Joseph of Copertino (1603–63), Franciscan priest. He was born of poor parents, at Copertino near Brindisi, in a garden shed because his father, a carpenter, had had to sell his house to pay debts. Resented by his mother, who was soon widowed, he had an unhappy childhood; he was nicknamed ‘the Gaper’ for his habit of wandering about open-mouthed. This was combined with a hot temper and an exemplary performance of religious duties. Attempts to join the Franciscan conventuals and Capuchins in this poverty-stricken area were alike unsuccessful: after eight months with the Capuchins when he forgot to do what he was told, dropped piles of plates and dishes on the floor, and neglected to tend the all-important kitchen fire, he was dismissed. A wealthy uncle failed to come to the rescue; his mother wanted to be rid of him and arranged for him to work as a servant for the Franciscan conventuals at Grottella. There he quickly grew in efficiency and in religious spirit to such an extent that he was admitted as a novice in 1625.
Although very backward in his studies, his extreme good luck in examinations enabled him to be ordained priest in 1628. His life thenceforward was distinguished by extreme austerity, many ecstasies and apparently supernatural healings. They were witnessed by men of unchallenged integrity, as the ‘Devil's Advocate’ against his canonization (subsequently Pope Benedict XIV) admitted. Perhaps the most famous are his repeated levitations, i.e. the raising and movement through the air of his body by no apparent physical force, of which seventy instances were recorded during his seventeen years at Grottella. The most spectacular were his flying to images placed high above the altars and helping workmen to erect a Calvary Cross thirty-six feet high by lifting it into place in mid-air ‘as if it were straw’. Ten men had previously failed to lift it. Such feats earned him the nickname ‘the Flying Friar’. His affinity with birds and animals was equal to that of Francis of Assisi; while when he was in ecstasy, blows, burning, and pinpricks failed to ‘awake’ him.
These phenomena were so disturbing to his superiors that for thirty-five years he was not allowed to celebrate a public Mass or attend choir and refectory with his community. After some time Neapolitan Inquisitors accused him of ‘drawing crowds after him like a new Messiah through prodigies accomplished on the ignorant who are ready to believe anything’. The charge was not proven; Joseph was sent to see Pope Urban VIII, at the sight of whom he went into ecstasy. His apparently incurable hypersensitivity to religion resulted in his being sent first to Assisi in 1639, where he remained for thirteen years in complete spiritual aridity; later, following the Inquisition of Perugia's intervention, to a lonely friary of Capuchins in Pietrarossa, where he lived in a prison-like seclusion until pilgrims discovered his presence; he was then removed to Fossombrone. The Lutheran Duke of Brunswick became a Catholic after twice seeing him in ecstasy at Mass. In 1655 the conventuals petitioned for the return of Joseph to Assisi; two years later he was restored to their house at Osimo in strict seclusion. Here he died and was buried, the object of both official reserve and popular veneration. In 1767 he was canonized, not for his levitations, but for his extreme patience and humility. Certain features of his life resemble in different ways those of John of the Cross and of Padre
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Sept. V (1755), 992–1060; A. Pastrovicchi, St. Joseph of Copertino (tr. F. Laing, 1918); G. Parisciani, San Giuseppe de Copertino alla luce dei nuovi documenti (1964); H. Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (1952); B.L.S., ix. 175–8; Bibl. SS., vi. 1300–3
