Albion Revisited
A series of articles on Ancient British Christianity
23rd November 2006
No.4. St.
Michael’s Mount
In the last part of this series we had a look at Tunic Crosses in Cornwall, and how
they provided evidence of Jesus’ visits to Cornwall in his
teenage years. There is more to this study, which can be helpful in
establishing the connection of Joseph of Arimathea with the mining of tin in Cornwall, and lead
in the Mendip Hills of Somerset.
First of all, a few quotations from ancient
history.
The Church Councils of Pisa (1409), Constance (1417), Sienna (1424)
and Basle (1434), declared -
"The churches of France and Spain must yield in points of antiquity and precedence to that of Britain, as the latter church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea
immediately after the passion of Christ."
And the learned Catholic Archbishop Ussher, (1550 -
1613) writing in his Brittannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates said - "The
British National Church was founded AD 36, 160 years before heathen Rome
confessed Christianity."
Such a statement is mind-boggling to an average evangelical Christian today, on
opening almost any book on Church History, who will be hard put to it to find
any reference at all to Britain in the first three centuries AD. But we are not wanting in written
evidence about Britain. Take for example Sabellius, (the Roman
Catholic prelate and theologian, excommunicated by Pope Calixtus
in 220 AD) writing in 250 AD he said - . "Christianity was
privately confessed elsewhere, but the first nation that produced it as their
religion and called it Christian, after the name of Christ, was Britain."
And then we have the written testimony of Maelgwyn of
Llandaff, Lord of Anglesey and Snowdonia, (AD 450)- "Joseph
of Arimathea, the noble decurion, entered his
perpetual sleep with his XI companions in the Isle of Avalon." (The “Isle of Avalon” is Glastonbury, which was an
island in those early days)
And yet another voice adds to the list. It is that of Polydore
Vergil, (1470 - 1555) the learned Italian historian,
living in England, who wrote - "Britain, partly through Joseph of Arimathea, partly through Fugatus and Damianus, was of all
kingdoms the first that received the Gospel".
And the eminent historian of the Roman Catholic church, Cardinal Baronius,
(1538 - 1607) who became Curator of the Vatican Library in 1597, wrote in his
Ecclesiastical Annals- "In that year [i.e. AD 36, the year of the
great persecution in Jerusalem, and the dispersion that followed] the party of
Joseph of Arimathea and those who went with him into exile, was put out to sea
in a vesse1 without sail or oars. This vessel drifted, and finally reached
Massilia [Marseilles] where they were saved. From Massilia Joseph and his company passed
into Britain and after preaching the Gospel there, died. "
Freculphus, Bishop of Lisieux in France,
AD 825 - 851, wrote concerning Joseph of Arimathea, that he was Philip's
"dearest friend,"
John Capgrave (1393 - 1464), the English chronicler
and hagiologist, an Augustinian hermit, who lived most of his life in friary at
King's Lynn, Norfolk, was a voluminous writer of English history. In his "De Sancto Joseph ab Aramathea" he quotes an ancient manuscript, which
asserted, (when translated from the Latin) "Philip sent from a Gaul a hundred
and sixty disciples to assist Joseph and his companions."
In this manner we learn that Joseph was appointed by Philip to preach Christ to
the British people, and from other records we know that he fulfilled his
function with great faithfulness, staying in Glastonbury until
the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in AD 48.
Concerning the passing of Mary, Richard Pynson
published an account of the life of Joseph of Arimathea in the years 1516 -
1520, and quoting from ancient sources he penned these lines -
"Now here how Joseph came into Englande;
But at that time it was called Brytayne.
Then XV yere with our lady, as I understande
Joseph wayted styll
to serve hyr he was fayne."
This is not the only source which speaks about Mary's "fifteen years"
in Britain, and working on the basis of this chronology we find that her death
occurred in her 64th year, in AD 48. She is said to be buried in Glastonbury, which
the Catholic Sisterhood always refer to as "Our Lady's Dowry." It may
be mentioned here that a French convent in Alexandria, Egypt,
was once housed by nuns who were members of the old French nobility. They
taught that "St.Joseph of Arimathea took
the Blessed Virgin with him to Britain and she died there."
After the passing of Mary, Joseph is recorded as having returned to Marseilles for a
few years, then to return to England
in AD 63, at the instigation of the Apostle James, where he continued to work
and minister until his death on July 27th AD 82 at the grand old
age of 98.
On top of all that historical evidence we must now add other
voices, which speak in particular about the mining of tin in Cornwall. The
quotation from Herodotus is as follows - "Of that part of Europe nearest
to the west, I am not able to speak with decision. I by no means believe that
the barbarians give the name of Eridanus to a river
which empties itself into the Northern Sea; whence, it is said, our amber comes. Neither am I better
acquainted with the islands called the Cassiterides, from which we are said to
have our tin. The name Eridanus is certainly not
barbarous; it is of Greek derivation, and, as I should conceive, introduced by
one of our poets. I have endeavoured, but without success, to meet with someone
who, from ocular observation, might describe to me the sea which lies in that
part of Europe. It is nevertheless certain that both our tin and our amber are
brought from those extreme regions." (Please
note that the word "barbarian" does not carry the modern connotation.
The bar-bar part of the Greek word indicated to them the sound
of foreign speech, and therefore the word merely refers to ALL foreign-speaking
people, those they could not understand.)
The reason for Herodotus's assertion was simply that Cornwall had almost
the world monopoly of tin production, and archaeological evidences show clearly
that the Tin Islands were exporting the metal as early as 1500
BC. Biblical "ships of Tarshish"
(a name given to ocean-going vessels, and used in the same way
that Victorians spoke of "East-India-Men") operating mainly from the
Phoenician port of Tyre were the main agents in transporting this valuable
metal to different parts of the world.
