In the 1601 Annales Ecclesiasticae, the Vatican librarian Cardinal Baronius recorded that Joseph of Arimathea first came to Marseilles in AD 35. From there, he and his company crossed to Britain to preach the Gospel. This was confirmed much earlier by the chronicler Gildas III (516-570), whose De Excidio Britanniae stated that the precepts of Christianity were carried to Britain in the last days of Emperor Tiberius Caesar, who died in AD 37. Even before Gildas, such eminent churchmen as Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (260-340), and St. Hilary of Poitiers (300-367) wrote of early apostolic visits to Britain. The years AD 35-37 are thus among the earliest recorded dates for Christian evangelism. They correspond to a period shortly after the Crucifixion -- prior to the time when Peter and Paul were in Rome, and earlier than the New Testament gospels.

An important character in 1st century Gaul was St. Philip. He was described by Gildas and William of Malmesbury as being the inspiration behind Joseph's assignment in England. The De Sancto Joseph ab Arimathea states, "Fifteen years after the Assumption (that is to say in AD 63), he (Joseph) came to Philip the Apostle among the Gauls." Freculphus, the 9th century Bishop of Lisieux, wrote that St. Philip then sent the mission from Gaul to England, "to bring thither the good news of the word of life, and to preach the incarnation of Jesus Christ."

Upon their arrival in the West Country, Joseph and his twelve missionaries were viewed with some skepticism by the native Britons, but were greeted with some cordiality by King Arviragus of Siluria, brother of Caractacus the Pendragon. In consultation with other chiefs, he granted Joseph twelve hides of Glastonbury land. A hide is an area of land reckoned agriculturally to support one family for one year with one plough, equal in Somerset (the Glastonbury area) to 120 acres. Here they built their unique little church in a scale of the ancient Hebrew Tabernacle. These grants remained holdings of free land for any centuries thereafter, as confirmed in the Domesday Book of 1086: "The Church of Glastonbury has in its own ville twelve hides of land which have never paid tax. In Joseph's era, Christian chapels were hidden underground in the catacombs of Rome -- but once the wattle chapel of St. Mary was built at Glastonbury, Britain could boast the first aboveground Christian church in the world.

A monastery was subsequently added to the chapel, and the Saxons rebuilt the complex in the 8th century. Following a disastrous fire in 1184, Henry II of England granted the community a Charter of Renovation in which Glastonbury was referred to as "the mother and burying place of the saints, founded by the disciples of our Lord themselves." A stone Lady Chapel was constructed at that time. Later, the whole grew to become a vast Benedictine abbey, second in size and importance only to Westminster Abbey. Prestigious figures associated with Glastonbury included St. Patrick, who was the first Abbot in the 5th century, and St. Dunstan, who was Abbot from 940 to 946.

In addition to the accounts of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, others tell of his association with Gaul and the Mediterranean tin trade. John of Glastonbury (14th-century compiler of Glastoniencis Chronica) and John Capgrave (Principal of the Augustinian Friars in England 1393-1464) both quote from a book found by the Emperor Theodosius (ruled 375-395) in the Pretorium in Jerusalem. Capgrave's De Sancto Joseph ab Arimathea tells how Joseph was imprisoned by the Jewish elders after the Crucifixion. This is also described in the apocryphal Acts of Pilate. The historian Bishop Gregory of Tours (544-595) similarly mentions the post-Crucifixion imprisonment of Joseph in his History of the Franks. And in the 12th century, it was recounted yet again in Joseph d'Arimathie by the Burgundian Grail chronicler Sire Robert de Boron.

The Magna Glastoniensis Tabula and other manuscripts go on to say that Joseph subsequently escaped and was pardoned. Some years later he was in Gaul with his nephew, Joseph, who was baptised by Philip the Apostle. Young Joseph (Jesus and Mary's second son) is traditionally referred to as "Josephes" -- the name that we shall continue to use in this book in order to distinguish him from his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea.