53). "Since Claudia wife of Rufus comes from the blue-set Britons, how is it that she has so won the hearts of the Latin people?" He praises her beauty and that of her three children as greater than that of Greeks and Italians. It is interesting that he speaks of Rufus as her "holy husband". In an earlier epigram he had written, "The foreign Claudia marries my Rufus Pudens". Martial was born in Bilbilis in Spain, and went to Rome AD 65. He wrote the above poem about AD 68. About the same time St. Paul links together the name of Pudens, Linus and Claudia with Eubulus in his greetings to St. Timothy from Rome (2 Tim, iv, 21). In Romans xvi, 13, he sends greetings from Corinth to "Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother, and mine", and in verse 10 he had sent greetings "to them which are of Aristobulus’ household".
I will hazard the guess that Aristobulus and Eubulus may be the same person. Eubulus means prudent or well-counselling, and Aristobulus means best counsellor. Eubulus may have been his right name, and Aristobulus a pet name, with a play upon the words. A Pudens, servant of the Emperar Claudius, is named among the sepulchral chambers of the Imperial household. It is a matter, too, of interest that the name of Pudens is also in the well- known Latin inscription on a stone discovered at Chichester, which narrates that Pudens, son of Pudentinus, gave a site there for a Temple to Neptune and Minerva. The inscription also bears the name of the Emperor Tiberius Claudius, who died in AD 37. This would be before the conversion of Rufus Pudens, and the dates fit in well. Baronius tells us that Rufus the Senator received St. Peter into his house on the Viminalis Hill in the year AD 44.
He was apparently a Christian then, before receiving St. Peter. If he be the Pudens of the Chichester inscription he was apparently converted between these two dates. Was Rufus Pudens, the Roman, converted in Britain? Was it he who first brought Christianity into the British Royal Family, when or before he married Gladys, soon by an easy transition to become Claudia? It is a fascinating question.
Cressy in his Church History of Brittany, 1618, tells us "Our ancient histories report that Timotheus the eldest son of Rufus came into Brittany [sic] where he converted many to the faith, and at least disposed King Lucius to his succeeding conversion." And Cardinal Baronius distinctly says that Timotheus was a son of the most noble Roman Senator, Rufus Pudens, a disciple of SS. Peter and Paul" (Vol. 2, Sec. LVI, p47).
It seems that our early British Church was founded by St. Joseph of Arimathea, that then St. Simon Zelotes the Apostle came, and was martyred, and then St. Paul sent Aristobulus, said to be the brother of St. Barnabas – and thought by some to be of the family of Herod – to be our first Bishop, and that he, too, was martyred. And I think that it is indisputable that St. Paul himself came and taught in Britain; and it is stated, but on less authority, that St. Peter came.
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The great rival abbeys and churches of Glastonbury and Westminster were both dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. The one at Glastonbury was built on to the east end of St. Mary’s, the Olde Churche. One was the Church of the Celtic and the early Saxon dynasties, the other of the later Saxon. St Euergen of Caer Salog (Salisbury) and of Llan Illtud, South Wales, was the first British female saint. That Tacitus does not mention Bran being taken prisoner is not a great obstacle. He may have been taken prisoner, but unknown to Tacitus, or Bran may well have joined his son, after the latter was given his life and freedom to live in Rome. |
Some think that as a result of these early efforts, when Caractacus and his family went to Rome as prisoners in AD 51, his sister Gladys, his daughters, Gladys (who, in compliment to the Emperor Claudius is said to have taken the name Claudia on her marriage to Rufus Pudens), Euergen and Linus his son were already Christians; but Caractacus and his aged father Bran, who had become an Arch-Druid, were unconverted, probably through troubles of State and war.
The Welsh Triads say that Bran was baptised in Rome in AD 58 by St. Paul. When they came back they were Christians, and thenceforth fostered and protected in Siluria or South Wales the Christian Church. Bran returned to Britain before Caractacus, AD 58, very probably as a missionary.
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Bp. Edwards of St. Asaph’s Landmarks in the history of the Welsh Church, p.2. The date given by the Triads is impossible. St. Paul did not go to Rome till AD 62. The date 58 is probably the date of the baptism, and the Apostle’s name an addition. The Triads hail from the book of Caradoc of Llancarvan, who died in 1156, but most of the events in them refer to the 6th century. And some must be older than that – one speaks of Glastonbury, Llan Illtud and Ambresbury as the three principal Choirs of Britain, but Ambresbury fell in the 6th century. Bran is stated to have returned mortally wounded from his punitive expedition to Ireland, and ordered his companions to carry his head to be buried in the White Hill, London (where the White Tower now stands), as a protection against future invasions, and there it remained till, some 500 years later, King Arthur had it removed. Vide Mabinogion. The Mabinogion (plural of Mabinogi) are the oldest remains of Welsh mythological sagas. Every young Bard had to learn them by heart, which confirms Caesar’s statement that the Druids never committed their learning to writing, although it is said that they used Greek letters in writing. |
Bran Vendigaid, or the Blessed, was a very remarkable personality. The Welsh Triads not only speak of him as one of the introducers of Christianity, [Triads, 18 and 35, 3rd series. Myvyrian Arch., vol 2] but together with Prydain and Dyfnwal as the three who consolidated elective monarchy in Britain. The Triads call .the descendants of Bran one of the Three Holy Families of Britain.
