ON S. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA, AT JERUSALEM.
SECTION I. 17 MARCH.
CommentaryJoseph of Arimathea, at Jerusalem (S.)
Section I. The ecclesiastical veneration of this saint: his eulogy from the Gospels and Tradition.
[1] The sixteenth day before the Kalends of April opens the Roman Martyrology with this saint, as well known to the Evangelists as he is almost unknown to all other Martyrologists; His name inscribed in the Roman Martyrology: and it recites for him the following: At Jerusalem, S. Joseph of Arimathea, a noble Decurion, a disciple of the Lord, who took down his body from the cross and buried it in his own new tomb. These lines were indeed absent from the first edition of the same Martyrology, which was revised by command of Gregory XIII under Sixtus V: but when the Canons of the Vatican Basilica, who preserve a relic of this saint's arm and honor his memory with the veneration of a double Office, reminded Baronius, the author of the aforesaid revision, he judged it entirely fitting that the other churches, which were bound to follow the order of the Roman Breviary, should in some measure follow the practice of the church preeminent in the whole Christian world: and the Apostolic See approved his judgment when in the year 1585 Sixtus, Gregory's successor, permitted the Martyrology, revised again by his order and purged of certain errors, to be newly submitted to the press, the earlier edition being suppressed. Without any older precedent: However, that the said author had no other Martyrology, either printed or manuscript, from which to draw this material, is shown by his own annotations for this day; in which you will find nothing about Joseph other than the Gospel passages cited concerning him. Indeed, in the archives of the Vatican Basilica itself, the Martyrologies preserved there (which it is credible were in use there before printing) nowhere mention Joseph: there are two very ancient and briefer ones, and another of about three centuries' age, which is prolix and compiled from Usuard, Ado, and others.
[2] On account of the arm preserved in the Vatican church: There is preserved in the same archive a catalogue of sacred relics, which we mentioned above when the arm of S. Longinus presented itself to us; in which catalogue the following was noted: A silver arm, holding tongs in its hand, in which is preserved the sacred arm of S. Joseph of Arimathea, the noble Decurion, who took down the body of our Savior from the cross. On the base's plinth are the insignia of the Chapter of the said Basilica: the whole was made of silver under Pope Clement VIII during the Visitation. The aforesaid arm, whose simple record is found in the inventory of the year 1454, two years later in a similar inventory and in two others of the years 1466 and 1489, was noted thus: the arm of S. Joseph of Arimathea in silver with tongs in its hand of silver. But in the year 1527, in the Bourbon sack of the city, the arm itself was also stripped of its silver, and thereafter the record of its preservation in a wooden tabernacle or case is found up to the years 1550 and 1581.
[3] Brought from the East together with the arm of S. Longinus: That this arm too was brought from the East together with that of S. Longinus we can plausibly conjecture: and that Baronius, moved by a similar conjecture, attributed his death or veneration to Jerusalem, where Cornelius a Lapide, writing on Matthew, infers from the fact that Joseph had his tomb there, elsewhere, 22 February: and consequently also his place of dwelling, that he held a prominent place in the senatorial order: for those who were Senators at Rome were called Decurions in the municipalities, as the Latin text of Mark reads, but in Greek bouleutēs. Whether similar relics of this same S. Joseph, brought from somewhere into the diocese of Liege and venerated on the 22nd of February, gave occasion to the author of the Martyrology printed at Liege in 1624 to assign him to that day, we cannot say. The Greeks believed the day of his death was July 31: for thus they read on that day: And on July 31 in the Menaea: Saint Joseph of Arimathea, the one who cared for the burial of the Lord, is perfected in peace: and this distich is added:
You found the funeral care in a sepulchral cave, O caretaker of the dead one who empties tombs.
