pistin epispasamenos ... kai pollous
toi logoi photisas tos charitos, ekklaesias te sustesamenos,
episkopous te kai presbuterous kai diakonous
cheipotonhesas, dodekatoi etei tou Kaisaros authis eis Romen
paraginetai.][391]

["Peter ... cometh even unto Britain. Yea, there abode he
long, and many of the lawless folk did he draw to the Faith of
Christ ... and many did he enlighten with the Word of Grace.
Churches, too, did he set up, and ordained bishops and priests
and deacons. And in the twelfth year of Caesar[392] came he
again unto Rome."]

The 'Acta Sanctorum' also mentions this tradition (filtered through
Simeon Metaphrastes), and adds that St. Peter was in Britain during
Boadicea's rebellion, when he incurred great danger.

E. 6--The 'Synopsis Apostolorum,' ascribed to Dorotheus (A.D. 180),
but really a 6th-century compilation, gives us yet another Apostolic
preacher, St. Simon Zelotes. This is probably due to a mere confusion
between [Greek: Mabritania] [Mauretania] and [Greek: Bretannia]. But
it is impossible to deny that the Princes of the Apostles _may_
both have visited Britain, nor indeed is there anything essentially
improbable in their doing so. We know that Britain was an object of
special interest at Rome during the period of the Conquest, and it
would be quite likely that the idea of simultaneously conquering
this new Roman dominion for Christ should suggest itself to the two
Apostles so specially connected with the Roman Church.[393]

E. 7.--But while we may _possibly_ accept this legend, it is otherwise
with the famous and beautiful story which ascribes the foundation of
our earliest church at Glastonbury to the pilgrimage of St. Joseph of
Arimathaea, whose staff, while he rested on Weary-all Hill, took root,
and became the famous winter thorn, which

"Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord,"[394]

and who, accordingly, set up, hard by, a little church of wattle to be
the centre of local Christianity.

E. 8.--Such was the tale which accounted for the fact that this humble
edifice developed into the stateliest sanctuary of all Britain. We
first find it, in its final shape, in Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150);
but already in the 10th century the special sanctity of the shrine was
ascribed to a supernatural origin,[395] as a contemporary Life of St.
Dunstan assures us; and it is declared, in an undisputed Charter of
Edgar, to be "the first church in the