All the earliest traditions of Glastonbury circle round St. Joseph. Its name, the Secret of the Lord, probably comes from his having buried the Holy Grail there, and his being buried there with the two phials with the Blood and Sweat of our Lord. The Church of St. Mary on the site of the ancient wattle church is ever locally called "St. Joseph’s Chapel". Tradition still shows there Wyrrall or Weary All Hill, on which St. Joseph and his eleven tired companions are said to have rested on their first landing, for Glastonbury was an island in those days.
It is generally assumed that St. Joseph arrived at Weary All by water. But it would have been probably equally possible for him to have arrived there at low tide on foot by the ancient Causeway from Street, crossing the Brue by the Pons Perilous, or Pomparles Bridge, from which some five centuries later King Arthur is said to have thrown away his famous sword Excalibur, forged at Glastonbury. The only link which suggests arriving from the mainland is a lingering tradition that St. Joseph founded a cell at Crewkerne [25 miles SW of Glastonbury] on his way to Glastonbury. Of course that may have been on some return journey from or to Glastonbury some years later. The founding of a cell suggests this. Some hermit may have settled there. Very probably a very ancient figure with a staff on the outside of Crewkerne Church, which probably came from an earlier church than the beautiful Gothic one there now, may be that of St. Joseph. The late Alderman John Morland, of Glastonbury, a very sound antiquary, found a corduroy road, at least as old as the Romans, parallel to the present road from Street. But besides the possibility of arriving at Weary All direct by water, or coming on foot from the mainland, there is yet another possible theory full of interest and romance.
The antiquary Eyston, in 1714, in A little Monument to the once famous Abbey and Borough of Glastonbury, published by Hearne in 1722, narrates some traditions (some rather vague and inaccurate) which he had gathered from the landlord of an inn, probably the Pilgrims’ Inn or "George" in Glastonbury, who rented a large part of the Abbey enclosure. One of these traditions was "that St. Joseph of Arimathea landed not far from the town, at a place where there was an oak planted in memory of his landing, called ’The Oak of Avalon’; that he and his companions marched thence to a Hill, near a mile on the south side of the town, and there being weary rested themselves, which gave the Hill the name of Wearyall Hill; that St. Joseph stuck on the Hill his staff, being a dry hawthorn stick, which grew, and constantly budded and blowed upon Christmas Day." The mere mention of ‘The Oak of Avalon’ awakens the deepest interest. There still linger two ancient trees called ‘The Oaks of Avalon’. They are also called Gog and Magog. [One is now nearly dead, the other dying – ed.]
They are almost the last remains of an ancient Druidic grove at the foot of Stonedown (a name which bespeaks its Druidic use).
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The dolmens and menhirs have long disappeared. Stones may be buried. More likely they have been used for building and road-mending. The writer always suspects that the church on the Tor was built of Druidic stones to assert the victory of Christ and Christianity on the site of the old religion. Near the age-long pilgrim path up the Tor there still linger three stones, very probably the remains of a menhir or stone table. Dr. Davey Biggs, in Ictis and Avallon points out how the Iberian metal-seekers built these stone monuments. If St. Joseph did land at this grove, the tradition that St. Paul landed at Paul’s Grove near Porchester is of great interest. That tradition should have linked the landing place of both these traditional missionaries with groves is startling, the more so as the habit of planting trees to commemorate important visits still lingers. Rutter in his North-West Somerset, 1829, p87, in a footnote, gives a very unusual derivation of the name Glastonbury, as Glastan-byrie, the Hill of Oaks, which is interesting. |
From them ran also an avenue of oaks which led towards the Tor. This grove and avenue were shamefully cut down about 1906 to clear the ground of a farm! The trees were immense. They were all sold to Messrs. J. Snow & Son, timber merchants of Glastonbury. Mr. Curtis of that firm remembers five boys standing in one of them called Magog when he was a boy. The real Magog was cut down and so probably was the real Gog. Magog was eleven feet in diameter, and more than 2,000 season-rings were counted. Besides the two trees still called Gog and Magog, there are, by an ancient narrow road, now a lane, the remains of five other immense oaks. The biggest of all (possibly the real Gog) is cut down and prone on its side, and looks from the road across a field something like a shed. In hedges there are two other giants just dragging out the last flicker of life, and there are fragments of two other dead monarchs (doubtless some of those that were cut down) in hedges. From the real Magog Mr. James, a late member of the firm, many years ago made a Glastonbury chair, candlesticks, bowls and picture frames, as a hobby. The oak is extraordinarily red and of an unique grain or ‘figure’.