[4] These are the Menaea, not indeed the great ones published in the Venetian editions (whose body is known to be assembled from quite heteroclite parts, some of them very imperfect), but the most accurate Dijon manuscripts of our Pierre-François Chifflet: nor was a longer eulogy needed, since anyone could easily weave one from the very words of the Gospels, as Jean de Paris, likewise of our Society, composed in his Gospel Harmony embracing the life, teaching, and history of Jesus Christ from the concordant arrangement of the four holy Gospels, Eulogy from the Gospels: whom we follow here in transcribing. And when it was already late (because it was the Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath), there came a certain rich man from Arimathea, a city of Judea, named Joseph, a noble Decurion, a good and just man, who was himself also a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews. This man had not consented to their counsel and deeds; and he himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God: and he went in boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate wondered whether he had already died: and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned it from the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph and ordered it to be returned. Then Joseph, having bought fine linen, and taking him down, wrapped him in the clean linen cloth. And Nicodemus also came, who had first come to Jesus by night, bearing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. They therefore took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid, which had been hewn out of rock. There therefore, because of the Jewish Preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus. And Joseph rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and departed.
[5] From these things there do not depart, as to substance; nor from the greatest verisimilitude, as to the smaller circumstances added to the Gospel narrative, the things which Matthew Paris described from the words of Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, on October 13, 1247, in a most solemn assembly of nobles and bishops, speaking about the authenticity of the same blood before Henry III, who was celebrating the reception of the sacred blood sent to him from Jerusalem, and they are as follows: When Jesus had been crucified and was dead, Joseph asked for the body of Jesus, going in to him boldly (by which he is believed to have been powerful), and it was granted to him. He therefore (although the Jews murmured), with all honor and reverence, took down that most holy body from the cross, With what care Joseph washed the Lord's body: wounded and stained with blood in many ways; and having a fine linen cloth hanging from his neck and shoulders (lest he unworthily handle so worthy a body with bare hands), he diligently and devoutly wiped the sacred wounds, still moist and dripping, with dutiful care. Indeed, he even drained by wiping the places of the extracted nails, stained with blood on the very beam of the cross; using the linen cloth in place of a sponge. And when the said Joseph had carried the body of Christ, not far from Golgotha, to be entombed, in the place where the sepulcher is now adored... he washed that body... and the reddened water of the washing, mixed and tinged with blood, he caught in a most clean vessel, not to be cast away: yet more reverently the pure blood itself dripping from the wounds of the hands and feet: and preserved the blood: but with the greatest fear and honor he received in a most noble vessel, as a treasure beyond price, to be specially reserved for himself and his successors, the blood with water which he judged to be the heart's blood, happily drawn and pressed out from the right side... When Joseph had piously and prudently completed these things, Nicodemus came...
[6] And when Joseph and Nicodemus had departed from there, they divided between themselves (by reason of friendship and fellow-discipleship) the aforementioned liquids, as a precious acquisition. Thus therefore the possession of this most dear thing devolved from fathers to sons, and from friends to friends, [A portion of which was given by the Patriarch of Jerusalem to the King of England in 1248:] so that after the course of many years it came into the possession of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, as a treasure of the Church over which the Patriarch is known to preside, in the year of grace 1247: who then, both on account of the peril of the Holy Land, which Christians then feared to lose, and because they knew the King of England to be most Christian and his land itself most Christian, the aforesaid Patriarch, with the counsel of his suffragans and the Masters of the Templars and Hospitallers and other overseas nobles who either affixed their seals as testimony of the truth or transmitted the assertion of the mandate, prudently decided to send the said treasure of the aforesaid blood to the most pious King of England, Henry III, so that under his protection it might be more worthily venerated and more safely preserved, and not in return for any commercial exchange, but rather to be conferred in the generosity of pure charity.
Section II. Fabulous tales attributed to S. Joseph: Relics: Office.
