St. Joseph in Britain: Reconsidering the Legends, Part I

THE French Arthurian romances of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries contain a significant subset of legendary material associated with the historical figure of St. Joseph of Arimathea. The romances locate the saint or his family in Britain. The older standard criticism has routinely dismissed the legendary Joseph as a late creation produced under suspect circumstances, only marginally predating the appearance of the earlier romances themselves. There are valuable insights in this earlier criticism; however, more appropriate techniques and a broader range of available knowledge allow us new ways of thinking about these stories. The 'Joseph' legends should be considered within the milieu of Christian conversion legend, as well as their traditional Arthurian context. After the personality of Joseph had appeared in the romances, it was fitted back into a base of pre-existing British conversion stories, associated with the theme of first-century Christian contact. Strands of the legends undoubtedly lead back to oral tradition, and concepts developed in the study of oral history are equally useful in dealing with this antique weave of history and legend. The historicity of the 'Joseph' legends is a significant issue, but the historical development is also a legitimate study. Both can be productively explored in tandem. Final conclusions and ultimate solutions are not in order at this point, but the process of discovery should begin again, drawing in the related information available from other disciplines. In the older criticism, a minority opinion did exist. Alfred Nutt, whose Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail appeared in 1888, stressed the relation of the stories to conversion legend; he also argued that the genesis of the 'Joseph' legends was still unexplained. He identified two distinct forms of the early history of the grail, both naming Joseph as the initial possessor of the vessel. In the first, Joseph or his descendants are also responsible for bringing the grail to Britain, and converting the inhabitants. In the second, Brons is designated as the guardian of the grail, and Britain is converted by Brons and his son, Alain. Nutt also suggested associations between Brons and Bran the Blessed, son of Ll^r, hero of a Welsh conversion legend. He saw the 'Brons' version as the older form of the early history, 'still chiefly, if not wholly, a legend, the main purport of which is to recount the conversion of Britain.' He added the following about the 'Joseph' version: '[w]e do not know how or at what date the legend of the conversion of Britain by Joseph originated."2 Nutt's summation still holds. Despite the imaginative scenarios created over the intervening years, we still do not have an adequate explanation of the initial legends linking Joseph and the grail, and Joseph and Britain. The initial step in re-evaluation is to look at the development of the 'Joseph' stories, as it can be traced through written sources. Apparently the earliest written British version occurs in an altered copy of William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, produced about 1247.3 It survives in the 'T' manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College,