ON SAINT JOSEPH, SPOUSE OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD
BEFORE THE YEAR 30
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Joseph, Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God (Saint)
Section I. The acts of his life from the Evangelists Matthew and Luke, and the titles of honor founded upon them.
[1] Gregory of Nazianzus believed that he had, in a single word, both sufficiently described and praised the husband of his sister Gorgonia, by saying that he was HER HUSBAND: Joseph, the husband of Mary "for I do not know," he says, "what more it is necessary to say." In like manner, the Evangelist Matthew seems to have heaped upon the most holy Joseph absolutely all praises that can be spoken or conceived, when he said THE HUSBAND OF MARY, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Now the birth of Christ was in this manner. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. He is forbidden by the Holy Spirit to dismiss her who is with child: And Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to expose her publicly, resolved to put her away privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins... And Joseph, rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took his wife; and he did not know her until she brought forth her firstborn son; and he called his name Jesus. He goes with her to Bethlehem, And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled... and all went to be enrolled, each in his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed wife, who was with child. And it came to pass while they were there that the days were accomplished for her to bring forth. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, where the newborn Jesus is adored by the shepherds, because there was no room for them in the inn... And soon the shepherds, who were in the same region keeping watch and guarding their flock by night, being informed of the birth of the Messiah... when the angels departed from them into heaven... came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in the manger.
[2] He is presented in the temple. And after the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, that is, of Mary, they carried him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons... And when his parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the law, he Simeon received him into his arms and blessed God. And his father and mother were marveling at those things which were spoken concerning him; and Simeon blessed them... And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. He is adored by the Magi, When therefore Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying: Where is he who is born King of the Jews?... And King Herod, hearing this, was troubled; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ should be born. And they said to him: In Bethlehem of Judah... Then Herod, having secretly called the wise men, carefully learned from them the time of the star that had appeared to them; and sending them to Bethlehem, said: Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, report to me, that I also may come and adore him. And they, having heard the king, departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over where the child was... and entering the house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they adored him...
[3] And when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: For fear of Herod he is taken to Egypt, Arise and take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for it is about to happen that Herod will seek the child to destroy him. And he, rising up, took the child and his mother by night and withdrew into Egypt. Then Herod, seeing that he had been deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and sent and killed all the boys who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men... And when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, he is brought back to Nazareth, saying: Arise and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who sought the life of the child are dead. And he, rising up, took the child and his mother and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there; and being warned in a dream, he withdrew into the region of Galilee; and coming, he dwelt in a city called Nazareth. And the child grew and was strengthened, full of wisdom, He is lost in the temple, and the grace of God was upon him. And his parents went every year to Jerusalem on the solemn day of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast day; and when they had completed the days and were returning, the boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it. But supposing him to be in the company, they came a day's journey and sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances; and not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and questioning them... He is found among the teachers by Joseph. And seeing him, they were astonished; and his mother said to him: Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have sought you sorrowing. And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? And they did not understand the word that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.
READING I
READING II
READING III
[4] Thus far the Acts of Saint Joseph, set forth in the very words of the Evangelists Matthew and Luke; which Master Peter de Juliano (or rather, de Ailly), Bishop of Cambrai, created in the year 1398 and honored with the cardinalate in the eleventh year of the following century, From the aforesaid there arise twelve titles of honor for Saint Joseph who died in the year 1416 according to Pouillon, but according to the Parisian necrology in the Sainte-Marthe collection in 1425, taking his theme from the eighth chapter of Esther, "This honor is worthy of the man whom the King desires to honor," posits twelve honors of the Holy Joseph, the true Mordecai, as twelve stars in his royal crown. So says the Utrecht manuscript, of which more below, The exposition by Peter de Ailly: after the Legend of Saint Joseph. This sermon or treatise exists among his works published at Strasbourg in the year 1490; from which the compiler of the said manuscript, made for the use of the Collegiate Church of the Holy Savior, received those same twelve titles of honor verbatim, omitting digressions and fuller explanation; and the Carmelite Order received the same titles in the same words and with the same compendious brevity into its own Breviary, distributed through nine readings in the following manner. If we gather together what the Evangelical Scripture commemorates in scattered places concerning Saint Joseph, we find him indeed commended with great praises of acclaim, that he was noble by lineage, on account of which holy Mother Church rightfully recites his twelve honors with festive joys. For first, he is descended from the most noble and royal stock, as the Evangelist testifies, who, beginning the book of Jesus Christ, son of David, from Abraham, concludes that Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Second, he is called a true blood relation of Mary the Virgin Mother and of Jesus her Son: a blood relation of Jesus and Mary, because all are proved by the testimony of Scripture to be born of the seed of David. For the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David: which refers not only to Joseph but also to the Virgin betrothed to him. A third honor accrues to Saint Joseph, that he is matrimonially betrothed to the most sacred Virgin, the Mother of God,
as the holy Evangelists frequently commemorate, the Mother of God his spouse, a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, and Joseph the husband of Mary. Not joined carnally in the manner of men, but sacramentally united by virtuous love. But a fourth honor is given to him, inasmuch as he is adorned with the title of Virginity. and at the same time a virgin; Certainly Mary was betrothed to Joseph when Gabriel was sent to her; and when he had said, "Behold, you shall conceive and bring forth a son," she is recorded as having replied: "How shall this be done, since I know not man?" that is, I never intend to know one. She was therefore a bride and a virgin, and with the consent of her spouse she observed the resolution of perpetual virginity. Fifth, Blessed Joseph is honored inasmuch as he was singularly deputed not only to the service of the Virgin Mother but also to the care of her Son: in that he was deputed to the service of the Mother and the Son, for beyond the general causes of his betrothal, certain special ones are mentioned by the Saints: namely, that the Virgin's childbearing might be concealed from the devil; that Joseph might be the witness of her chastity, defending her from the infamy of suspicion, lest she be condemned as an adulteress according to the law; and finally, that the Mother together with her Son might be sustained by him and nurtured by his care.
READING IV
READING V
READING VI
[5] The sixth honor is that to him, as to a celestial secretary, the secret mystery of the Incarnation is revealed by God through an Angel, secretary of heavenly secrets, who appeared in a dream and said to the trembling man: "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" -- not by human but by divine operation, not by the seed of man but by the mystical breath of the Holy Spirit was it incarnate. And not only the mystery of the Incarnation, but also through him the mystery of human salvation was made known by the Angel: "And she shall bring forth a son," he said, "and you shall call his name Jesus," adding the reason for the name: "For he shall save his people from their sins." The seventh honor of Saint Joseph is that he is proven just by Evangelical testimony: "Joseph," it says, "her husband, being a just man" -- that is, being one proved by faith, just in every way, hope and charity, and by the integrity of all good morals and all virtues; for in the Scriptures, under the name of justice, the sanctity of a virtuous life is generally understood. Wherefore Joseph is also called just, because justified by faith, like his father Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness; and Joseph also believed that the Messiah would be born not of the seed of man but of the mystical breath, and of a virgin woman of the seed of David; by which faith, being justified, he was truly called just. His eighth honor is attested by the Gospel, the one who named Jesus, because this name "Jesus," eternally bestowed by God, temporally revealed by the Angel, was solemnly proclaimed to mankind by Saint Joseph himself: "You shall call his name Jesus"; which we do not doubt was done: "And after eight days were accomplished for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before he was conceived in the womb."
READING VII
READING VIII
READING IX
[6] In the place of the seventh Reading the Gospel is indicated: "When his mother Mary had been betrothed," etc., as on the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord. The ninth honor of the just Joseph is discerned from the fact that in his presence many great mysteries of our faith are declared. He was present when Christ was born, and when marvelous things were told of him by the shepherds; for, a participant in the mysteries, as the Evangelist Luke relates, "they found Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in the manger; and they marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds." He was present when Christ was circumcised and the firstfruits of innocent blood were shed; and then on our account Christ's suffering, and on Christ's account Joseph's compassion, began. He was present when he was adored by the Magi; he was present when Christ was presented in the temple, conscious of the prophecies, when he himself with Mary "carried Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord." But the tenth honor of Joseph was that he was instructed not only by the oracles of the old prophets but also of the new concerning those things which were to come in Christ; for the aged Simeon blessed them and, prophesying of Christ's passion, said to Mary his mother: "A sword shall pierce your own soul," that is, his passion. The eleventh honor of Saint Joseph is that he was consoled not only by prophetic address and that he was deemed worthy of angelic conversations but also frequently and familiarly by angelic speech. Four times we have heard from angelic revelation that words of angelic consolation sounded in his ears. First, when he hesitated about the pregnancy of the virginal womb, the Angel said to him: "Joseph, do not fear to take Mary as your wife." Then, when Herod's persecution was imminent, the Angel appeared to him in a dream, saying: "Joseph, take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt; for it is about to happen that Herod will seek the child to destroy him." And when Herod was dead, again the Angel appeared to him and said: "Arise, and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel." Afterward, when he had come into Israel, he feared Archelaus who was reigning in place of his father, Mary and Jesus were subject to him and then, being warned by the Angel, he withdrew into the region of Galilee. The twelfth honor of Blessed Joseph is that not only the Mother of God, Queen of heaven and Lady of the Angels, but also the Son of God, King of kings, before whom every knee bends in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, is attested by Sacred Scripture and the Evangelical history to have been subject to him. For concerning the Mother of God, who doubts, since the husband is the head of the wife, and the bride is subject to the groom and under his authority? Concerning the Son as well, the Evangelist affirms that "he was subject to them." To whom? Certainly to Mary and Joseph. O wondrous and stupendous novelty! O wondrous and wonderful humility! The Lord is subject to a servant; God humbles himself before a man.
[7] Since all these honors of Saint Joseph were the fruits of the virginal marriage, the Carmelite Order, rightfully applauding him, sings this congratulatory antiphon at Magnificat in First Vespers:
Happy the marriage, in faith and sacrament, Not lacking offspring, yet with the flower preserved, obtaining the fruit of marriage in a wondrous manner A foster-father, a virgin-parent, he and she free from stain, With virginal honor, with conjugal care, They serve one another, and tenderly nourish Their son by a shared vow: Through whose ministry, hidden in mystery, True God, to deceive the ancient enemy, Fulfills his eternal plan.
These words follow after the praises of the same Saint Joseph had been set forth in a most sweet hymn in those same Vespers, which hymn we also thought should be appended for the use and consolation of those who are devoutly devoted to the virginal spouse, and it is as follows:
Let us praise with our whole heart the wisdom of God, Who by lot joined to the Virgin the diligence of Joseph, That he might nourish the infancy of him born without stain.
He whom the integrity of an inviolate mother bore, and he is to be worthily praised for the care he bestowed: The virginity of a putative father nourished: From dark enemies is the Divinity concealed by this art.
Joseph carries, Joseph handles, Joseph soothes with kisses: While Herod slays the little ones with their tiny limbs, Joseph snatches this child, whom a virgin nurses, from dangers.
The child, led into Egypt by Joseph's ministry, Is afterward brought back by the Father's command: He ripens; the fruit of heaven is made so by the mystery of the Cross.
Glory to the most high Father, equal praise to the Son, Equal honor to the Paraclete proceeding from both, Who may save us by the powerful merit of Saint Joseph.
Amen.