[7] Apocryphal Acts attributed to him from the Gospel of Nicodemus: The account of Robert of Lincoln sufficed, although, as stated above, found in apocryphal, that is, non-canonical scriptures, so that those who had received the treasure would not think they should doubt its truth: and it ought doubtless to have been sufficient, since there is nothing in it that does not appear to conform to the best reason: by the same reasoning all other such relics existing either at Bruges in Flanders or elsewhere are justified. But the Gospel which circulates under the name of Nicodemus with this title: Here begin the deeds of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, discovered by the Emperor Theodosius in Jerusalem in the Praetorium of Pontius Pilate in the public records: This Gospel, I say, is so apocryphal that in its greater part it appears to be entirely fabulous: therefore what either Peter de Natalibus accepted from it in book 4, chapter 2, or Capgrave in his legend,
we rightly reject as spurious and false: nor does the same Peter perhaps deserve much more credence in what he adds from another source in these words: And from elsewhere by Peter de Natalibus: When Joseph, after the Ascension of the Lord, had been baptized by the disciples and was preaching Christ, he was seized by the Jews and enclosed in a certain wall, so that he might perish there in hunger and darkness. When Jerusalem was captured and destroyed by the Emperor Titus, Titus, seeing that wall, had it opened, and found Joseph enclosed within, with venerable white hair and a glorious appearance; and he heard from him who he was and for what reason he had been enclosed there; and he added that from the day he was shut in until then he had been nourished with heavenly food and strengthened by divine light. After the capture of Jerusalem, he remained with the disciples for the whole time of his life, and rested in the Lord in a good old age.
[8] Attributed to him also a journey to Spain: He must have been older than ninety, or certainly eighty, who survived the desolation of the Holy City: yet we shall more easily believe this, and that he ended his life there, than either Pseudo-Dexter asserting that he was placed with Lazarus, Magdalene, and Martha in an unarmed vessel by the Jews and arrived at Marseilles, or Julian of the same sort claiming that the same man came to Spain as a companion of the Apostle S. James, and was made Bishop by him there, preached in Carpetania, Celtiberia, and Lusitania, and again returned with him to Judea and remained there for about eight years; and finally came to Gaul with those whom we have mentioned: whom they relate, A journey to Britain also attributed: says Baronius at the year 48, to have sailed to Britain: which tradition is indeed very suspect to us as regards its truth, so that it is not worth entering into that most disputed controversy of British writers, in which they ask whether he was sent to Britain by the Apostle Philip, who was preaching in Gaul, or by Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, who was eager to foster the seed of faith he had cast in Britain, with twelve companions; who nevertheless, leaving to others the care of preaching the word, lived in obscurity on the island of Avalon, and were as it were the first beginning of the monastery of Glastonbury.
[9] What testimonies does this rest upon? For we think the first author of this fable to be the same person who stuffed the deeds of King Arthur with an immense farrago of fables, and at the same time filled all England with fictions: how much faith therefore can be placed in that tradition of the common people which they put forward, the reader will learn well enough from the colophon with which Capgrave concludes that fabulous Legend of S. Joseph. This writing is found in the deeds of King Arthur: and again, as if recapitulating to assign the passage, lest the curious reader be wearied by searching through that whole badly-stitched Iliad, he says thus: Joseph of Arimathea, a noble Decurion, with his son called Josephes and many others, came to Greater Britain, which is now called England, and there ended his life, as the book of the deeds of the illustrious King Arthur testifies, in the quest of a certain distinguished knight called Lancelot du Lac, made by the companions of the Round Table, namely, where a certain hermit explains to Gawain the mystery of a certain fountain frequently changing its flavor and color. A better and older author will nowhere be found: for Freculf, a writer of the ninth century, who seems to be cited by Capgrave, book 2, chapter 4, not of the Kings of the Franks, but of the universal chronicle, is cited only because he describes the dispersion of the Apostles and disciples of Christ to preach the faith throughout the whole world: but about Joseph he has not a word in his entire work. To that Arthurian Romance, lest another witness of equal truthfulness be lacking, is appended in Capgrave the book of Melkin, who lived before Merlin, that famous peddler of trifles.
