introduced; and from John xix. 26 it is clear that he was not alive at the time of the Crucifixion.
Joseph was the father of several children (Matt. xiii. 55), but according to ecclesiastical tradition by a former marriage. The reading of Matt. i. 16, in the Sinaitic Palimpsest (Joseph . . . begat Jesus, who is called the Christ) also makes him the natural father of Jesus, and this was the view of certain early heretical sects, but it seems never to have been held in orthodox Christian circles. According to various apocryphal gospels (conveniently collected in B. H. Cowper’s The Apocryphal Gospels, 1881), when married to Mary he was a widower already 80 years of age, and the father of four sons and two daughters; his first wife’s name was Salome and she was a connexion of the family of John the Baptist.
In the Roman Catholic Church the 19th of March has since 1642 been a feast in Joseph’s honour. Two other festivals in his honour have also been established (the Patronage of St Joseph, 3rd Sunday after Easter, and the Betrothal of Mary and Joseph, 23rd of January). In December 1870 St Joseph was proclaimed Patron of the whole Church. (G. H. Bo.)
JOSEPH OF ARIMATHAEA,[1] in the New Testament, a
wealthy Jew who had been converted by Jesus Christ. He is mentioned
by the Four Evangelists, who are in substantial agreement
concerning him: after the Crucifixion he went to Pilate and
asked for the body of Jesus, subsequently prepared it for burial
and laid it in a tomb. There are, however, minor differences
in the accounts, which have given rise to controversy. Matthew
(xxvii. 60) says that the tomb was Joseph’s own; Mark (xv. 43
seq.), Luke (xxiii. 50 seq.) say nothing of this, while John (xix.
41) simply says that the body was laid in a sepulchre “nigh at
hand.” Both Mark and Luke say that Joseph was a “councillor”
(εὐσχήμων βουλευτής, Mark xv. 43), and the Gospel of
Peter describes him as a “friend of Pilate and of the Lord.”
This last statement is probably a late invention, and there is
considerable difficulty as to “councillor.” That Joseph was a
member of the Sanhedrin is improbable. Luke indeed, regarding
him as such, says that he “had not consented to their counsel
and deed,” but Mark (xiv. 64) says that all the Sanhedrin
“condemned him to be worthy of death.” Perhaps the phrase
“noble councillor” is intended to imply merely a man of wealth
and position. Again Matthew says that Joseph was a disciple,
while Mark implies that he was not yet among the definite
adherents of Christ, and John describes him as an adherent
“secretly for fear of the Jews.” Most likely he was a disciple,
but belonged only to the wider circle of adherents. The account
given in the Fourth Gospel suggests that the writer, faced with
these various difficulties, assumed a double tradition: (1) that
Joseph of Arimathaea, a wealthy disciple, buried the body of
Christ; (2) that the person in question was Joseph of Arimathaea
a “councillor,” and solved the problem by substituting Nicodemus
as the councillor; hence he describes both Joseph and
Nicodemus (xix. 39) as co-operating in the burial. Some critics
(e.g. Strauss, New Life of Jesus, ch. 96) have thrown doubt upon
the story, regarding some of the details as invented to suit the
prophecy in Isa. liii. 9, “they made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death” (for various translations, see
Hastings’s Dict. Bible, ii. 778). But in the absence of any
reference to this prophecy in the Gospels, this view is unconvincing,
though the correspondence is remarkable.
The striking character of this single appearance of Joseph of Arimathaea led to the rise of numerous legends. Thus William of Malmesbury says that he was sent to Britain by St Philip, and, having received a small island in Somersetshire, there constructed “with twisted twigs” the first Christian church in Britain—afterwards to become the Abbey of Glastonbury. The legend says that his staff, planted in the ground, became a thorn flowering twice a year (see Glastonbury). This tradition—which is given only as such by Malmesbury himself—is not confirmed, and there is no mention of it in either Gildas or Bede. Joseph also plays a large part in the various versions of the Legend of the Holy Grail (see Grail, The Holy).
