Joseph of Arimathea

   A minor figure in the Gospels, who entered folklore when *Glastonbury claimed he founded a church there in ad 63; this story first appears in 1247, as a forged chapter inserted into William of Malmes-bury's treatise On The Antiquity of Glastonbury Church (written c.1130). Such an early founder conferred great prestige; in the 14th and 15th centuries the Abbots of Glastonbury began calling Joseph 'Saint', dedicating a chapel to him, and claiming miracles. At first, no relics were mentioned, but in the late 15th century came the story that he had brought two flasks containing the blood and the sweat of Jesus, which were buried in his grave. This seems to be a religious adaptation of a theme long popular in romances of knightly adventure, where Joseph is regarded as the first custodian of the *Grail. The flasks and drops of blood were shown on the Abbey arms.

   Traditions about Joseph continued to grow after the Reformation, presumably because the idea of a mission to Britain predating that of Augustine suited Protestants. The story that the *Holy Thorn sprang from Joseph's staff was first printed in 1722, from a local innkeeper's account (Vickery, 1995: 182-7). Currently, there is a legend that Joseph was a tin merchant and the great-uncle of Jesus, and that he brought Jesus to Cornwall and/or to Somerset in the course of a trading journey. How old this legend is is disputed; those who believe it assume it to be medieval, but it is nowhere mentioned before the 1890s, unless William Blake is alluding to it in his poem of 1804 beginning, 'And did those feet in ancient times / Walk upon England's mountains green?' However, these lines could be merely symbolical. The story appeared in Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Cornwall (1899) and subsequent guidebooks, and was widely publicized by three vicars in the 1920s and 1930s - the Revd L. S. Lewis of St John's, Glastonbury, the Revd H. A. Lewis of Talland (Cornwall), and the Revd C. C. Dobson of St Mary's, Hastings (Sussex).

   ■ R. F. Treharne, The Glastonbury Legends (1967) E. M. R. Dit-mas, Traditions of Glastonbury (1983) A. W. Smith, Folklore 100 (1989), 63-83; Rahtz, 1993.