[10] Because Michael Alford in the Annals of the British Church sees that little faith is to be given to these, he seizes upon the book on the Antiquities of Glastonbury, and a bronze tablet affixed to a column there, which Spelman exhibits as if drawn from life before his volume on the Councils of Britain, and which he most rightly judged from the very form of the characters to be scarcely three hundred years old: but how utterly without credibility the aforesaid antiquities are, we shall show below on this day in the deeds of S. Patrick. Therefore whoever wishes to wait for the return of King Arthur to England, let him also wait to see fulfilled what Melkin promises about Joseph: when his body shall be found, the sarcophagus shall be seen intact and undefiled in the future, and it shall be open to the whole world. From then on neither water nor the dew of heaven shall be able to fail those inhabiting the most noble island.
[11] Memorial assigned to various days: Meanwhile the Vatican Basilica has and will have the noble pledge of his arm, nor, on account of the supposed burial of Joseph in Britain, hitherto unopened, does it remit anything of the veneration to be paid to him; and this on the 17th of March. Equilinus, accustomed to joining together saints of the same name whose proper day is unknown, in his index refers him to the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April: Wilson in his English Martyrology chose the 27th of July, perhaps because he found no other saint proper to Britain to whom to commend that day: and he asserted that Joseph died in the year of Christ 82, giving full credence to Capgrave, and citing in the margin Polydore Virgil, Camden, and Harpsfield, who followed him. Anthony Paul Masini in his survey of Bologna mentions this same S. Joseph on this 17th, A finger at Bologna: on the occasion of a finger believed to have been taken from his holy body and preserved in the church of S. James the Greater. Similarly, at Mantua in the church of the Franciscan Fathers, among many other relics, Gonzaga numbers some of the bones of the aforesaid Saint Joseph: and elsewhere other particles are perhaps found.
[12] The body brought from Jerusalem to Alsace in the 9th century: But whence was it received, if not from Jerusalem where he lived, and where he had obtained burial for himself? Which although he had yielded to the Lord's body, the wealthy man nevertheless found either in the same garden or elsewhere a place in which he might be worthily buried, if the Eastern tradition about him is true, which the translation of the body to Gaul confirms: concerning which Richer, a monk of the Abbey of Senones in the Vosges, diocese of Toul, writes the following in book 2, chapter 6 of his Chronicle published by Luc d'Achery in volume 3 of the Spicilegium: In the time of Charlemagne, a certain venerable man named Fortunatus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, fleeing the pagans who were then devastating the Holy Land, brought with him the body of S. Joseph, the one who buried the Lord; and arriving at the monastery of Moyenmoutier, he settled there with his relics: he was afterward appointed Abbot of that monastery. But afterward the body of the saint itself, through the insolence of the Canons who had taken possession of that place, was stolen by night and carried away by certain pilgrim monks, and thus that monastery was deprived of such a treasure. So writes he, who sufficiently indicates in book 5, chapters 4 and following, that he lived beyond the year 1250. Moyenmoutier was built by S. Hidulph, Archbishop of Trier, to be commemorated on June 11 or July, between the monastery of Senones itself and the other of Etival, in portions of land received from both, not very long before the time of Charlemagne: where after the said Fortunatus and several intermediate abbots, a certain Abbot Pippin presided, whom you find in chapter 7 expelled together with the monks in the year 894 by Count Hasuma, who had obtained the monastery from the benefaction of Zwentibold, Duke of Lorraine. From this time, however, the aforesaid Canons held the place, until seventy years later Duke Frederick of Lorraine, likewise expelling the Canons, hastened through a certain Adalbert, a monk of Gorze, to restore monks once more, in the same condition as the Clerics had previously lived there, except for these things, namely the body of S. Joseph the one who buried the Lord, and other items alienated through the negligence of the Clerics, which could not be restored.
