A good many valuable writings and relics were destroyed in the Glastonbury fire of 1184. More were lost in the ravages of the Tudor dissolution of the monasteries. In the course of this latter destructive episode, Abbot Richard Whiting of Glastonbury was murdered (1539) by the brutal henchmen of Henry VIII. Fortunately, copies of some important manuscripts were salvaged. One of these (attributed to Gildas III) refers to Joseph of Arimathea as a "noble decurio." The 9th-century Archbishop Raban Maar likewise described him as a "noblis decurion." A decurio was an overseer of mining estates, and the term originated in Spain, where Jewish metalworkers had been operative in the celebrated foundries of Toledo since the 6th century BC. It is not unlikely that Joseph's mining interest was one reason for the generous land grant by King Arvigarus. Joseph was after all a well-known metal merchant and artificer in metals (as were the Old Testament characters Tubal-Cain and Hiram Abiff -- both remembered in modern Freemasonry).
The De Sancto Joseph states that Joseph of Arimathea's wattle church of St. Mary was dedicated "in the 31st year after our Lord's Passion" (that is, AD 64). This conforms with AD 63 being the date of commencement, as given by William of Malmesbury. But with regard to the fact that the dedication was to St. Mary, it has long been a point of some debate that a church should have been consecrated (apparently) to Jesus' mother Mary some 15 years after her Assumption, and centuries before there was still anything approaching a Virgin Mother cult. Many have suggested that such an early chapel would more likely have been dedicated to an archangel, or even to Jesus himself. But (as confirmed in the 12th/13th century Chronicles of Matthew Paris) AD 63 was the very year in which the other Mary -- Mary Magdalene -- died at St. Baume.
Among the visits Joseph made to Britain, two were of great importance to the Church and were cited later by a number of clerics and religious correspondents. The first (as described by Cardinal Baronius) followed Joseph's initial seizure by the Sanhedrin after the Crucifixion. This visit in AD 35 ties in precisely with an account of St. James the Just's being in Europe -- which is hardly surprising, since Joseph of Arimathea and St. James were one and the same person. The Reverend Lionel S. Lewis (Vicar of Glastonbury in the 1920s) also confirmed from his annals that St. James was at Glastonbury in AD 35. The second of Joseph's visits followed the AD 62 stoning and excommunication (spiritual death) of James the Just in Jerusalem.
Cressy, the Benedictine who lived shortly after the Reformation, wrote:
"In the one-and-fortieth year of Christ (that is, AD 35), St. James, returning out of Spain, visited Gaul, Brittany, and the towns of the Venetians, where he preached the Gospel, and so came back to Jerusalem to consult the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter about matters of great weight and importance."
The "weighty matters" referred to by Cressy concerned the necessity for a decision on whether to receive uncircumcised Gentiles into the Nazarene Church. As Jerusalem's first bishop, Jesus's brother James presided at the Council meeting which handled the debate.
(Author's Note: Just to review, after Jesus survived the Crucifixion and ascended to the priesthood of Melchizedek, he left the Jerusalem Church in the hands of his Gabriel, his brother James, the Joseph of Arimathea. The Overseas Church that Paul started became Roman Catholicism, from which modern Christianity stems. It had no validity as far as the original Nazarene, or Jerusalem, Church was concerned...and neither did he. There will be a section later titled, "Judaizers," in which I discuss the above debate over the Abrahamic covenant of the circumcision.)
A number of old traditions relate to St. James in Sardinia and Spain, but they are often attributed to the wrong St. James. This is mainly because the Apostle James Boanerges (sometimes called St. James the Greater, as distinguished from James of Alphaeus - the Lesser) disappears from the New Testament for an unwarranted period.
Misunderstandings, caused by apparent anomalies and duplicated entries concerning Joseph of Arimathea and St. James the Just, provoked some arguments between the bishops at the Council of Basle in 1434. As a result, individual countries decided to follow their different traditions. It is "St. Joseph" who is most remembered in connection with Church history in Britain, whereas it is as "St. James" that he is revered in Spain. Even so, the English authorities compromised when linking him with the monarchy, and the royal court in London because the Palace of St. James.