In 1935, Mr. Ackroyd Gibson of Glastonbury professionally made many bowls out of the remains of these trees. The Oaks of Avalon were there when St. Joseph came, but one may have been planted later to commemorate his coming. More likely the tradition is slightly jumbled, but it is not altogether to be despised. The Oaks of Avalon are to the northwest of the Tor. The sea must have come up to just below the oaks, and it would have been a very possible landing place, and the ancient hill-road Paradise Lane, to the north of the Tor, leads to Weary-All, joining the ancient road from Wells. They would pass a dell now called ‘Paradise’, in spring a haunt of primroses. The ordnance map shows a footpath from Paradise Lane down to the Oaks of Avalon which has lately got obscured at its latter end. Both the roadways and the footpaths to these historic Oaks of Avalon ought to be improved and marked by sign-posts. [Today this has been done – ed.] The view across the Vale of Avalon by the footpath is beautiful in the extreme.
The very names Gog and Magog are arresting. Nennius in his History of the Britons, AD 796, edited in the 10th century by Mark the Hermit, tells us that Magog was the second son of Japhet the son of Noah. Quite likely Gog is the shortening of the name Gomer. Gomer, from whom came the Comeri or Cwmri (Cymri), the forefathers of the British, was the eldest-born of Japhet. It was because the Cymri were the eldest-born of the tribes of Japhet, that the Arch-druid was found in this Island, and not on the Continent. We read that when Brute [Brutus], from whom Britain takes its name, came here about 1130 BC, he and his people drove the ‘Giants’ into mountain caves, and so on. His companion, Corineus, struggled with and slew a monster, Goemagot, said to be twelve cubits high, who could pull up an oak in one shake, and who inhabited the west country (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bk. 1, cap. 16). Brute, the forefather of the British Kings, was stated to be the descendant of Aeneas of Troy. According to the Receuill des Histoires de Troye, Gog and Magog, two giants, were brought to London (Troia Nova, hence Trinobantes) by Brute and his companions. Hence the old statues of Gog and Magog in the Guildhall, London. Gog and Magog figure in Ezekiel (cap. 38 and 39) and the Revelations (cap 20) as evil powers. The same lingers in the Gogmagog hills in Cambridgeshire where there is an ancient camp of thirteen acres with triple defences. There are remains of earthworks near Gog and Magog in Avalon. There are still two great oak trees in Yardley Chase in Northamptonshire called Gog and Magog which were depicted in Strutt’s Sylva Britannica in 1830. The names seem connected with great antiquity, powers of evil, struggles, hills and oaks.
We can tell by their season-rings that the Oaks of Avalon, remains of seven of which still linger, were here when St. Joseph came, and it is extremely possible that he landed there, and proceeded past Paradise and the Tor to rest on Wirral (through tradition to be called Weary-All) and plant his staff there. There the King Arviragus met him and made his donation of land. Both Arviragus and the Druids may have known St. Joseph as a trader and metal merchant before he came here as a missionary. On Wearyall there grew the famous Holy Thorn (Crataegus monogyna praecox), which is said to have sprung from his staff which he planted in the fertile ground, possibly as a token of taking possession of the XII Hides of land which King Arviragus, cousin of Caractacus, granted to him and his followers, much as today we plant a flagstaff and flag when taking over a new territory.
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The exact size of a Hide is uncertain. It was a portion of land, variable in extent, but sufficient to support one family. Coke lays it down that its number of acres was indeterminate. Eight hides composed ‘a Knight’s Fee’. But the Liber de Soliaco (temp. Rich. I) tells us that at Glastonbury itself I hide (16 furlongs) = 160 acres, and one Knight’s Fee or 4 hides=640 acres. In Canada today, a township consists of 36 sections of 640 acres or one square mile each, and sections are divided into quarter-sections of 160 acres each, an interesting survival. Ultimately Glaston XII Hides was the name of a district several miles in extent over which the Abbot had supreme jurisdiction, even to the power of life and death. The old title apparently remained when there were many more than XII Hides. The Abbey also held much property outside its jurisdiction. |
This tree survived the Reformation. Its claims to sanctity awakened the ire of an unhappy Puritan, who expressed himself by diligently and impiously trying to cut it down. It was a gigantic tree for a thorn, and was in two parts. One part he demolished, the other he wounded mortally. And then it revenged itself. A splinter from it flew into his eye and finished him.
The wounded tree itself lingered some thirty years – in fact, saw a generation come which hated and revolted from the Puritans – and then died. But in the meantime various thorns were budded from it. One is in the Abbey grounds, a better one in the parish churchyard [St John’s on Glastonbury High Street], and a still better one in the vicarage garden. There are others in various parts. It cannot be struck, but can be budded. It seems to be a Levantine thorn. Most botanists agree to this. Certain it is that, in addition to flowering profusely in May, it keeps the habit of blossoming again at Christmastide, but more freely on old Christmas Day. And nearly always on Christmas Day flowers from it are placed on the altar of the glorious parish church of St. John the Baptist.
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[Reservation: although Lewis makes a reasonable case for Joseph landing near Gog and Magog, I think it perfectly likely that he would land in the most likely place for a harbour, on the south side of Wearyall Hill, near to where the Butleigh Road descends from the island onto what are now flat drained moors. Additionally, Wearyall Hill provides the best place to see over the whole of the Glastonbury area, and the old river Brue flowed round it from north to south of it. Beckery or the south of Wearyall Hill are the easiest places to land when coming in on the old river Brue. – Palden Jenkins.]