[13] An Office composed by Cardinal de Bérulle: The most illustrious Cardinal de Bérulle, piously devoted to the most sacred Humanity of Christ and to all who had the good fortune of conversing with Him, being about to commend the veneration of this S. Joseph to the Gallican Churches and to the Oratory of Priests founded by himself, appended to the Office of the Solemnity of the Lord Jesus Christ conversing with men, woven from various flowers of Sacred Scripture and printed at Paris in 1627, another Office of S. Joseph of Arimathea, expressed from the very marrow of Sacred Scripture, as Pierre d'Hardi-Villier, Doctor of the Sorbonne and Pastor of S. Lawrence, judged in his approbation: and as Philip, Bishop of Nantes, said in a similar approbation of both together, it contains nothing but things entirely holy and pious, and not merely breathing but inspiring the love of Christ. Prayer: In it everything is proper except the hymn and psalms from the Common of Confessors: and this is the Prayer: O God, who didst deign to choose Blessed Joseph of Arimathea to take down from the cross the body of Jesus, thy beloved Son, and to lay it with honor in his own new tomb; grant, we beseech thee, that, cleansed by the blood of the same thy Son, buried together with him, and configured to his death, we may live in him, through him, and with him forever.
[14] The Lessons of the First Nocturn: I from Isaiah the Prophet, chapter 11. Lessons from S. Ambrose: In that day the root of Jesse. 2 and 3 from Jonah, chapter 2. And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. The Lessons of the Second Nocturn are taken from Sermon 52 of S. Ambrose on Good Friday: which, on account of the most sweet comparison made by this holy Doctor between the womb and the tomb, Joseph and Mary, it will not be tedious to transcribe here. The Fourth Lesson is therefore: Let us see what is done with the body of the Lord itself after it is taken down from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea received it, a just man, as the Evangelist says, and buried it in his new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid. Blessed therefore is the body of the Lord Christ, Comparing the tomb of Joseph with the womb: which when born is begotten in the womb of a Virgin; when it departs, is committed to the tomb of a just man. Blessed indeed is the body which virginity brought forth and justice guarded. The tomb of Joseph guarded it incorrupt, just as the womb of the Virgin Mary kept it inviolate: for here it is not touched by the pollution of a man; there it is not harmed by the corruption of death.
[15] The Fifth Lesson: Everywhere holiness is paid to the blessed body, everywhere virginity is paid to it. A new belly conceived it, a new tomb enclosed it: therefore the Lord's womb is virgin, his burial is virgin. Indeed, I would rather call the burial itself a womb; for the likeness is not small. For just as the Lord came forth living from his Mother's womb, so he rose living from Joseph's sepulcher: and just as he was then born from the womb for preaching, so also now he was reborn from the sepulcher for proclaiming the Gospel: except that this birth is more glorious than that one. For that one produced a mortal body; this one brought forth an immortal one: after that birth there was a descent to the underworld; after this one a return to heaven. The latter birth is indeed more holy than the former: for the former held the Lord of the whole world enclosed in the womb for nine months, but the latter guarded him in the bosom of the tomb for only three days: the former brought forth the hope of all more slowly,
and the latter raised up the salvation of all more swiftly.
[16] The Sixth Lesson. No less is the glory that the tomb of Joseph raised up the Lord Joseph compared with Mary: than that the womb of Mary brought him forth. But perhaps someone may say: what comparison is there between a belly and a tomb, since the one brought forth a son from her inmost bowels, while the other merely provided a place of burial? But I say that this devotion of Joseph is worthy to be compared with the devotion of Mary: since she conceived the Lord in her womb, he in his heart: she provided the Savior with the secret of her members, he did not deny the secret of his own body: she wrapped the Lord in swaddling clothes when he was born, he in linen cloths when he departed: she anointed the blessed body with oil, he honored it with spices. Their services therefore correspond to each other, as does their devotion; whence it is necessary that their merit also correspond: except that an angel summoned Mary to her service, while justice alone persuaded Joseph.