[8] Moreover, as all things that were drawn from the Gospels at the beginning are most certain, so also what we have appended and what is consonant with de Ailly remains beyond all suspicion of falsehood; but on the contrary, We omit certain apocryphal matters whatever certain persons have from various apocryphal writings of Oriental authors, beyond what has already been stated, must be regarded as wholly uncertain. And if certain holy Fathers seemed not to reject these entirely, they were not on that account to be transcribed here, especially since they are not in every respect conformable to the Evangelical text. Such is the story of Saint Joseph's rod blossoming before those of all the other kinsmen, like Aaron's rod, especially about his rod miraculously blossoming. by which prodigy the priests of the temple recognized that he was divinely destined above all others for marriage with the most Blessed Virgin. Indeed, the most Blessed Virgin Mary is described by the Prophet Isaiah under the figure of a rod going forth from the root of Jesse, which, joining fruitfulness to virginity by an unprecedented prodigy, blossomed wondrously; and since she, by the law of marriage, passed into the right and possession of Joseph, occasion was given for taking a figurative expression as a literal fact, and for attributing to Joseph a dry rod that had blossomed by the divine power of the Holy Spirit. It also seemed to some that a similar sign was needed so that Joseph, averse to carnal marriage, might be willing to take a wife. But we shall show below that it came about by divine dispensation that, while the observance of the law was preserved, neither party was permitted to evade marriage, and therefore there was no place here for either lot or free choice of the Virgin or of the priests or kinsmen. As for how many years Joseph survived after the finding and bringing back of the twelve-year-old Jesus from the temple, He seems to have died before Christ's preaching. not even a probable conjecture can precisely state; except that it is nearly certain, and held as undoubted by most, that he died before Jesus began to manifest himself to the world, since the Evangelists nowhere further mention him, and the Nazarenes, marveling at Christ's teaching and saying, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Jude and Simon?" Mark 6:3 "And are not his sisters here with us?" would not have passed over his father Joseph if he had been alive; and elsewhere again the mother and brothers, but never the father, are mentioned. Nor indeed was it fitting that he who by law and by name was his father should remain before the eyes of men, when he was about to prove himself the Son of God by such wondrous works.
Section II. The Cult and Feast of Saint Joseph among the Greeks and Other Churches of the East.
[9] The same reason that could have moved God to remove the putative father Joseph from this life before he manifested his Son to the world and to the Jews The cult of Saint Joseph was unknown to the early Church also seems to be among the several other reasons that can be alleged for why the cult of the Lord Joseph was not, like that of the Virgin Mother of God, propagated throughout the whole world along with the Christian faith by the Apostles, or at least instituted by the successors of the Apostles in the same manner as that of the holy Martyrs. Indeed, it seemed dangerous to greatly preach to peoples rude in the mysteries of the faith one whose frequent commendation could in some way undermine belief in the virgin birth; and Joseph, who died before the promulgation of the Law of grace, seemed to belong to the Old Testament, in whose defense the slain Martyrs were more usefully set forth for veneration, as an encouragement to the faithful contending amid persecutions. Yet when faith had been sufficiently strengthened, and the honor of ecclesiastical cult had been laudably extended also to those who shone with outstanding examples of virtue without shedding blood, it seemed fitting to reason
that he whose praise in the Gospel was so great should not be entirely passed over in the sacred rites, even though he had died before the Gospel.
Therefore the Greeks, besides that feast The Greeks instituted which they celebrate on the Sunday preceding the Nativity of Christ in common for all the progenitors of Christ and other Just ones of the Old Testament of both sexes, recalling the names of each with a brief two-verse encomium, wished that the next Sunday after this, which falls within the Octave, should be entirely proper to Joseph, the Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity, the Spouse of Mary the Virgin, to David the King, and to James the Brother of the Lord; perhaps by the same author who marked the Canons of the Office to be recited on that day, composed by himself, with the acrostic of his own name, Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, whose hymns bear this title, to be gathered from the initial letters of the individual stanzas:
Christou se melpo dexion parastatn. Iosph.
"I sing of you, the valiant defender of Christ. Joseph."
[10] To this holy Poet it was reserved to celebrate his patron in those modes that that age approved in sacred songs, with hymns composed by Blessed Joseph the Hymnographer. in which, among other things, he congratulates him on this felicity: that he simultaneously possessed virginity and was called father of the child who was born -- "you obtained virginity and were called father of the child who was born"; that Aaron's rod, blossoming of old, prefigured him, recognized as the spouse of the Virgin by a similar sign; and that finally, strengthened in spirit and adorned with virtues, he gloriously descended to his fathers in extreme old age; and now his feast summons all the ends of the earth to the praise of God, who glorified him and deigned to have him as father. In these hymns, the detail about the blossoming rod would not be displeasing, except that it transitions from a symbolic to a material sense. But what is especially pleasing is the assertion concerning his virginity, in which the virginity of Joseph is praised, accommodated to the sense of the Latin Fathers and of the entire Western Church, although certain Greeks seem to have believed that those who are called the Lord's brothers in the Gospel were sons of Joseph himself from a prior marriage -- which reason also rejects, lest he should have brought hands not entirely pure to the handling of the virginal body of Christ; nor does the customary usage of Scripture demand it, in which the sons of brothers are everywhere called brothers among themselves; and it is especially to be rejected for the reason that they, as will appear from what is to be said below, would have had a prior claim over Christ in the order of obtaining the blessings of David's line and the headship of the family by the rights of legal succession, which seem not to have devolved upon Joseph until after the death of Joachim, Christ not yet having been conceived, from Jacob, the last of the first line of the Zorobabelids. Nor does that great age greatly displease, and his old age, rashly called into doubt. which is attributed to Joseph both by painters everywhere and by ancient tradition, and by Epiphanius in Heresy 78, who relates that he died at the age of ninety. Indeed, what seemed to more recent writers a greater congruity in favor of a younger age, lest a marriage contracted between those too dissimilar in age should seem disgraceful for the elderly man, entirely collapses on account of the law compelling him to it. But a much greater age, such as Cedrenus reports, up to the one hundred and tenth year, we rightly reject, and with the same Epiphanius regard as a fable devised by the Antidicomarianites; for an old man greater than eighty, and one burdened like a widower with numerous children, would have been a burden rather than a help to the Virgin, and equally unfit for the responsibilities of a new family and for the ministry of nurturing Christ, both at home and abroad. But an age somewhat greater than fifty, in one who had always led a celibate life and had preserved by continence and sobriety the strength of his body for enduring any labors for many years still to come, involves no difficulty.
[11] Coptic calendars record the feast of Joseph on the twentieth day of July: Orientals observe it on July 20, and in that one which is found in Selden, in his book On the Sanhedrins of the Hebrews at the end, it is expressly added: "of the Carpenter." And Isidore de Isolani, a writer of the Order of Saint Dominic from about 140 years ago, testifies in his Summa on the Gifts of Saint Joseph, part 4, chapter 9, that the Catholics of the East were accustomed to observe that day with great veneration, and in their churches to read a certain Life of Saint Joseph, of which, having obtained a copy translated from Hebrew into Latin in the year 1340, he gives an epitome, omitting many things which would by no means be accepted by devotees of the holy Roman Church, from an apocryphal life, whose truth, Christ preserving it, cannot fail. In this work, Christ himself, to whom the entire narrative concerning Joseph is attributed while speaking to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, is made to conclude thus: "And they placed the body of Joseph my father in a sepulcher beside the body of his father Jacob. And he died on the twentieth day of July." We do not dispute the day, which Masini, in his Bologna Illustrated, says is observed in many churches of Italy and honored as the death-day of Saint Joseph. As for the place of burial, Bede says it was in the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and it is not far from verisimilitude that his death was divinely arranged so as to fall at that time of year when, according to the custom of the feast day, he had gone up to Jerusalem to worship with his wife and son, as though he died then and was buried in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, so that, what was most desired by the Hebrews, he could be brought to the sepulchers of his ancestors, to which otherwise, being a man of modest, if not negligible, fortune, he would not easily have been transferred from Galilee after death; for we are persuaded that his funeral was attended to in the ordinary manner without great ceremony.
[12] But neither in the Valley of Jehoshaphat itself is the place of burial sufficiently clear; for as we shall say the following day from Quaresmius, the monument of Saint Joseph the Spouse is visited with veneration beside the stairs on which day the Latins hold Joseph as one of the 70 by which one descends to the Virgin's sepulcher, opposite the chapel of Saints Joachim and Anne; and yet Adamnan speaks thus: "In the Valley of Jehoshaphat, not far from the church of Saint Mary, the tower of Jehoshaphat is shown, in which his (Jehoshaphat's) sepulcher is seen; to which tower a certain stone house adjoins on the right side, cut and separated from the rock of the Mount of Olives, in which, hollowed out inside with tools, two sepulchers without any ornament are shown: one of which belongs to that just Simeon who, in the temple, embracing the infant Lord Jesus with both hands, prophesied concerning him; and the other belongs to the equally just Joseph, the Spouse of Saint Mary and the foster-father of the Lord Jesus." Similar accounts are found in Bede. Perhaps, just as regarding the day, so also regarding the person, those Orientals and whoever now follows them in Italy have caused confusion; for all Latin Martyrologists after Ado and Usuard record the feast of Joseph the Just on July 20, the one who, together with Matthias, was proposed for the Apostleship in place of Judas, whom the Roman Martyrology says was consummated by a glorious end in Judea. But as for Joseph the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin, they consistently place him on March 19; Joseph the Spouse on March 19. on which day, while we cannot affirm for certain that Saint Joseph died, we can most plausibly deny that he was married to the Blessed Virgin on that day, even though two copies of Usuard printed by the Carthusian Fathers at Cologne, together with the manuscript Florarium, place his betrothal then. For it is more credible, as Euodius affirms in Nicephorus, that the Incarnation of the Word took place in the fourth month after the betrothal, and thus that the betrothal belongs to the month of December, or at least to January, on various days of which (as we shall say below) the same nuptial solemnity is celebrated in Belgium and France.
Section III. The Feast of Saint Joseph and its Proper Offices in the Latin Church.
[13] Peter de Natalibus, Bishop of Equilio, in book 3, chapter 209, Whether his name was inscribed in the Martyrology of Saint Jerome, having briefly narrated the Life of Saint Joseph in accordance with his purpose, concludes it thus: "In a certain most ancient Calendar, at the beginning of which a rubric was placed stating that it had been taken from the ancient exemplars of Eusebius of Caesarea, I found written: 'The Feast of Joseph, Spouse of Our Lady, on the fourteenth day before the Calends of April'; to which, on account of its antiquity and the origin of the exemplar, I gave sufficient credence." Indeed, in the most ancient Martyrology which we have, transcribed from the monastery of Saint Maximin at Trier, the memory and indeed uniquely of Saint Joseph, Spouse of Saint Mary, is found in nearly the same words on the said day; which Martyrology, being of such a kind that it appears to be an abbreviation of some exemplar of the Hieronymian Martyrology (which is also often cited under the name of Eusebius), almost leads us to the suspicion that that Joseph who is named alone in all other most ancient exemplars, and in many indeed uniquely, on the thirteenth day before the Calends of April, is this most holy Patriarch of ours, and on what day is not clear: who in the Church of Antioch (for in Antioch the aforementioned Maximinian manuscript has the fourteenth before the Calends, while all others have the thirteenth) had a most ancient cult, and who, as the exemplars varied through the carelessness of copyists, first wandered between two days, then was even assigned to both days, and thus was divided into two persons; all the more easily because the Codices that showed Saint Joseph on the 19th day generally used this formula: "At Bethlehem, of Saint Joseph, Foster-father of the Lord." Thus manuscripts of exceptional antiquity, written nearly eight hundred years ago: at least 800 years ago it was read in the calendar, the Reichenau manuscript near Constance, the Patrician manuscript at Naples among the Theatine Fathers preserved among the papers of Caracciolo, the fragment of Cardinal Barberini inserted in Codex 1852, the Fulda manuscript of the Queen of Sweden, likewise the Trier manuscript of Saint Martin, and another from Saint Mary of the Steps of somewhat later date; to which is added the Calendar of the Church of Aquileia, which exists in a transcript in the Vallicellian Library at Rome, so ancient that we thought it should by no means be neglected.
