Joseph of Arimathea

Joseph of Arimathea, according to all four Gospels of the New Testament, a rich Jew of Arimathea, probably a member of the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish court in Jerusalem, who after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, requested the body from the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and placed it in his own tomb. According to some ancient writers he was later the founder of Christianity in Britain and of a monastery at Glastonbury; scholars, however, reject these claims. In the Arthurian cycle of romances and in late medieval legend he brings the Holy Grail into Britain.