[17] The Gospel is taken from Luke, chapter 23. At that time: behold, a man named Joseph: and upon it the Lessons. The seventh from book 10 of S. Ambrose's Commentaries on Luke: What does it mean that not the Apostles, but Joseph and Nicodemus... bury Christ? The eighth from sermon 53 of the same on Holy Saturday: Let us see why the Savior is placed in another's tomb. At Mass also this Prayer is proposed to be recited among the Secret prayers: Secret Prayer: Lord God, who didst will that the adorable body of Jesus thy Son, who died on the cross for sinners, should be given through Pilate to Blessed Joseph of Arimathea, a just man waiting for thy kingdom: accept this offering and sacrifice of the same sacred body, and grant to thy faithful, through the intercession of thy disciple Joseph, the spirit of Jesus thy beloved Son; that we may be directed by him on earth and glorified in heaven. Finally, to conclude the entire sacred liturgy, this other prayer is added: Lord God, who didst commit thy newborn Son to the care of Blessed Joseph, the carpenter and spouse of Mary; And Postcommunion: and didst entrust the same, dead upon the cross, to the faith and piety of another Joseph, a noble Decurion of Arimathea, who boldly asked and happily obtained from Pilate the body of Jesus, and laid it in his own new tomb: grant us the grace to boldly confess the same Christ before men, that Christ himself may happily confess us before thee, his Father, who livest and reignest, etc.
[18] Gregory of Antioch's homily on Joseph: In the illustrious Imperial Library at Vienna there is a Greek manuscript codex on paper, marked number 49, and in it a homily of Gregory, Bishop of Antioch, on the women bringing ointments to the sepulcher of Christ and on Joseph of Arimathea: which, judging it worthy of being inserted in this place, we arranged through the Reverend Father Hermann Horst, formerly Provost of our Professed House and now Confessor to the most August widowed Empress, that this codex be sent to Leoben to Father Reinold Dehn, often mentioned by us and to be mentioned still more often, so that he might render that homily into Latin; and he would have done so had he not been advised to desist; since, as he wrote, although that was the title, yet nothing is contained in it about Joseph beyond what the Evangelists relate, namely that he asked Pilate for the body of Christ to bury it, and obtained his request. Indeed, he says: Anyone who reads the homily attentively will easily agree with me that the beginning is missing from the prayer devised by the author for this purpose and attributed to Joseph, as are other things which there is no doubt the author had placed before it, even though in the manuscript no sign of omission appears at this point: for in other places the torn paper reveals the deficiency, as also the very frequent orthographic errors reveal the ignorance of the scribe.
[19] This saint also had his devotees in Spain, led to special veneration of him, Maria Vasquez, piously devoted to him: not on account of the faith preached by him in Spain (which before Pseudo-Dexter we believe occurred to no one even in a dream to think) but on account of the service he rendered in taking down from the cross and entombing the most beloved spouse of chaste souls: among whom was the devout Sister Maria Vasquez de Mello, praised by this name by Father Paul de Barry in chapter 9 of his booklet which he wrote on devotion to S. Joseph, the Foster-Father of Christ: where, from the history of the Holy Women of the Order of S. Dominic written by Brother Juan Rechac, called of Santa Maria, he relates that on one occasion in the monastery of Zamora, a certain instrument or document was sought, the loss of which could cause great harm to the house: and while each of the Sisters invoked her own particular saint, She relates the help she desired: to whom each was especially devoted, she herself turned to conciliating Joseph of Arimathea with pious prayers. Nor was a long prayer needed: for soon there appeared at the monastery gate a nobleman, mounted on a splendid horse, known to no one, who, dismounting, ordered that Maria Vasquez be summoned, and when she came to the turning window, he spoke not a word to her; but handed over to her that very document about which everyone was anxious, and departed.