[14] We say nothing of the many exemplars of Usuard, augmented for the use of various Churches three or four hundred years ago, and of calendars of the same age; because the former are of greater moment for our purpose, since they prove that the name of Saint Joseph was inscribed in the calendars of the Latin Churches, if not by Saint Jerome, transcribing only the names and the place of cult from the fuller treatise of Eusebius, then certainly either before or about those same times when the Greeks had already organized a solemn office at which the same feast began to be so celebrated among the monks of the Laurae of Jerusalem, as we saw in the preceding paragraph; although the latter did so on an entirely different day and month than the first, perhaps the Antiochenes, had instituted its celebration, and the notice transmitted to the Latins bore. And these Latins, indeed, seem to have remained with a bare commemoration, such as we have described, until, as Christian affairs in the East were collapsing, the Carmelite Order, happily united in the eleventh and twelfth centuries under one head into a form of European monasticism, finally itself migrated to Europe, where they gradually converted the rite and Greek Office of the Church of Jerusalem, which they had initially used according to the typicon of Saint Sabas, to which the Carmelites had been accustomed in Syria, into the form of the Latin liturgy and psalmody, while preserving certain principal feasts of the ancient Patrons of the Order, among
which it is credible that this very feast of Saint Joseph was one, and was transferred to the day on which it was found inscribed in the Latin calendars.
[15] For it is evident from their Breviaries that the mendicant Orders were the first in ordering an Ecclesiastical Office in honor of Saint Joseph, and that they preceded by their example both other Churches and the Roman Church itself; but who were earlier than those who had long been accustomed to celebrate it annually in the East? Nevertheless, the Office was composed late, they can be believed to have brought its use into Europe: and the Order used it until the reform of the Breviary, as is clear from the readings taken from Peter de Ailly and the hymns, which savor of the sweetness and elegance of Battista Mantovano. That, however, already before he himself composed the sacred calendar -- that is, at the beginning of the sixteenth century -- the cult of Saint Joseph was celebrated in the Order, these verses from book 3, poem 4, do not allow us to doubt:
Holy Father, coming from the blood of the Hebrew King Who had been a Shepherd, your nativity has been added to our though the proper Office was composed rather late. Calendars (so the prudence of the Fathers decreed)... After the tenth, the ninth day of light is yours; your priest veils your temples, And strikes the tinkling bronze to the count for you: He sweeps the floor, gathers fresh greenery from the trimmed beds, And makes the doorposts bloom, the columns put forth leaves, The white altars shine, the chapel give off fragrance; He burns incense and crumbles myrrh over the slow fire.
That we should understand these not of any other calendar than the Carmelite, nor of any other chapel than that of the Mantuan convent, is shown by the fact that he concludes the poem with the kind of ending with which the eulogies of Saints specially proper to the Order are nearly always finished, as those of Saint Cyril, Saint Longinus this month, Saint Angelus in May, etc., but not those of others; and it ends thus:
Look upon us also, now glorified under so great a foster-son, And mindful, impart the longed-for salvation To all Italy, and be present in our homes.
[16] As regards the Franciscans, Arthur of the Monastery, in his Martyrology, cites a decree of the General Chapter sitting at Assisi in the year 1399, The Franciscans adopt the feast in the year 1399. by which it was established that the feast of Saint Joseph should be celebrated under the Office of a Confessor with nine readings; he then indicates other decrees of other General Chapters concerning this matter, conceived within the last forty years of the following century, by which the honor of this feast was increased. The Order of Preachers, indeed, seems to have either received or contemplated something similar well before the end of the fifteenth century; for there exists in the second part of the Legend (for the Historia Lombardica is reckoned the first part), printed at Cologne in 1483 and reprinted two years later at Louvain, a Sermon of Albert the Great on Saint Joseph, with this preface: "To the honor and eternal glory of our Savior, Did Blessed Albert the Great prepare Readings for the Dominicans? who gives wisdom and eloquence abundantly to all who devoutly ask... concerning Joseph, the most holy man and most chaste spouse of the glorious and ever-Virgin Mary, moved by the humble prayer of suppliants who venerate the same Joseph with the affection of their inmost heart, in place of the Matins Readings, I, the least of all Clerics and the lowest of Priests, Albert, a Brother of the Order of Preachers, with divine grace assisting me, have taken care to recite certain things in summary; submitting myself and my words, if any should seem incongruous, to be corrected in charity by learned men." There follows a Life distributed into four proper Readings, from which you would wish nothing absent except that, from popular credulity, it says that Mary was betrothed to him by a marvelous divine sign, in preference to all the other young men of the house of David who were eligible. Blessed Albert the Great taught at Cologne around the year 1250 and had Saint Thomas Aquinas as a disciple there; he died as Bishop of Regensburg in 1280. That this sermon is his, while we would not dare to assert without doubt, we would also not wish to deny; although the style differs from his other writings, being concise and modulated almost after the manner of ecclesiastical hymns -- for Readings for the choir, not a sermon for the pulpit, had to be composed. That it was by Lord Albert rather than by another person of the same name, the Cologne Fathers perhaps knew from domestic tradition. Since, however, it is not established that the use of these Readings was ever accepted by the Order, Cajetan, the General, organized the Office. and Isidore de Isolani in the year 1522, at the end of his Summa on the Gifts of Saint Joseph, appends an Office according to the arrangement, as he says, of the Reverend Master of the Order, Fra Thomas de Vio Cajetan, having nothing in common with those Readings, it will be safer to defer the beginning of the Office instituted among the Preachers, at least a proper one, to the Generalate of Cajetan, who, elected in the year 1508, as the author Leander Albert states, was created Cardinal in the very year 1517 in which the latter published his own work, and seems to have made way for a new election, in which Garcia de Loaysa was created Master.
[17] That the cult of Saint Joseph was also received by various individual Churches, In the Church of Utrecht, a Life of Saint Joseph, long before the Roman Church permitted it to all, we learn from the Utrecht manuscript of the Church of the Holy Savior, written two centuries ago, in which is found "A Legend of Saint Joseph, the virginal Spouse of the Virgin Mother, collected from the sayings of the Saints, omitting apocryphal matters"; but not so pure and solid that it would be worthwhile to present it here. It begins thus: "Joseph, son of Jacob, Spouse of the Virgin Mary, Foster-father of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was from his earliest age until death a most steadfast guardian of perpetual virginity, according to Jerome against Helvidius." To the Legend is appended an Epilogue of his Life, or rather an encomiastic sermon, beginning: "Joseph, son of Jacob, a virginal man and Spouse of the Virgin Mother, is not only prefigured in Joseph according to Bernard, but also in Jacob himself according to Augustine." And after some remarks, when it had been said that he was also well prefigured in Mordecai, and his feast, as also elsewhere in France and Belgium, there follow the excerpts from Peter de Ailly which we gave in section 1; and all these serve to show that the feast was received both in the Church of Utrecht itself, for whose use these things were written, and in several other Churches of France and Belgium at least 250 years ago. For it becomes probable that, on the occasion of the newly instituted solemnity, that treatise was composed and published by the aforesaid Doctor, perhaps not yet a Bishop, who himself closes it with this elegant prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, eternally God from God, and by ineffable humility made man in time from a Virgin, who willed that Saint Joseph should be betrothed to Blessed Mary your mother, a Virgin to a Virgin, and that a humble one should be joined to a humble one, and who wonderfully exalted him from small to great, from humble to lofty, augmented with many virtues and great honors: grant us, we beseech you, by his example, merits, and prayers, true virtue of humility with purity of heart and body; and to us, grounded in humility, grant increase of faith, hope, charity, and all virtues, so that through virtuous merits we may be able to attain the glorious rewards with him. Who with the Father," etc.
[18] Philip, also Bishop of Speyer, granted the Beneficed clergy of his diocese likewise in the Church of Speyer, with a proper Office. permission to read and celebrate under a double feast the feast of Saint Joseph; which Office, collected both from the Gospel and from the approved opinions of the Saints, you may find entirely proper in the Breviary of the year 1507, and nowhere in need of correction. It has this prayer: "Almighty and everlasting God, who deigned to choose Saint Joseph as foster-father and guardian of your Son, and as a faithful custodian of his Mother, so that the care and providence of both might be relieved: grant, we beseech you, that we may be refreshed with spiritual food on his feast, and by his prayers with you may obtain the perpetual custody and grace by which we are saved." Furthermore, the Church of Milan, on the twelfth day of December (for it celebrates no feasts of Saints during the season of Lent), according to the rite of the Ambrosian Liturgy, a proper Mass in Milan, sings a proper Preface to Saint Joseph in this manner: "It is truly fitting and right... that we always and everywhere give thanks to you... through Christ our Lord, whose Blessed Joseph merited to be the foster-child and guardian of the sacred Incarnation, and from whom he received the eternal rewards of his labors. Trusting that we are aided by his merits with you, we humbly beseech your clemency, that you who conferred upon him the prerogative of so great a merit, that he might in a special manner serve your Only-begotten Son both in his divine and human natures, may form us by his examples and console us by his intercessions. Through whom your Majesty," etc. Finally, the Missal which they call Mozarabic or Mixed, and at Toledo, according to the order of the Church of Toledo, reprinted in the year 1551 under the auspices of Archbishop Juan Martinez Siliceo, has a Mass of Saint Joseph entirely proper and distinctive, with this introit: "My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord, and glory to his holy name, because he has made wonderful his Saint Joseph, the Spouse of the Virgin Mother of Christ." In the Calendar, moreover, the feast is noted as to be celebrated in six copes (which is the highest solemnity).
[19] In what year the feast was introduced into the aforesaid Churches of Milan and Toledo, there is no occasion to guess; this is certain: before the years noted in the editions of the said Missals, likewise in the Roman from the year 1490 it was noted as to be celebrated under the rite of a double in the ancient Breviaries of the Roman rite from the year 1490; yet in such a way that slightly older ones (such as one printed in the year 1479 which we possess) place it in the rank of simple feasts. The former Breviary, that of the year [14]90, had proper antiphons, responsories, chapters, and hymns with this prayer: "Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, also with a proper Office; that by the intercession of Blessed Joseph your Confessor, who was found worthy to be called the father of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, and who was called husband of the glorious and ever-Virgin Mary -- not by corruption of the flesh, but nevertheless by the name of husband -- we may be freed from all adversities." That the Office was also introduced into various Churches of France we know from the ancient Breviary of Langres, in which in the year 1604 the same Office is still found after revision -- the same one that we have already noted as less approved. But the Church of Maurienne acted more wisely, preferring to take the readings of the second and third Nocturns from Augustine and Origen, with all the rest from the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff. For there were in this Office certain things not entirely established; and to those to whom it seemed right that everything which could be called into doubt should be absent from the order of the divine psalmody, the antiphons at Vespers were rightly displeasing, some of which, especially the chief one at Magnificat, contained: "The celestial Pontiff, instructed by an oracle, having seen the miracle of the flowering rod of Joseph and the sign of the appearing dove, commands Mary to be given to Joseph in marriage, that the divine dispensation might be fulfilled."
[20] Therefore, when in the year 1522 the same Breviary was reprinted at Venice, more augmented and corrected, but around 1522 it was amended, with only the readings of the former Office retained, all else was renewed, and hymns in the more elegant Sapphic meter were composed, and antiphons taken from the Gospel, so that nothing in either was not entirely secure
and this more fitting prayer was substituted for the former: "O God, who delivered to your most faithful Patriarch Joseph the incomparable treasure of your parent, Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to be guarded, and to whom, by reason of the prerogative of his special merits, you delivered your very self as Son: grant us, by his merits and prayers, to despise earthly things and to prepare our hearts as chaste tabernacles for you." Finally, two years later, for some reason unknown to me, the curators of the new edition for the use of the Franciscan Order removed the Office itself from the body of the Breviary, but among the extravagant additions at the end of the book, they reprinted the first one, which we said was less approved. From all this it seems to follow that the aforesaid change of the noted Offices was not established with sufficient finality, and again changed by Pius V. indeed that neither was received into universal use; and therefore Pope Pius V, in the Breviary restored according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, abolished both and ordered that, besides the prayer which is still recited today and the proper readings from Saint Bernard for the second nocturn, everything should be done from the Common of a Confessor not a Pontiff; which was afterward observed even after Urban VIII wished the feast of the Lord Joseph to be observed also by the people, Urban VIII commands the feast for the people, like other feasts common to the whole Church by precept -- which had been a pious wish of Isidore de Isolani of the sacred Order of Preachers, when, petitioning Adrian VI on this matter, he dedicated to him his Summa on Blessed Joseph. From this work, and from various testimonies of the holy Fathers on the same subject, and from the opinions of more recent authors, Charles Stengel, a celebrated writer of the Benedictine Order, Writers on Saint Joseph compiled his own Joseph, printed at Munich in the year 1616 and illustrated with elegant engravings from the burin of Raphael Sadeler. A similar writing method to Stengel's, but in the French language and with a greater apparatus of common topics, was employed by Philippe de Vliesberghe, surnamed des Champs, Lord of Pourville, etc., in a book printed at Douai in 1621, to which, from the saying of a certain Saint, he gave the title "Joseph, Jewel of the World," following the entire Life of Saint Joseph in historical order. Charles de Saint-Paul also, Abbot and Superior General of the Bernardines, whom they call Feuillants, in France, published at Paris in the year 1629, in the French language, tables of the eminent qualities of Saint Joseph, of which the first exhibits him as third in the created trinity, the second as the Spouse of the Virgin, the third as the Father of Christ, the fourth as a just man, and the fifth and last as glorious in heaven and there powerful in interceding for us. From our own Society of Jesus, and also of the French nation, the same subject was elegantly and piously treated in the same language by Etienne Binet and Paul Barry, both best known and most useful to all France for the publication of ascetical books; and the latter also inserted into his little work miraculous favors divinely bestowed upon the devout of the most holy Patriarch, of which we append some rendered into Latin at the end of this treatise.