Pliny, (A.D. 23-79) writing in his "Natural History" spoke about
our islands in this way - "Opposite the Celtiberia
are a number of islands, by the Greeks called Cassiterides, in consequence of
their abounding in tin." . . . . . "The nature of lead comes next to
be considered. There are two kinds of it, the white (i.e., tin, called plumbum album) and the black (lead, called plumbum nigrum).
The white is the most valuable; it was called by the Greeks cassiteros;
and there is a fabulous story of their going in quest of it to the islands
of the Atlantic, and of its being brought in barks made of osiers, and covered
with hides. It is now known that it is the production of Lusitania
and Gallaecia. It is a sand
found on the surface of the earth, and of a black colour,
and is only to be detected by its weight. It is mingled with small pebbles,
particularly in the dried beds of rivers. The miners wash this sand, and calcine the deposit in the furnace. It is also found in the
gold mines that are known as alutiae, the
stream of water which is passed through them detaching certain black pebbles,
mottled with small white spots, and of the same weight as gold. Hence it is
that they remain with the gold in the baskets in which it is collected; and
being separated in the furnace, are then melted, and become converted into
white lead (tin.)" . . . . "White lead was held in esteem in the days
even of the Trojan War - a fact attested by Homer, who called it 'cassiteros'. (Nat. Hist. book xxxiv. Ch.47. It
must be stated that Pliny was not always very accurate concerning his
geographical information. For example, although tin is known in the
region he calls Gallaecia, it is vanishingly
small in comparison with Cornwall,
and never mined there in any quantity.)
Elsewhere, Pliny mentions that a Greek named Midacritus
(about 600 B.C.) is recorded to have imported tin from Cassiteris
Island.
(Nat.Hist. 7.197)
Now hear what Diodorus Siculus
had to say about the British tin mining industry- "Then all the
rest of your voyage is eastward, thus making an obtuse angle to your former
course, until you reach the headlands of the Pyrenees
that abut on the ocean. The westerly parts of Britain
lie opposite these headlands towards the north, and in like manner the islands
called Cassiterides, situated in the open sea approximately in the latitude of Britain , lie opposite to, and north of,
the Artabians. (the modern La
Coruna,
[Corunna] the port in NW Spain
from which the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588)" (D.Sic.Book II.v.15)
"Now we shall speak something concerning the tin that is dug and
gotten there. They that inhabit the British promontory of Belerium,
[possibly the ancient name of Polurrion, near the
Lizard in Cornwall]
by reason of their converse with the merchants, are
more civilised and courteous to strangers than the
rest. These are the people that make the tin, which with a great deal of care
and labour, they dig out of the ground, and that
being rocky, the metal is mixed with some veins of earth, out of which they
melt the metal and then refine it. Then they beat it into four-square pieces
the size of dice, and cart it to a British island, near at hand, called Ictis. For at low tide, all being dry between them and the
island, they convey over in carts an abundance of tin
in the mean time. But there is one thing peculiar to those islands, which lie
between Britain
and Europe; for at
full sea they appear to be islands, but at low water for a long way they look
like so many peninsulas. Hence the merchants transport the tin they buy of the
inhabitants to France,
and for thirty days' journey they carry it in packs on horses' backs through France
to the mouth of the river Rhone.
Thus much concerning tin." . . . . "And not only do they go into the
ground a great distance, but they also push their diggings many stades in depth and run galleries off at every angle,
turning this way and that, in this manner bringing up from the depths the ore
which gives them the profit they are seeking." (D.Sic.Book V:1-4, 35)
And later in the same account he had this to say - "Above Lusitania (a Roman province roughly equivalent to modern
Portugal) there is much of this tin metal, that is, in the islands lying in the
ocean over against Iberia, (the peninsula dividing Spain from Portugal by the
Pyrenees) which are therefore called Cassiterides; and much of it likewise is
transported out of Britain into Gaul, the opposite continent, which the merchants
carry on horseback through the heart of Celtica to
Massilia (Marseilles) and the city called Narbo (Narbonne)." (D.Sic.Book
V.2)
The island he called Ictis is none
other than St.Michael's
Mount, just offshore to Marazion
in Cornwall, and exactly fits Diodorus's
description. In 1969, in the little harbour of the
island, skin divers found a stone bowl with a handle, which was subsequently
identified by the British Museum as Phoenician, - and dating as far back as
1500 B.C. When visiting Truro
recently, we were able to see the massive H-shaped tin ingot that was dredged
from the St Mawes harbour
in 1812, weighing 158 pounds. The shape indicated that they were designed to be
carried one on each side of a horse for transportation, as mentioned above.
Who were the people who worked the mines? Undoubtedly ancient
British men. But records show that others were also involved. The
eminent English antiquarian and historian, William Camden (1551 - 1623), wrote
a book called Britannia which was published in Latin in 1586 and in English
translation in 1610. It was a landmark in the topographical study of Britain.
In this work he said,-
"The merchants of Asher worked the tin mines of Cornwall,
not as slaves, but as masters and exporters."
Our attention is turned to the island known as St.
Michael’s Mount. In earlier days it was called Ictis.
At low tide the island may be reached by walking across the causeway, exactly
as described by Diodorus Siculus.
Today the island is owned by the National Trust, having been gifted to the
Trust by the St. Aubyn family, who have lived there
since 1659, and continue to have private rooms in the castle. Two elderly
brothers, Piers and John St. Aubyn are the present
members of that family. I have been in correspondence with John, (otherwise
titled as Lord St. Levan) concerning the Celtic cross
on the southern side of the island, and he has kindly given me permission to
publish the photograph of this cross, which is facing out to sea, and has not
one, but two carvings of the young Jesus.