THE VIRGIN-MOTHER AS THE HOLY GRAIL
Brian E. Colless
"Now hear how Joseph came to England, but at that time it was called Britain, then fifteen years with our Lady, as I understand, Joseph waited upon her." (Robert de Boron, Joseph d'Arimathie, 13th century, translated by M. Thompson, London, 1951, p. 14)
Joseph of Arimathea is an important character in the Gospels, as the man who provided a tomb for the crucified Jesus (Mark 15:42-47; John 19:38-42; Luke 24:50-53; Matthew 27:57-61). In the Grail legends he is said to have preserved some of the blood of the Saviour in a vessel (the cup used at the Last Supper) and taken it to Britain. There is a tradition that he was a metal-merchant who had previously traveled there on business (and that he had taken Jesus with him). This Joseph has a place in the King Arthur legends. He is claimed as the founder of Glastonbury Abbey (in Somerset), which also has alleged connections with Arthur.
A new theory about Joseph of Arimathea has been offered by Graham Phillips in his book The Marian Conspiracy: The hidden truth about the Holy Grail, the real father of Christ and the tomb of the Virgin Mary (2000). This is his second book about the Grail; his first was The Search for the Grail, which mentioned an ointment jar containing drops of Christ's blood, collected by Mary Magdalene, and found in Britain, in an attic in the English town of Rugby; that book reappeared under the title of The Chalice of the Magdalen. In this second work he focuses on Mary the mother of Jesus, and he presents his research as a quest, starting in the secret archives of the Vatican Library and discussing with Father Michael Risonelli whether the Holy Grail was ever a symbol for the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary. He learns that Giovanni Benedetti, an archaeologist of the Vatican Museum, was sent to investigate the traditional tomb of Mary in Jerusalem, and found no substantiating evidence, though he also looked into another possible site elsewhere, but he was ordered to cease his search and refrain from publishing or publicizing his research. Since 1950, the official Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the Virgin Mary has been "the Assumption", that she ascended into Heaven, and so she has no earthly grave.
On a visit to Ephesus (in Turkey, Asia Minor), I was taken to see Mary's house; Ephesus is where the Apostle John is said to have lived. In John's Gospel (19:25-27), Jesus looks down from the cross and commits his mother to the care of a disciple he especially loved; this disciple had been right next to Jesus at the Last Supper (13:23), and it is traditionally assumed that this was John and that he was the author of the Johannine Gospel. Note that John is not mentioned by name in this document, and he may be the unnamed follower of John the Baptizer who changed his allegiance to Jesus, along with Simon Peter's brother Andrew (John 1:35-39). So Ephesus is a possible place for Mary to have resided.
Nevertheless, Graham Phillips was inclined to look beyond Asia Minor, starting from the statement of Robert de Boron (around 1200), quoted above, that Joseph of Arimathea had come to England, or Britain, and waited upon our Lady for fifteen years; he was also reported to have served the Holy Grail, and so the possibility arises that Mary was the Grail, Phillips surmises, following Giovanni Benedetti (mentioned earlier), who was known to have gone to Britain in his quest. Phillips is thus assuming that Joseph of Arimathea was "the disciple Jesus loved", who was commissioned to care for Mary. Joseph is sometimes pictured standing at the cross, collecting blood from the pierced side of Christ.
Phillips inspected two interesting places with Marian associations in England. In Walsingham, near the Norfolk coast of eastern England, is the Holy House, a replica of Mary's home, first built in 1061, after the Virgin Mary had appeared to Richeldis de Faverches, the lady of Walsingham manor. Benedetti had been there in 1950. He had also gone to Elton Manor near the Dartmoor village of Widecombe, where apparitions of a woman in shining white clothing had been seen since 1805. In 1899, the novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, who was also a researcher of paranormal phenomena, stayed at the manor; although he was not favoured with a sighting of the Virgin Mary, he conceived The Hound of the Baskervilles there. William Blake had been there in 1810, and had written "Jerusalem" there; the first verse was reproduced in a panel above the central fireplace.
And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?
Below this is a faded little painting of Glastonbury Tor and its tower, bearing the date 1810, the title "Jerusalem", and the artist's name, Emily Reddington, who was the lady of the manor when the vision was first sighted in 1805.
Phillips then traveled to Glastonbury, billed as "The Ancient Avalon". In 1190, we are told, a grave was found with the body of a tall man in it, and also a lead cross, with a Latin inscription: Hic iacet sepultus inclitus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia (Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in Avalon Island). Phillips is sceptical about this. Robert de Boron says Joseph of Arimathea founded his church in "the Vale of Avalon" (without defining its position). Around 1135, in his History of the Kings of Britain, the Welsh bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth describes it as an island in the west of Britain; Glastonbury is in the SW of Britain, and it is a long way from the sea in Somerset, but it could be considered an inland island in marshlands.
In the sixth century, a British monk named Gildas, who is judged to be a reliable historian, reported (De Excidio Britanniae) that some of the original disciples of Jesus came to Britain, in the last year of the reign of Emperor Tiberias (37). He supplies no names, but Joseph and Mary are possible candidates.
In 1130, William of Malmesbury wrote The Ecclesiastical History of Glastonbury, and made no mention of Arthur, Avalon, the Grail, or Joseph of Arimathea. In 1247, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey added the idea that the first church on the abbey site had been founded by Joseph of Arimathea. However, the author himself had quoted an old letter which seemed to imply that the oldest church in Britain was somewhere else. William of Malmesbury said that when Pope Gregory the Great's envoy Augustine (Saint Augustine of Canterbury, d. 604) sent his report in 597, it included this information:
"In the western confines of Britain there is a certain royal island of large extent, surrounded by water, abounding in all the beauties of nature and necessaries of life. In it the first Neophytes of Catholic Law, God beforehand acquainting them, found a church constructed by the hands of Christ himself.... He continues to watch over it as sacred to Mary, the Mother of God."
First note that Augustine, as a bishop of the Roman Church, had difficulties of compatibility with the existing British Church, so he was not introducing Christianity to the British Isles. Augustine was at Canterbury in the SE corner of England, and Glastonbury was W of Canterbury. Could it be the "royal island of large extent, surrounded by water" situated in "the western confines of Britain"? The Isle of Man would fit this prescription better, or Anglesey, across the Menai Strait from Bangor and Caenarfon.
(To be continued)
Mary's home is shown to tourists and pilgrims in Ephesus (Asia Minor, Turkey)