[21] The prior institution of the feast by Gregory XV. The aforesaid decree of Urban concerning the celebration of the feast of Saint Joseph also by the common people was not immediately and everywhere received outside Italy, and various Churches of Belgium finally admitted it under Innocent X; but neither was Urban the first in establishing that feast, but rather renewed the sanctions of his predecessor Gregory XV, which had either not been received or had been abolished by desuetude, under whom you find a decree issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the Marian Calendar of George Colveneer. Sixtus IV is also added, of whom Platina says in his Lives of the Pontiffs: "He added many solemnities to the old ones: Also by Sixtus IV? as those of the Conception, the Presentation of the most Blessed Virgin Mother of God, Saints Anne, Joseph, and Francis, which he ordered to be celebrated in the Church." But unless we wish to say that Saint Francis was also honored with a feast to be observed by the people, we cannot understand here anything other than that he established that the Office should be celebrated as a double throughout the universal Church, as we have said. Furthermore, the Princess Isabella Clara Eugenia, of most praiseworthy memory, bringing with her from Spain into Belgium an outstanding zeal for promoting the devotion of the faithful toward this Saint -- where through the followers of Saint Teresa he was held in great honor by all -- achieved so much by her own example that throughout the whole city of Brussels, with workshops closed, March 19 was reckoned among festive days, long before the most recent precept was pronounced by Urban VIII. The same began to be done with the greatest solemnity in Bohemia, on April 11, 1655, and indeed by mandate of the Emperor and the Estates, as a feast of the Patron of that kingdom under the title of Preserver of the Peace, Saint Joseph, Patron of Bohemia. as we learned from letters sent to us from Germany. But why on the eleventh day of April? Namely, in that year, when Easter fell on March 28, the commemoration of Saint Joseph fell on the Friday after Passion Sunday -- a time scarcely suitable for the new joy of a recent feast, so that it was more fitting for it to be transferred, with the most ample pomp, to the Second Sunday after Easter for celebration.
Section IV. The Marriage of Joseph and Mary: Necessary by Law, and in What Degree of Consanguinity Was It Contracted?
[22] It is the economy of the Holy Spirit to intersperse matters to be believed with causes for doubt, so that Among other obscure points of faith concerning Christ credulity, striving and pressing through the veil, may carry off the prize of no idle victory. This can be seen both in the place and time of the birth of the Messiah from the divine promise, and especially in his genealogy: for that he would descend from the seed of Abraham and the stock of David was a prophecy noted everywhere and universally; but how its truth could stand was made especially obscure by the Evangelists Luke and Matthew when, with an expanded series of generations and as if with the reliability of documents, they seemed to wish to propose it as clearly demonstrated. For besides the fact that one weaves the natural genealogy and the other the legal, the genealogy is traced from Joseph, since one descends from David to Joseph through Solomon and the other traces the generations back to the source through Nathan: what does it mean that they explain to us the lineage of Joseph? Since Joseph, abstracting from the law and considered precisely as the spouse of Mary, stood in relation to Christ, the son of Mary alone, as a stepfather to a stepson. And as it is certain that the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of stepfathers in no way whatsoever pertain to the genealogies of stepsons, through their common tribe, not sufficiently explained by itself so it ought to be equally certain that those enumerated by either Luke or Matthew as progenitors of Joseph alone, and not also of Mary, would contribute absolutely nothing to what Matthew manifestly promises in the very title, and Luke implicitly in the whole purpose of his work, namely the generation of Jesus Christ; and thus occasion would be given to adversaries of the truth for charging the Evangelists with falsehood or our faith with error. The Fathers everywhere respond with nearly one voice: Mary was of the same tribe as Joseph, and from this it is established that the genealogy of both is common; for Joseph is praised for justice, which he would in no way have possessed if, contrary to the precept of the law, he had taken a wife from anywhere other than the tribe of his father. But here no other law can be adduced than that which, enacted on the occasion of the daughters of Zelophehad, is to be understood as applying only to girls inheriting their paternal estates in full, and reciprocally extends only to those men who were joined to such girls by the nearest agnatic relationship -- as is clear from several histories of the Scriptures.
[23] Wherefore the holy Fathers accomplished nothing by that response unless, unless in the nearest degree. as if the matter were held certain from ancient tradition, the case of the aforesaid law had occurred in Blessed Mary, who, as the sole offspring and heir of Joachim, was owed to Joseph, a kinsman so close that it was entirely the same thing, and was understood to be the same, to construct the genealogy of either Mary or Joseph. But by what means the same? This, Joseph was Mary's uncle the Evangelists, leaving it in the popular consciousness as a thing then commonly known, were divinely prevented from weaving into their writings, so that the diligence of later generations might struggle in investigating it, and faith might be exercised. Among the various authors pursuing various paths, which anyone can read and see among the Interpreters, we prefer above all others the opinion of a most learned man of our Society, namely Peter Possinus, hitherto hardly common -- which, briefly proposed by the Reverend Father Jean Besson in his Lucubrations on the Canticles at verse 13 of chapter 1, he more broadly set forth and expounded in his Theogenealogical Diactics after the first Catena of the Greek Fathers on Matthew -- where, having weighed and considered all things from every side, he concludes that both Evangelists wove the Genealogy of Christ through Joseph in no other way than insofar as all the very same persons who were ancestors of Joseph were also ancestors of Mary: whence the Fathers wished a legitimate consequence to be drawn from the genealogy of Joseph to the genealogy of Mary, and therefore of Jesus himself. But this could not have been otherwise than if either both were born of the same father (which the marriage contracted between the two forbids us to think) or she was his brother's granddaughter and he her uncle. For whatever other degree of kinship you may imagine, you will introduce one or more persons pertaining nothing to the genealogy of Christ, who drew his flesh not from Joseph but from the Virgin alone. From this Possinus most justly concludes that the holy Fathers, by the response we have mentioned, prepared the way for themselves to say that Blessed Mary was born of a brother of Joseph, even if no one explained this explicitly.
[24] Indeed, from an attentive meditation on the Scriptures (these are the words of Possinus concluding the whole disputation) and of the ancient polity of the Jewish people, it is proved from the practice of the Hebrews I seem to have discovered that there was in use among the Hebrews a certain singular kind of legal guardianship or right of conjugal adoption, by which each uncle was bound by the obligation of a certain duty, established by common estimation, to take into his house his orphaned niece-ward, left bereaved by the premature death of her father, and to betroth her to himself or to his son, until such time as, having subsequently reached adult age, the nuptials could be celebrated. Examples of this custom could be sought from far back, even from Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew race, and his brother Nahor, who undertook the care of the orphaned virgins left by their brother Haran -- Iscah, by another name Sarai, and Milcah. But we have a more recent and more effective argument and example of this institution, and by the example of Mordecai: written in the book of Esther, chapter 11, in these words: "There was a Jewish man in the city of Susa, named Mordecai... who was the foster-father of the daughter of his brother, Edissa, who was called by another name Esther, and had lost both parents, exceedingly fair and beautiful of face; and when her father and mother were dead, Mordecai adopted her as his daughter" -- which, received word for word from the Hebrew, but understood and explained by the Rabbis in our sense, the Seventy-two Interpreters of venerable and sacrosanct authority rendered thus in Greek: "And when her parents had died, he trained her for himself as a wife."
life and liberty upon her people -- so in a truly outstanding and singular manner, just as Esther was a figure of Mary, so that notwithstanding his vow of chastity, so Mordecai was a figure of Joseph, who, compelled by no other than the twofold necessity and duty of obedience and charity, did a certain violence to the resolve he had previously conceived and confirmed by the religious obligation of a vow -- a resolve of preserving and even professing his virginity to his last breath -- insofar, that is, as he endured to receive a Virgin into his house and to celebrate the betrothal and nuptials with her, which would never have proceeded to carnal union unless God had more expressly commanded it, on account of a similar vow of the Blessed Virgin, perhaps divinely revealed to him. Certainly nothing more plausible can be said to excuse a marriage subsequent to such a vow than that, from the time the vow was made, an unforeseen necessity of entering into marriage arose which bound both equally, the marriage was necessary on both sides, if they wished the law to be observed, as indeed they did. The same reasoning places the greater age of Joseph, who was until then celibate, believed by all antiquity, beyond any suspicion of incontinence -- a suspicion which otherwise would easily have descended into the minds of the common people; and, what is the main point, it ensures that the genealogical series set forth by the Evangelists neither abounds in superfluous names pertaining nothing to the Virgin's Son nor is destitute of necessary ones: and the true genealogy of Christ: for even though the Virgin's father Joachim is passed over in silence, nevertheless Joseph is there to fill that degree, not as a son-in-law summoned from outside, but found at home in the place of a father, and about to ascribe to Christ all the same ancestors that Joachim, had he been expressly placed in the series, would have ascribed to him.
[26] These things do not hold so in the opinions of others. For those who gratuitously wish Heli to be Heliakim, one or the other of which is lacking in the opinions of others and either name to be the same as that of Joachim, and this Joachim to be a brother of Jacob, so that the spouses born of them would be cousins -- whichever of the two they assign as the father of Joseph, they introduce one stranger into the genealogy of Christ; and still more if they wish us to ascend higher in order to arrive at the common root of consanguinity. Cornelius a Lapide, commenting on Luke, believes he can settle the whole matter if he makes the father of Joseph and Anna, the mother of Mary, brother and sister, so that Luke would have traced the paternal line of Mary, and Matthew the maternal, which was common to her and Joseph. Great is the name of Cornelius in our estimation, and deservedly venerable; but, with all due respect to him, just as reason shrinks from believing that Luke, who followed the natural generation in all other instances, placed a son-in-law instead of a son or daughter at the very beginning, so Matthew would deservedly be charged with vain boasting for having paraded before the Jews a vain pomp of royal names from which Christ would have no right to the royal line of David -- Jews who were expecting and would demand that the Messiah be the heir of David's blessings according to legitimate succession. For who is unaware that Jewish women, unless they were the sole heiresses of their father's inheritance without a brother, were forbidden by no law from marrying into an alien family, and by that very act of marrying out they lost absolutely every paternal right? So that Anna, married to Joachim, who was descended from a family which (as is supposed) was not royal, could not have brought the daughter born of that marriage into the family of her own father, unless that daughter was released from the house of Joachim; and no law whatever compelled this to be done, for what law can be produced that obliges heiress-wards to the nearest kinsman on the mother's side? Since from that arrangement manifest confusion of possessions would necessarily arise, which the laws wished to be avoided by every means.
Section V. The Twofold Genealogy of Joseph in Matthew and Luke, and Christ's Descent from Both.
