Bible and Sword

Read Bible and Sword for Free Online

Book: Read Bible and Sword for Free Online
Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
cannot bring himself to deny the substance of the Joseph story, though he admits that “the leaven of monkery hath much swollen and puffed up the circumstance thereof.” Acknowledging the lack of verifiable material on the first century, Fuller adds what might be a precept to many less honest historians: “But as I find little so I will feign nothing; the time being better spent in silence than in lying.”
    Clearly by this time, no matter what evidence pro or con might be added, no one could pry Joseph out of the Britishtradition. It may even be that he rightfully belongs there, for, as so often happens when modern science goes to work on the stuff of legend, the available facts tend to confirm the legend. Archaeological findings have in fact confirmed the existence of a Stone Age lake village at Glastonbury. It is pictured by the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes in terms that fit exactly the story of Joseph and his wattled church in the marsh. “For the security which the times demanded, the founders of the village chose a piece of marshy ground … hacked down the growth of alder and willow which cumbered the site and then, with immense labor went on to build up an artificial island on the ground they had cleared.… On it stood some sixty round huts with wattled sides, trodden clay floors and roofs thatched with reeds.… Inside its protecting wall the village itself is full of life and activity—a compact stronghold of humanity isolated among the swamps.”
    Perhaps its isolation and protected position accounted for the preservation of Glastonbury’s antique traditions. Then at some unknown date a fire apparently destroyed the original community, but in so doing baked hard the clay covering the wattle work and thus made possible its survival. Uncovered after two thousand years, it still carried the impress of the woven reeds or wicker. Examples of stonework typical of the kind found in Syria were also dug up around Glastonbury, suggesting some connection with Joseph’s homeland.
    As Professor Freeman, an authority on ancient Britain, has said: “We need not believe that the Glastonbury legends are facts but the existence of those legends is a great fact.”

CHAPTER III

“WITHIN THY GATES, O JERUSALEM”:
The Pilgrim Movement
    Pilgrims from Britain first set out on the long journey to Jerusalem back in the murky era between the twilight of the Roman Empire and the pre-dawn hours of the Middle Ages.
    The pilgrim movement began in earnest early in the fourth century after the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official, or at least the favored, religion of the Roman Empire. His mother, the Empress Helena, having likewise been converted, undertook to locate the exact site of the Gospel’s events. On a journey to Palestine in 326 she discovered, after convenient excavations, the True Cross and the Holy Sepulcher. Subsequently her own and her son’s activity in dotting Palestine with churches, monuments, and hostels to mark the holy places excited the Christian world and led to a wave of pilgrimages.
    Celtic Britain’s history during this period lies in shadow. But in Palestine if not in Britain evidence exists of Britons making pilgrimages to the Holy Land, beginning in the fourth century. St. Jerome writing from Bethlehem in 386 remarks: “The Briton no sooner makes progress in religion than he quits his Western sun to go in search of a place of which he knows only through Scripture and common report.” This observation is confirmed independently by a contemporary, Palladius Galatea, Bishop of Heliopolis inEgypt, who lived much of his life in Palestine. In the course of a book of biographical sketches of monks, ascetics, hermits, and other local celebrities Palladius refers to the pilgrims who came from all corners of the world “even from Persia and Britain.” Another of Jerome’s letters implies that Britons must have been coming in some numbers, though apparently in an insufficiently pious

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