JOSEPH I. (1678–1711), Roman emperor, was the elder son
of the emperor Leopold I. and his third wife, Eleanora, countess
palatine, daughter of Philip William of Neuburg. Born in
Vienna on the 26th of July 1678, he was educated strictly by
Prince Dietrich Otto von Salm, and became a good linguist.
In 1687 he received the crown of Hungary, and he was elected
king of the Romans in 1690. In 1699 he married Wilhelmina
Amalia, daughter of Duke Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg,
by whom he had two daughters. In 1702, on the outbreak of
the War of the Spanish Succession, he saw his only military
service. He joined the imperial general Louis of Baden in the
siege of Landau. It is said that when he was advised not to go
into a place of danger he replied that those who were afraid
might retire. He succeeded his father as emperor in 1705, and
it was his good fortune to govern the Austrian dominions, and
to be head of the Empire during the years in which his trusted
general Prince Eugène, either acting alone in Italy or with the
duke of Marlborough in Germany and Flanders, was beating
the armies of Louis XIV. During the whole of his reign
Hungary was disturbed by the conflict with Francis Ráckóczy II.,
who eventually took refuge in France. The emperor did not
himself take the field against the rebels, but he is entitled to a
large share of the credit for the restoration of his authority. He
reversed many of the pedantically authoritative measures of his
father, thus placating all opponents who could be pacified, and
he fought stoutly for what he believed to be his rights. Joseph
showed himself very independent towards the pope, and hostile
to the Jesuits, by whom his father had been much influenced.
He had the tastes for art and music which were almost hereditary
in his family, and was an active hunter. He began the attempts
to settle the question of the Austrian inheritance by a pragmatic
sanction, which were continued by his brother Charles VI.
Joseph died in Vienna on the 17th of April 1711, of small-pox.
See F. Krones von Marchland, Grundriss der Oesterreichischen Geschichte (1882); F. Wagner, Historia Josephi Caesaris (1746); J. C. Herchenhahn, Geschichte der Regierung Kaiser Josephs I. (1786–1789); C. van Noorden, Europäische Geschichte im 18. Jahrhundert (1870–1882).
JOSEPH II. (1741–1790), Roman emperor, eldest son of the
empress Maria Theresa and her husband Francis I., was born on
the 13th of March 1741, in the first stress of the War of the
Austrian Succession. Maria Theresa gave orders that he was
only to be taught as if he were amusing himself; the result was
that he acquired a habit of crude and superficial study. His
real education was given him by the writings of Voltaire and
the encyclopaedists, and by the example of Frederick the Great.
His useful training was conferred by government officials, who
were directed to instruct him in the mechanical details of the
administration of the numerous states composing the Austrian
dominions and the Empire. In 1761 he was made a member of
the newly constituted council of state (Staatsrath) and began to
draw up minutes, to which he gave the name of “reveries,” for
his mother to read. These papers contain the germs of his later
policy, and of all the disasters which finally overtook him. He
was a friend to religious toleration, anxious to reduce the power
of the church, to relieve the peasantry of feudal burdens, and
to remove restrictions on trade and on knowledge. So far he
did not differ from Frederick, Catherine of Russia or his own
brother and successor Leopold II., all enlightened rulers of the
18th-century stamp. Where Joseph differed from great contemporary
rulers, and where he was very close akin to the
Jacobins, was in the fanatical intensity of his belief in the power
of the state when directed by reason, of his right to speak for
the state uncontrolled by laws, and of the reasonableness of
his own reasons. Also he had inherited from his mother all the
belief of the house of Austria in its “august” quality, and its
claim to acquire whatever it found desirable for its power or its
profit. He was unable to understand that his philosophical
plans for the moulding of mankind could meet with pardonable
opposition. The overweening character of the man was obvious