[27] Here is another knot, untied by the aforementioned Possinus with no unhappy conjecture, Not Matthew writing for the Jews, in which indeed very many of the holy Fathers and Interpreters preceded him, saying that by one of the Evangelists the order of carnal generation is preserved, and by the other the principle of legal succession is observed. But most of them, rashly following Africanus (from whom they otherwise diverge in the conjunction of both lines), seem to have ascribed to Matthew, not sufficiently conformably either to reason or to the Scriptures, the series of generation according to nature, and to Luke the other according to legal succession. For Matthew, who was writing in Hebrew for the Jews, but Luke, the Evangelist of the Gentiles. who measured all rights according to the prescription of the law, was more properly the one to do this than Luke, whose Gospel, written in Greek, was directed rather to the instruction of the Gentiles, who were not so curious about Jewish ceremonies and laws, or were utterly ignorant of them. But lest we seem to prescribe to the Holy Spirit in this matter, let us rather inquire what was done rather than what ought to have been done; and we shall conveniently ascertain both by examining with Possinus the generations of each series and comparing them with the irrefutable testimony of the Scriptures.
[28] Luke constructs the carnal genealogy of Christ, What then does Luke? When at the beginning of his series, about to ascend upward from Christ, he had called him the son of Joseph, he expressly added "as was supposed," lest anyone should suspect a natural generation. He was supposed to be so because of the marriage of Joseph with Mary -- supposing, as a thing commonly known, that she was the niece of her uncle -- and therefore having no doubt that the grandfather of the one was, by carnal generation, the father of the other. Then without any restriction he proceeds absolutely to reviewing the rest in order: "who was the son of Heli, who was the son of Matthat," and so on for the rest. For unless these were carnally begotten one from another, you would have to extend that "as was supposed" beyond Christ, and further conceive the Evangelist to proceed on the same basis whenever any of the ancestors of Christ has a double father, one legal and the other natural. But Luke does not do this; rather the contrary, in the case of Obed, whose father Boaz, in the book of Ruth, chapter 5, we hear openly declaring in the assembly: "You are witnesses today that I have taken Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, as my wife, that I may raise up the name of the deceased in his inheritance, so that his name may not be blotted out from his family and his brethren and his people." Obed, therefore, born of that marriage, should have been reckoned to Mahlon according to the law, unless Luke was following the order of nature and wished to say that Joseph was the son of Heli as truly as Obed was the son of Boaz, even though he was legally the son of Mahlon; nor can any other degree be assigned in which Luke regarded the law rather than nature.
[29] On the other hand, the Evangelist Matthew, wherever the natural series fails, it is shown that Matthew follows the series of the promise, follows the succession of right; and it can be shown by frequent examples that "begot" is taken by him either simply or metaphorically, so as to be the same as "had as his successor in the headship of the Davidic family and in the blessings given in reference to the Messiah, to David and before him to Abraham." For this is what that solemn proposition seems to signify: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." On which matter see Possinus carefully arguing in chapter 10, where he shows that a right seems to have been granted to Abraham of always having one person on earth, until Christ was born, who would represent him as heir of the promise of the Messiah to be born from him. And this person would generally be he who was first among his brothers in the order of birth (unless a particular revelation intervened, as happened with Jacob, Judah, David, and Solomon), and the same propagated in a direct line by natural generation, continued through legal successions, until, when the sins of Solomon and the Solomonids demanded it, this order, so provided from the beginning, was disturbed -- while the primary purpose of God and the faithfulness of the promise still stood and attained their end through the path of legal succession, as will be explained in what follows. From all this it will also follow that either neither Evangelist follows a strictly natural order -- which is absurd -- or Luke does; and for this reason he extends his genealogy all the way to Adam, while Matthew stops at Abraham, as the first head of the divine promise, according to which the born Messiah was proclaimed to the Jews, who cared little about Abraham's predecessors, since those ancestors were common to them and many other nations, and indeed ultimately to all mankind.
[30] To prove moreover what we have already said about Matthew -- namely that when the natural series fails, it is shown in Hezekiah, he has recourse to the legal one -- first, Possinus demonstrates that the most holy King Hezekiah was not the natural son of the most impious Ahaz. He demonstrates this, I say, showing clearly from Scripture in chapters 53 and 54, with all evasions closed off, that Hezekiah cannot be called the son of Ahaz unless it is believed that he was born of the wanton lust of a nine-year-old boy, beyond his age, and indeed of a fornicatory kind -- for who would have given a legitimate wife to a boy of that age? And that the reigning Ahaz had only one son, and that he was consumed by a sacrilegious holocaust in honor of the idol Moloch in a frenzied rage, is gathered from the same Scriptures without difficulty. as the successor of Ahaz, who died without children, So that in Isaiah, chapter 14, Philistia could rightly rejoice, because with Ahaz dying without children, the rod of his smiter was broken -- that is, of Uzziah, who was the first of the kings of Judah to begin afflicting the Philistines, and whose posterity was now failing in Ahaz. But the Prophet tempers that joy: "For from the root of the serpent a basilisk shall come forth" -- that is, from the same royal stock from which Uzziah proceeded, creeping like a serpent along the ground and consuming all the fruit of victories in destroying and rebuilding fortifications, there shall come forth Hezekiah, who like a winged serpent with the greatest speed shall spread destruction far and wide through all the territories of Philistia. For he himself, as is said in 4 Kings 18, "smote the Philistines even to Gaza and all their borders, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city." But whose son? from the nearest agnatic line. That indeed is obscure; yet Scripture sufficiently indicates that Uzziah, who was elevated to the kingdom by the consent and zeal of the people, had several brothers -- for unless they existed, why would the sacred histories have so expressly and contrary to custom mentioned the popular favor? And if one must ascend higher, it is at any rate entirely certain that Jehoshaphat begat six other sons, expressly named in 2 Chronicles 21. Finally, wherever he was born, if he was not the son of Ahaz -- which is shown not to have been the case -- there can be no doubt that by right of succession, when a branch of the royal stock was extinguished, Hezekiah succeeded as the one closest to the scepter by degrees of kinship: which is sufficient for our purpose.
[31] The second example of legal succession reported by Matthew, but mixed with natural, we have at verse 11, where it is said: 2. In Jechoniah, legally a brother "And Josiah begot Jechoniah and his brothers in the transmigration of Babylon." Namely, when Jehoiakim, who was Josiah's firstborn by the death of Johanan, was destroyed at Babylon, his son Jechoniah, in claiming the inheritance of his grandfather Josiah, became equal to his uncles Zedekiah and Shallum; who therefore seem to be called here brothers of Jechoniah -- unless you prefer to take the name "brothers" more broadly for all the nearest blood relatives from the common grandfather Josiah, of his uncles all of whom perished in the transmigration of Babylon, having been partly already carried off there and partly killed while being carried off, together with the sons of Zedekiah, who had been substituted for his brother Jehoiakim in the kingdom
by Nebuchadnezzar, were slain at Riblah. But after the transmigration of Babylon -- that is, after all the people with their leaders had already been carried off to Babylon -- there Jechoniah begot Shealtiel.
[32] But how did he beget? King Evil-merodach indeed, in the very year he began to reign, raised the captive King from prison, 3. In Shealtiel, only the legal son of Jechoniah and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him. Yet who would dare deny that the terrible threat of God, pronounced against Jechoniah in Jeremiah 22, was fulfilled? "Thus says the Lord: Write this man as childless" -- not because he begot no sons (for a little above, mention is made of the seed propagated by him and destined to die in captivity), but because "there shall not be of his seed a man who sits upon the throne of David and has power any longer in Judah." This would certainly not have been fulfilled if Zerubbabel had been not merely the grandson of Jechoniah through his son, a long-reigning and successful prince of the Jewish people restored to their ancestral seats, but if through him even Christ himself -- whose kingdom shall have no end, the most longed-for fulfillment of all prior promises -- had been propagated from the seed of Jechoniah through the series of natural generation, as those maintain who make Matthew the author of such a series.
Section VI. The Divine Promises Transferred from the Solomonids to the Nathanites: From These, the Parents of Christ According to Both Lines.
[33] From the Solomonids to the Nathanites the promise passes, When Jechoniah, the last of the Solomonids, died without issue, as has been said -- having been shown once more to the Jews captive in Babylon shortly before his death, as a brief and vain hope -- the Solomonic line utterly withered, and, as was revealed to Saint Bridget, the promise was not completed in Solomon, but passed from his descendants to the descendants of his brother Nathan, born of the same Bathsheba after Solomon. From which Nathan, seek from Luke the line of carnal generation drawn down to Shealtiel, and conclude that Matthew, in him and his posterity, was regarding only the legal succession. And to this the whole of Psalm 88 pertains, in which David, in a prophetic spirit, miserably laments the transference of the headship, together with the promise made to him concerning the Messiah to be born from him, from the Solomonids to the Nathanites; concerning which Psalm 88 treats after he had so magnificently extolled "the faithful mercies of David" -- that is, those absolutely and irrevocably dedicated to David. Having hoped that those mercies which had been translated to Solomon would also remain so, and not having persuaded himself that the scourges of paternal indignation, threatened against sinning children, would proceed to the point of a change of the Christ, he again repeats the oaths made to him; and as if he had not noticed that God had spoken of himself, David alone -- "But my mercy I will not take from him, but I will fulfill it in some one of his sons, being bound to none by name and ready to deal with each according to his merits" -- he thus sorrowfully exclaims: "But you have rejected and despised" -- the royal stock, that is, hitherto descended from Solomon -- "you have deferred your Christ," or transferred him elsewhere. Then, pursuing the other things that are lamentable in the destruction of the city and the ruin of the Solomonids: predicting the change of the Christ: "Where," he says, "are your ancient mercies, O Lord?... Remember the reproach of your servants... with which your enemies have reproached... the change of your Christ."
[34] The Gentiles indeed taunted the Jews after the death of Jechoniah -- thus Joseph is the legal son of Jacob, who had until then believed that their hope would be fulfilled in the Solomonids -- that now it appeared at last to be vain. But it was by no means vain, though it had to be understood otherwise than they had believed, and was to be fulfilled in the succession of the Nathanites -- this the Prophet acknowledges, acquiescing in the divine will at the end of the psalm, saying: "So be it, so be it." From that time, however, that certain and infallible expectation of the Messiah from David became more difficult for the Jews; and the difficulty and obscurity grew further when, at the death of Jacob, who is assigned as the legal father of Saint Joseph and therefore also of the Virgin Mary, that principal line of the Zorobabelids drawn through Abiud failed; and, in order to arrive at the true heirs of the promise, it was necessary to descend through the carnal generations from Rhesa, another son of Zerubbabel, to the posterity of Heli -- and this after the prior death of Joachim, Christ was Joseph's legal son, so that, with him omitted, Joseph had to be named immediately after Jacob as the husband of Mary -- not any sort of husband, but, as the Athenians say, epidikazomenos, taken by right of the nearest kinship according to the prescription of the Law. In which sense the name "husband" cannot seem alien to a genealogy, being suitable for constituting one degree. For by this it came about that Joseph stood in the place of a father to Christ, and upon him, even if there had been no marriage with the Virgin, by the sole right of agnation, as upon a legal son, he would have devolved all the right he had acquired. Because Christ, through his mother made fruitful by the Holy Spirit -- and therefore introducing nothing of foreign blood into his lineage -- was as truly the legal son of Joseph as he was truly, through the same mother and Joachim, the carnal son and heir of Heli, the common parent of Mary and Joseph: whom by representing, Christ became qualified to enter upon whatever right had devolved upon the head of the deceased Heli through the death of his son Joseph, who died with no offspring propagated from himself.
