Joseph of Arimathea does not appear in person; he is invoked as an origin in the Florenzen chronicle.
Mentions
- In a tavern at Christmas, a stranger says he comes from very far away, “undoing the road that Joseph of Arimathea once made”. He speaks of an island he knows and of someone who “would have to become a true king again”, and admits that he sometimes lies.
- His name returns in the discussion of the apocalypse stone. Its original guardians always appear corrupted, like the kings descended from Joseph who guarded the grail in the stories of the castle of Alain el Membrudo. They are corrupted not by a curse but by what the guardianship does to them.
Grail and lineage
The notebook records the equation “Grail = the Blood of the Redeemer = CHRIST”, with cross-references to Magdalene and the lineage. It also states that Alain el Membrudo, of the lineage of Joseph, went to the dead man to consecrate himself, in the same passage where Arsaces recalls the sacrifice he feels guilty about.