[35] independently of the marriage with Mary, So that the marriage contracted with Mary was not necessary or useful for inserting Christ into the succession of the kingdom of Judah: for no marital law made a stepson the necessary heir of his stepfather; nor because through that law the wife's body passes into the husband's power, does it follow that everything whatsoever that is born from her in any manner must or can be imputed to the husband -- as is clear in the case of illegitimate children. Nevertheless, the same marriage was ordained by God for other pressing reasons, of which these two are the chief: that the mystery of the virginal conception might be placed beyond the suspicion of a fornicatory union, until miracles proved that the Son of God, the Messiah, could both be begotten and was in fact begotten without male intercourse; and secondly, that the law concerning the marriages of heiresses assuming their paternal inheritances in full might be observed, provided for other reasons such as Mary was to Joachim. That this law had force even to the point of conscience, and that its neglect was to be imputed as a fault, is sufficiently indicated by the words of Sarah, seven times widowed and still a virgin, from the book of Tobit, chapter 3, according to the Greek edition of the Septuagint: "I am the only child of my father, who has no son besides me who could succeed him; nor does he have a brother or nephew born of a brother, for whom I might keep myself as wife" -- as if implying that it could not be reckoned as her fault that, having no such person, she had consented to marry others; and that therefore the death of so many husbands should not be imputed to her, as though they were killed for her transgression of the law, in order to avert the injury that such marriages would inflict upon the nearest kinsman to whom she was obliged to keep herself.
[36] Furthermore, to return the discussion to where it digressed, the foundation for establishing this legal filiation of Christ to Joseph is a certain right, The foundation of the legal filiation, as they call it, of representation, established in the Jewish commonwealth and persisting even now among the remnants of the Dispersion. On account of this, Hebrew jurists, by a common dictum or axiom, deny that it can happen in their nation that anyone should die without a certain heir, because it cannot but happen that, by ascending upward, one arrives at a certain person who has some living descendant from him in a direct line of carnal generation, by whom he can be represented in order to divide the inheritance. And if, for want of natural offspring, the inheritance cannot be rolled further forward, having no one in whom to rest, it necessarily revolves back to the head until it finds someone surviving by a certain legal fiction -- as in the present case was Christ, ascending through Mary and Joachim to Heli, the common father of Joseph and Joachim.
[37] And this is why Josephus says, in his book against Apion, that the Jews were so diligent and scrupulous in this matter, on account of which the Jews had such great care for genealogies: that they prescribed a singular care, by divine institution, not for any priests dispersed through various places and shrines, as the Egyptians and Chaldeans did, but for one race, one temple fixed at Jerusalem, ministered by the descendants of Aaron and indeed by their chief, the High Priest -- a care for preserving in secret records the memory of things done publicly, as well as those pertaining to private families and persons, but whose successions it was of public interest to know. And lest anyone suppose that these perished when the temple was destroyed by the Chaldeans, let him read 1 Esdras, chapter 11, where it is said that the genealogy of certain priests, about whose lineage there was doubt, was sought (certainly in the sacred treasury or archive, translated to Babylon with the rest of the captivity and brought back by the returning Jews), and being not found, they were expelled from the priesthood -- a proof, says Possinus, manifestly showing that a diligent census of all families was customarily kept there, at least of the Priestly and Royal ones; and that the same diligence still endures is known by all who know the nation.
[38] Relying therefore on the authority of such tables, Matthew, intending to prove that Christ, who had said and proved himself to be the Messiah with such great evidence of signs, possessed that very thing from which Matthew shows Christ which they chiefly regarded and required -- namely, a true and legitimate succession from David -- achieved what he intended most perfectly, observing all the fine points of Jewish law under the direction of the Holy Spirit. And therefore we hardly doubt that he omitted the names of the Kings Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah because they were lacking in the said tables, having been struck from them by priestly judgment, by a sort of sentence of excommunication which they had incurred while living, as a mark of disgrace -- in the same way as afterward in the Church the custom was adopted of striking from the sacred diptychs the names of deceased Bishops who had been marked with a graver stain. The same may have applied to Jehoiakim, the father of Jechoniah, and perhaps to certain others as well. But why the Priests erased these rather than others equally or more impious from the records, Possinus discusses learnedly and solidly in chapters 30 and 45. So that his doctrine may be more easily grasped, here is a Genealogical Table from David to Joseph -- on one side according to law from Solomon, on the other according to nature from Nathan -- until both series, converging in Shealtiel and Zerubbabel and then again diverging from them, return to each other. For those who wish the two aforementioned, namely Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, to be different persons in Matthew from those in Mark, prove this by no argument; nor do we doubt that Zerubbabel was by nature the son of Shealtiel, even though in 1 Chronicles 3 he is called the son of Pedaiah, who was perhaps his uncle or elder brother, who died without heirs born from himself, and to whom therefore Zerubbabel was a legal son. We have wished to mark with asterisks * such successions insofar as they were adopted by Matthew to supply the failure of the natural series; the rest we have marked with a straight line.
GENEALOGICAL TABLE
OF JOSEPH, SON OF DAVID,
AND OF JESUS CHRIST, SON OF DAVID,
according to the order of
LAW --- NATURE
from Matthew. --- from Luke.
DAVID, SON OF ABRAHAM
From the first year of the people led back from Babylon by Zerubbabel
of the Israelite people until Christ, generally some 536 years are counted; and since nine generations, such as are counted only in Matthew, are not sufficient for these, it follows that some intermediate ones (it is uncertain how many, where to be inserted, and perhaps not all propagated in a natural series) were struck from the sacred books of the temple for a reason similar to that for which the three Kings marked with a cross above and finally Jehoiakim, the father of Jechoniah, were erased from the same, and therefore were omitted by Matthew, who was looking only at those in enumerating the progenitors of Christ.
[39] Having set forth, as we said, the genealogy according to law, Matthew, The oracle of Jacob is explained as a matter easy for the Jews, who were by no means ignorant of their own law, left it to them to examine how those legal successions were linked through carnal generations and the rights of the nearest consanguinity -- since he deemed it sufficient to have shown from their own tables that the promises made to Abraham and David pertained to Christ, and that God had therefore fulfilled what he had promised in Genesis 49: "The scepter shall not be taken away from Judah, nor a leader from his thigh, until he comes who is to be sent." For just as the scepter still endures in France after the third change of the royal line -- indeed, even in England, even after foreigners, the utterly alien Dukes of Normandy, seized power there -- so the scepter endured in Judah as long as the Jewish people had Kings and Princes by whom they were governed according to their own laws, from whatever tribe or nation those rulers were either chosen or imposed. The last of these was Archelaus, who immediately after his father's death was penalized by the Romans with the loss of half the kingdom, which, after he was expelled, was divided into four tetrarchies: as regards the political kingdom, and Judea was left out of the allotment, reserved for Roman governors.
[40] Nor, as has already been shown, was a Leader removed from the thigh of Judah until the Messiah was born -- that is, the head of the tribe descended from Judah -- and the domestic headship in the tribe of Judah, and indeed such a head as, descending through David, would leave behind him successors of the paternal blessing. It is credible that these came to an end in Joseph while Christ was growing up, so that the Jews, after Christ was taken away, did not and do not now have anyone whom, leading back to David, they could substitute for David after Christ by the privilege of representation that we have described. For it is entirely credible that those who are called the Lord's brothers in the Scriptures were blood relatives of Christ on the side of his grandmother Anne, and belonged either to the Aaronic tribe or, through mothers married outside their tribe, to any other whatsoever, dedicated to David, but by no means to the house and family of David, to which the headship in Judah had been established by God. For we believe Herod was no less zealously engaged in utterly destroying this family than in killing the infants of Bethlehem; because had he not done this, it would have been sufficient for the Savior, born by chance at Bethlehem, to be removed from there early, nor would it have been necessary for Christ's family to remain in exile in Egypt until Herod's death. And there would have been less to fear from Archelaus, unless it could be feared that he would, following his father's example, continue to seek out the shoots of the Davidic stock, wherever they might be hiding, to crush them. If any escaped Herod's cruel diligence, Vespasian, as Eusebius testifies, strove to remove them all, and after Christ's birth utterly extinguished, as regards others although that punishment perhaps reached many who, with some vain boasting, were laying claim to nobility, rashly and falsely inserting themselves into the name of the Davidic family, already previously entirely extinct on earth and remaining in the sole person of Christ, the heavenly King, both then and forever. It certainly pertained to divine Providence to remove from the Jews even that hope which could have been founded on any other branch of the Davidic family.
[41] Nor should you say that through the representation already explained, as long as there shall be Jews carnally descended from Judah, through Herod and Vespasian. it will necessarily be possible to find someone who, by Jews unwilling to believe in the Resurrection of Christ and the perpetuity founded upon it, would be regarded as the Leader and head of the family of Judah, and the heir of David, even though utterly extinct, by the same right by which Christ was heir of Solomon. For such a person would not be of the seed of David, and therefore would not maintain his claim by the same right as Christ, but only by a similar one. Nor is the Patriarchal blessing to be understood of any sort of leadership, but of that which, together with the kingdom, was to take its beginning in David and was to be made eternal in the Messiah, so often and so solemnly promised from the seed of David himself. Unless the obstinate are willing to believe this has already happened, they cannot now even falsely hope it will happen, if our opinion concerning the utter extinction of David's family is true. And these things, thus far, The author of the doctrine proposed in these sections. have been gathered from the most learned Peter Possinus's Diactics, with as much brevity as we could manage, with a few additions of our own. Let him who wishes to see innumerable other most curious questions, partly brought forward to confirm this doctrine and partly concerning the rest of Christ's genealogy, read the work itself. These matters can be treated on the day of October 9, when the most holy Patriarch Abraham is venerated, and on December 29, when the Roman Martyrology commemorates David, the founder of the royal line. Moreover, all and each of the resolutions of the aforesaid Diactics are praised, embraced, and reduced to a synopsis by our own Giovanni Battista Cancellotti, Confessor of His Holiness Alexander VII, in the apparatus to his Marian Annals -- which it suffices to have noted here.
Section VII. The Betrothal of Christ's Holy Parents and Their Vow of Continence.
[42] George Colveneer, Doctor of Sacred Theology and Chancellor of the University of Douai, The feast of the Betrothal began about 200 years ago, about thirty years ago published a Calendar of the most sacred Virgin Mary, in which he speaks of the feast of the virginal Betrothal on February 23 in this manner: "I do not find a mention of this feast in the Western Church older than two hundred years (in the Eastern Church, as we believe, it is still unknown), at which time Jean Gerson, the most celebrated Chancellor of the University of Paris, labored much for its institution; and there exist two letters of his on this matter in part 4 of his works, along with an Office for this feast arranged by him. In the preceding century, however, another Office on the same subject was composed by Peter Auratus, of the Order of Preachers, Doctor of Sacred Theology, granted by Paul III to the Order of Saint Francis, who in the year 1546 solicited Paul III by letter to deign to approve it by his authority for the day of January 22, on which he believed the betrothal to have taken place, as gathered from ancient authors. Colveneer recites these letters and adds: "That the Pontiff acceded to his wishes is easily established from the fact that he had already previously, by a living-voice oracle around the year 1537, granted to John Calvus, Commissary of the Friars Minor, that the Office of the Betrothal of the Blessed Virgin could be solemnly celebrated by our Brothers (these are Calvus's own words), and by the nuns and sisters living under our care, on March 7, as a greater double, throughout the whole world; and that, until a new Office for such a feast should be composed, the Office of the Nativity of the same Virgin should be used, with the name of Nativity changed to that of Betrothal, except for the proper Gospel: 'When his mother Mary had been betrothed,' etc."
[43] The same is then inferred, says Colveneer, from the fact that this Office was widely received throughout France and neighboring places: propagated through France and Belgium, "for ten years later the Cathedral Church of Arras received it, through the efforts of Eustace Fouet, a Canon there, under Antoine Perrenot, then Bishop of that See, afterward Archbishop of Mechelen, later Cardinal Granvelle, and finally Viceroy of Naples. From there it soon spread to other Churches of the same diocese, and it is celebrated on January 23. France held to the preceding day, in accordance with the mind of Peter Auratus. The Collegiate Church of Saint Amatus at Douai took the day of the 24th. Others took February 6, as in the Parish Church of Saint Albin and among the Dominican Fathers in the same place. We have seen March 7 granted to the Friars Minor. The Order of the Servants of Blessed Mary, and to various Religious Orders on various days. according to Ferrarius in the General Catalogue of Saints, chose March 8; and according to the same witness, the Church of Olomouc chose July 18. The Order of the Annunciate Virgins chose October 22." Among the various prayers composed by various persons to be proper to this feast, this one, taken by Colveneer from an ancient Bruges Breviary, is preferred above the rest: "O God, who joined the Virgin Mary in marriage to the Virgin Joseph, so that from the co-virginal union the Bridegroom of Virgins might be born: grant that through the intercession of both we may love the author of virginity himself, our Lord Jesus Christ," etc.
[44] That Joseph lived and died a virgin, the entire Latin Church, following Jerome, has held. But a virgin not in any manner, Joseph and Mary were virgins before the marriage, but by a deliberate resolve of the soul, extending to the whole subsequent life and confirmed by the religious obligation of a vow, is made very credible by that so constant celibacy of so many years. Regarding Mary, that she bound herself by the bond of a similar vow, no one now doubts except one who equally professes himself an enemy of the Catholic Church and of chastity. For to what else does that interrogation, full of wonder, point? "How shall this be done, since I know not man?" by a vow: One thing is not equally agreed upon among Catholic writers: whether that vow was made after or before the marriage. Nor can anything be said on either side, abstracting from divine revelation, except through conjecture resting upon some degree of congruity, which generally depends on the disposition and talent of each writer. Certain ones, however, fear without reason that the matrimonial contract may perhaps not have held, if so contrary an obligation to its use followed -- as if the spouses' power over each other's bodies could not be separated from the exercise of that power, when we see that the ownership of money still subsists even in those Religious who have forbidden themselves its use by a vow of poverty, and notwithstanding which, the same ownership is even newly acquired by them.
[45] Since, however, virginity consecrated to God by a vow was, before Christ, a thing so unusual that through the necessity of entering marriage, that we find nothing established by any law or anyone's example among the Jews concerning it -- indeed (on account of the certain hope of the Messiah to be born from that nation, and the supreme good which each one was confident would befall him if, through children propagated from himself, they were joined as immediately as possible to him), the despair of posterity was reckoned the extreme of all curses and evils, especially for those who were so uniquely the only children of their parents that, unless they successfully applied themselves to begetting offspring, they would frustrate their ancestors of the good of a so-hoped-for succession, and the inheritance would have to be rolled back upon the head -- a temporal inheritance, to be sure, but a figure and pledge of the eternal and much better one promised in the Messiah. Therefore it was believed, by common estimation, that one who refused either to raise up seed for a dead brother by marrying his widow, or, being the nearest agnate, to marry the sole heiress of her parents, would sin most grievously against the laws and public decency; and likewise such a girl or widow who refused to consent to such a marriage,
or, once such a marriage was legitimately contracted, to use it for bearing children from herself.
[46] But since all these considerations were so much greater in Joseph and Mary, the closer they were brought by the direct line of both nature and law to that hope, it may seem to have been dissolved, why should I here be afraid to open a certain thought of mine, which may perhaps conduce not a little to the honor of both, and to confess that I suspect, with things so constituted, that in reality, and from the very nature of the obligation -- which at that time was scarcely or not at all consistent with such a vow, since the stronger duty prevailed -- both were released from that religious bond, or at least had reasonable doubt whether they were still bound. And since meanwhile the already-established custom and the demands of public decency brooked no delay, not only was the Virgin taken home by Joseph as soon as her father died -- that is, in her twelfth year of age (for the common opinion holds that she lived until then in the temple) -- but also three years later, in the assembly of friends and kinsmen, the contract was celebrated by words of present consent, or whether there was doubt that it still bound, with the intention of abstaining from its exercise for the time being, until, having propitiated God through good works and prayers, they might deserve to obtain some more certain indication of the divine will. I said "from the very nature of both obligations," because the necessity of fulfilling a law given by God, into which one is brought by no will of his own, is more powerful and prior to any obligation that is voluntary, such as that of a vow. And this can scarcely be conceived in such a way as to have bound them only to contracting the marriage and not also to consummating it, with prejudice to another's right: since the purpose of the law, according to the ordinary course of nature, could not have been obtained without the union of bodies. And even if it had only bound them to the marriage contract, by that very fact, on account of the danger of incontinence which ordinarily underlies such familiar usage as that contract brings, the observance of the former vow was rendered so difficult that it could rightly be judged that no one intended to bind himself to such a case when he simply vowed chastity.
[47] In this matter, however, with God dispensing, the vow was renewed. Furthermore, although our spouses, cleared by such a dispensation of the right to use their marriage, both wished and could yield that right, so far at least as concerned their own part, they nevertheless do not seem to have been able, without grave sin, to defraud their ancestors (at least those who had no other posterity, as Joachim and probably also Heli were, and perhaps many more) of that incomparable and inestimable glory which they were to obtain eternally among the Blessed, if the series of the promise had been propagated through them. And yet the same reason that obliged them to contract the marriage did not immediately oblige them also to consummate it by carnal union, because just as our first parents, having received the command to propagate offspring, nevertheless remained virgins in paradise, waiting to see how and at what time God wished his command to be fulfilled, so they too could for the time being doubt whether God, who by that unexpected necessity seemed to have dissolved the obligation of the former vow, would not also dissolve this obligation by which they were bound to their ancestors, and would allow them to practice chastity at their own discretion. When these most pure spouses were divinely taught that this was granted by God, I have no doubt that both renewed the vow they had previously made, the heroic dignity of which was now so much greater inasmuch as the matter of the vow was rendered more difficult than before, and they seemed to be depriving themselves, for the love of God and the practice of virginity -- so little valued in the common estimation of that time -- of greater and nearer goods. If things were so, I would dare to assert that God, who cannot be outdone by any human generosity, decreed for both of them, as a reward for this act, by a wondrous and ineffable manner, the very thing whose hope they had so generously renounced.
[48] To confirm what we have said, the revelations of Saint Bridget serve admirably, in which, in book 7, chapter 25, What was revealed to Blessed Bridget about this: the Mother of God is read to have spoken thus to her handmaid: "You must know for most certain that Joseph, before he betrothed me, understood in the Holy Spirit that I had vowed my virginity to my God, and that I was undefiled in thought, word, and deed; and he betrothed me with the intention of serving me, regarding me as his lady. I also knew most certainly in the Holy Spirit that my virginity would perpetually remain inviolate, even though by the hidden dispensation of God I was betrothed to a man." But what happened after she conceived the Son of God in her womb? She herself narrates this in book 6, chapter 59, where, having recounted her visit to her kinswoman Elizabeth, she continues: "After this, however, a certain thought began to press upon my mind, and concerning Joseph's perplexity, discussed, as to how and with what devotion I should conduct myself after so great a grace bestowed upon me; what also I should answer if I were asked how I conceived, or who was the father of the child to be born; or lest perhaps Joseph, instigated by the adversary, should suspect something against me. And behold, as I was thus thinking, an Angel, not unlike the one I had seen before, stood by me saying: 'Our God, who is eternal, is both with you and in you. Therefore do not fear, for he himself will give you speech, he himself will powerfully and wisely accomplish his work with you.' But Joseph, to whom I had been entrusted, seeing my womb swelling by the power of the Holy Spirit, was vehemently alarmed" (these words are again from the aforesaid chapter 25 of book 7), "not suspecting anything sinister against me, but remembering the words of the Prophets, who foretold that the Son of God would be born of a Virgin, he considered himself unworthy to serve such a Mother; and" (to return to the interrupted words of chapter 59) "he was anxious about cohabiting with me, not knowing what to do. To whom an Angel said in a dream: 'Do not withdraw from the Virgin entrusted to you; for as you have heard from her, so it is most true: she has conceived of the Spirit of God and will bring forth a Son, the Savior of the world. Therefore serve her faithfully and be the guardian and witness of her purity.' From that day Joseph served me as his lady, and I also humbled myself to his least tasks."
[49] The Mother of God then continues to describe her own and her most chaste spouse's manner of life in this way: and of the most honorable domestic life of both spouses, "After this I was continual in prayer; rarely wishing to see or to be seen, and going out most rarely, except for the principal feasts. I was also attentive to vigils and to the Readings which were read by our priests, having set times for manual labor; and I was discreet in fasting, as far as my nature could bear, in the service of God. Whatever remained to us beyond our food, we gave to the poor, content with what we had. Joseph served me in such a way that a scurrilous word was never heard from his mouth, never a murmur, never an angry word. For he was most patient in poverty, diligent in labor where it was necessary, most gentle to those who rebuked him, most obedient in his service to me, most prompt as a defender against those who disparaged my virginity, a most faithful witness of God's wonders. He himself was also so dead to the world and the flesh that he desired nothing except heavenly things; and he was so trusting in the promises of God that he continually said: 'Would that I might live and see God's will fulfilled!' For he most rarely came to the assemblies and counsels of men, because his whole desire was to obey the will of God. Therefore now his glory is great." Thus far the text.
Section VIII. The Betrothal Ring of Saint Joseph: Other Relics.
[50] Now the betrothal ring, the pledge of the virginal marriage, calls us to itself, in the possession of which the happy city of Perugia in Umbria The betrothal ring. believes itself blessed, and indeed holds a reputation most celebrated throughout the whole world. The revelation that followed its authenticity, and the miracles that followed the revelation, and the fruits of solid piety among the people, confirm it more than the trustworthiness of those through whom it was transferred. For the one who first brought it to Italy, in the time of Count Hugh, who died in the first year of the eleventh century, it was brought to Chiusi, was a certain jeweler from Jerusalem, who offered it without charge to a certain man of Chiusi named Rainerius (who had been sent by Judith, the wife of Hugh, curious about such luxuries, to purchase rarer treasures of this kind at Rome), as a noble addition to his stock of precious goods -- though it was carved from sardonyx or common amethyst -- indicating what it was. Rainerius, having delivered the other gems faithfully to the Countess, concealed the gift, neglecting it for a full decade, until his only little son died and, having been carried into the church of Saint Mustiola, revived at the tomb just long enough to explain before everyone for what fault he was being snatched from his father and what a precious treasure lay hidden with him, it is revealed, and then gently composed himself again for death, after he had offered the ring, produced by his belatedly repentant father, to the parish priest, and had warned that the crowd rushing in at the sound of the bells -- rung by no one -- should be kept away.
[51] Reverence for the sacred pledge grew when, not long afterward, Waldrada, a woman of royal blood, rashly placed it on her own finger, and becomes famous for miracles, and brought it back incurably withered. Warned by her example in the previous century, another man, Contulus de Contulis, to whom the chest made for its custody was committed for cleaning, was more cautious and kept his profane hands from it, and entreated a priest who received the ring in a sacred chalice; and not daring, though asked, to test the size of the circlet with his finger, he preferred to take its impression in soft wax. Which wax, when afterward applied to his hip, Contulus never failed to find beneficial for dispelling the sciatica from which he frequently suffered. Similarly, other rings made of ivory or silver that have touched the ring itself are useful for women in childbirth. also in objects made sacred by its touch. The same are known to be highly effective in reconciling the hearts of quarreling spouses. Even the wooden box in which the sacred gem had once been kept, in a fire that broke out in the home of the Giordano family, alone remained unharmed by the flames; and the cotton drawn from it, lest it be put to profane uses, repeatedly burned like fire the fingers of anyone attempting to do so.
[52] But these things took place at Perugia, to which this pledge was not brought until the year 1477; it is taken to Perugia, and of it the people of Chiusi were despoiled through the theft (shall I call it pious or impious?) of a certain German Franciscan named Winterius, who, when about to display the Ring to the venerating people on the appointed day of the year, hanging from a golden chain, after duly performing that office, pretended to place the Ring back in its chest while furtively slipping it into his sleeve. But having crossed the river Chiana, he was surrounded by so thick a fog that he would have had to remain there, had he not, taking counsel while halted in the sand, obtained light from the Virgin by prayer. Led by this light to Perugia, with the same fog following him, and the same mist having spread over the entire city for fully twenty days, he at last brought forth what he had wished to conceal, and at the same time restored to the marveling people the longed-for serenity of heaven. Then, having transferred the sacred Ring into the jurisdiction of the Senate and People of Perugia, he received not only impunity
of what he had done, and after a long contention, but also obtained rewards, for which he easily despised the threats of the people of Chiusi. When these, having failed to persuade a return either through their own envoys or through those of their Sienese allies, and having seen the Perugians decree as if concerning their own property that the ring should be locked away in an iron chest under the guard of a double lock with multiple keys and displayed to the people three times a year with the greatest testimony of public joy, they finally rushed to arms, and the neighboring Italy of Umbria and Etruria was divided into factions, until Sixtus IV decreed that it should be transferred to Rome -- as if it should more worthily be kept in the City, the Mother of all Religion, than where it was causing such disturbances.
[53] But when Sixtus died, the case of the Perugians was heard anew adjudicated in favor of the Perugians, under Sixtus's successor, Innocent VIII; and the Betrothal Ring of the Virgin was adjudicated to the city, which the Pontiff wished to conciliate to himself, in the year 1486, with such rejoicing of the entire people as can scarcely be described. All of which Giovanni Battista Lauro of Perugia sets forth most copiously, and concludes his booklet on this whole matter, printed at Rome in 1621, in the following manner: "Furthermore, in order that the ever-enduring cult of the Ring among the Perugians might be amplified far and wide from day to day, the Fathers judged that it should be transferred from the Palatine chapel to a more worthy place, not so much of their own accord as at the urging of Blessed Bernardine of Montefeltro, a ninth chapel having been built in the church of Saint Lawrence, a most praised preacher of that time, who, having extolled the dignity of that Ring with great praises and taught that the fallen observance should be recalled with much more fervent zeal, soon had an obedient Senate to his words. They had a most ornate chapel built in the basilica of Saint Lawrence, enclosed on one side by a painted wall and carved panels, and on the other by iron pillars and gratings, at the most magnificent expense. At the top of this fortified structure, a band running around it, these verses are found inscribed:
Here the Queen is venerated, united with her husband, And with a gracious ear receives righteous prayers. 1511 Here in this shrine lies the Ring of the inviolate Mother: He who gave it is the guardian of his own gift.
A society of secular men named after Saint Joseph was established besides, which, together with the Laurentian clergy, would provide perpetual service to the ring chapel. A statue was also dedicated to the most holy Father at the right side of the altar, which on the nineteenth day of March is carried forth into the forum with an annual procession."
[54] When these things had been arranged, the pomp of the decreed translation was begun, with the Bishop (who was then, it is transferred there from the court, according to Ferdinando Ughelli, Augustinus Spinola of Savona) carrying the golden case, from which the Ring hung from a golden chain, conspicuous... which, handed over to Troilus Baleon, the Archpriest, and the other clergy as guardians, and secured by a lock and fastened with multiple keys, was placed on high in a hollow in the wall of the erected chapel, there to lie hidden. Furthermore, to increase the worship of veneration, as often as the reliquary was to be displayed for the people to behold, to be solemnly displayed to the people annually. it was rather cleverly devised that two small columns should rise from the altar, surpassing the shrine in height, which would lower the small cabinet, enriched with the priceless suspended treasure, taken from the chest, through the hands of angels bearing lighted candles on the right and left, by gradually unwinding ropes, and set it upon the altar, draped with painted coverings -- while meanwhile harps, drums, trumpets, and alternating choirs sang musically, and the people fell on their knees, professing by the beating of their breasts both the penitence and the joy of their hearts. There are, however, also other rings elsewhere, to which the tradition of ancestors has conciliated similar honor: Other rings in Burgundy, for as Ferreolus Locrius says, book 5, chapter 31, "The betrothal ring of the Blessed Virgin, by which the priory of Semur among the Mandubians in Burgundy is ennobled through the generosity of Count Gerard Rustillon, has held its name there for 877 years." And after some further remarks: "But the ascetics of the monastery of Anchin also claim and demonstrate that they have another ring of the Blessed Virgin, and in Belgium. adorned with a certain small image on the paten. A rare monument of the Virgin, if it be hers, even from the fact that it immediately frees a woman suffering more acutely the pains of childbirth, and this has been proved by examples." So says Locrius, and from him Charles Stengel.
[55] That a part of the Cloak with which Saint Joseph received the newborn Savior, The Cloak, together with his staff, is preserved at Rome in the church of Saint Cecilia in Trastevere, is reported by Ottavio Panciroli; and that another part is in the church of Saint Anastasia. That this cloak is of a yellowish color is written, on the testimony of those who have inspected it, by Joseph Geldolphus a Ryckel in his Phylactery composed from the sacred relics of Jesus, Mary, Anne, and Joseph. Of the same cloak, the Discalced Carmelite Fathers at Antwerp have a not inconsiderable portion, a gift of Cardinal Ginetti, which they display under three keys, and cloths of Saint Joseph, not without the stirring of devotion, to the venerating populace during the Christmas holidays of our Lord. Among the relics also brought from Jerusalem by Charlemagne, the Church of Aachen at certain times displays some cloths, bearing the name of the first swaddling bands of Christ in the stable of Bethlehem, which those who see them, says the same Geldolphus, would judge to be travel leggings or foot-wrappings not unsuited for wrapping the child, although from ancient times they are called the stockings of Saint Joseph. Other relics of Saint Joseph, besides certain household vessels (which are judged to have been common to the holy spouses and their Son Christ, perhaps he who reigns in heaven with a risen body. because they were transported together with their little house from Nazareth to Loreto in Italy by angelic hands), no one either seeks or claims to have -- and no wonder, if (as Saint Bernardine of Siena, as reported by Bernardino de Busti, declared in a sermon to the people of Padua) "In soul and body Saint Joseph is glorious in heaven." And why should he not be? "We read," says Gerson in a sermon on the Nativity of Mary, "that many bodies of the Saints rose and came into the holy city and appeared to many. Let the pious mind reflect, I pray, whether the just Joseph is to be thought one of those who appeared to his dearest spouse and consoled her."
Section IX. Churches, Oratories, and Confraternities Dedicated to Saint Joseph.
[56] The glory of Saint Joseph from the churches erected to him: Whatever the case may be regarding the aforesaid opinion, which piously believes that Saint Joseph already now possesses in heaven the full beatitude of his body as well, it ought to be entirely beyond all controversy, that which we recalled the Mother of God said to Saint Bridget above: "And his glory is now great" -- great not only in heaven but also on earth, now that so many churches, oratories, and altars have been erected to him throughout all Europe that it would be difficult to enumerate them, and entirely superfluous to investigate, since each of the readers can estimate the rest from what he sees in his own city and his own country. Accordingly, from the infinite number we shall here report a very few, which are either more commendable for their antiquity or lie nearer to our own knowledge. In the first place, then, we must mention what is seen in the church of Saint Agricola, called the Principal church on account of its antiquity, and the patronage which the Virgins of Avignon claimed for themselves, at Avignon, adorned with the insignia of Gregory XI, whom Paul Barry suspects to have been the founder of a Confraternity, enrolled at the same place under the invocation of Saint Joseph from among the virgin girls of the said city, who began to reside there in 1371. All of them assemble annually at the aforesaid chapel on his feast day; and after Mass and Vespers have been sung, each one takes home a blessed bouquet of flowers as a token, so that they may remember, by the example and help of so great a Patron, to keep the flower of their virginity uncorrupted for lawful marriage with God or man.
[57] In a similar way, various confraternities of married men, gathered under the protection of the Virgin Mother of God and the direction of our Society in the principal cities of Belgium, in Belgium, married men, proposed to themselves as a model of the purest example of conjugal faith and love, the Lord Joseph, by adopting him as their secondary Patron. And since the same Saint, chosen by God for nurturing and guiding the childhood of the Lord, most happily fulfilled that office and care, also in some places of the same Belgium and boys: the boys who are taught the first rudiments of the Latin language by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus have claimed the same as their patron. At Rome, moreover, the Congregation of the so-called Virtuosi, At Rome, a society of artisans. established in the year 1548 by a certain Desiderius, a Canon of Santa Maria ad Martyres or the Rotunda, on his return from a pious visit to the sacred places, and gathered from Painters, Architects, Embroiderers or Plumassiers, and other such artisans, set up for itself a chapel in the aforesaid church with an altar dedicated to the cult of this Saint, where they also annually distribute dowries to poor girls on his feast day. I consider that they venerate him as Patron with this in view: that he himself also, as the Gospel teaches, practiced the carpenter's craft, whence Christ did not disdain to be called the son of a carpenter.
[58] But what sort of carpenter? This is by no means agreed upon among the Doctors. Those who wish him to have been a blacksmith have in their favor Various opinions about the trade of Saint Joseph, Saint Hilary, commenting on chapter 14 of Matthew, Bede on chapter 6 of Mark, and Saint Ambrose in book 3 on Luke. But Saint Thomas by no means approves this, saying on chapter 13 of Matthew that this seems by no means likely. In support of his having been a mason, a sermon 5 of Saint Augustine on the Nativity is cited; "Others also thought he was a goldsmith," says Gonzalvus Durantus, Bishop of Montefeltro, in his Notes on chapter 58 of book 6 of the Revelations of Blessed Bridget, and he adds: "The common opinion, however, is that he was a carpenter, as Saint Thomas testifies, who in the place cited above cites Saint Chrysostom; and the Author of the Opus Imperfectum, homily 32, favors this opinion, and, surpassing the rest in authority and antiquity, Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho, where he asserted that our Lord practiced the carpenter's trade (which was of course his father's, received from Joseph) and made yokes for oxen and plows, the more common opinion makes him a carpenter, wishing by these external works to manifest to the world the obedience and mortification he was to teach men." And Ludolph also agreed with this opinion in his Life of Christ, part 1, chapter 16, who piously and religiously offers much for those who wish to meditate on this matter. Irenaeus also has more on these things, book 1 against heresies, chapter 17; Feuardent notes much in the same place; and this question is treated more fully by Francisco Suarez in his Commentaries on the third part of Saint Thomas, volume 2, question 3, disputation 17, section 3.
[59] Therefore the carpenters in the City of Rome, as Ottavio Panciroli reports, so that he is rightly held to be the patron of such craftsmen. describing the twelfth church of Region 1 dedicated to Saint Joseph, in the year 1596 (that is, fifty-seven years after they had united into one guild) contracted for the building of a new church to him as their special Patron, above the one called Saint Peter in Chains, and took care to have it exempted from the rights of the neighboring churches of Saint Luke and Saint Martha; and by an indulgence of Gregory XIII, they annually release one prisoner condemned to death from his chains on the feast day of Saint Joseph, when they also provide dowries for orphaned and poor daughters of carpenters from collected alms, and settle them in marriage.
But there is no doubt that much earlier, elsewhere too, practitioners of the same craft commended themselves to such patronage. At Antwerp, certainly, from the very first division of such craft guilds, the carpenters acknowledged Joseph as their Patron, and had an altar and a funded chaplaincy in his honor in the principal basilica of this city, now the Cathedral.
[60] What shall I now say of the Religious Orders? The Carmelite Order, as it was the first in this area, His cult was most especially restored in the preceding century, insofar as we can ascertain by probable conjecture, so when it began to be renewed to its primitive rigor of discipline and spirit through Saint Teresa of Jesus, it so inflamed the languishing affection of devotion toward the holy foster-father of the Lord, and propagated it along with its monasteries throughout the whole Christian world, that those who had learned from the Life and writings of the holy Reformer how ardently she was drawn toward his honor and cult, and did not sufficiently know how long before her time the Western or Latin Churches had received the same, the Discalced Carmelites under Saint Teresa, supposed that this glory had been divinely reserved for this Saint: that through her, the hitherto unknown and obscure name and merit of Saint Joseph should begin to become known to the faithful and to be held in esteem and delight. She herself indeed contributed much to this, being accustomed to call him her Lord and Father, giving him the first place of honor among the Saints after his wife and Son, holding him as her ordinary advocate and intercessor for her needs; through whom, as she said she had asked many things of God, she never remembered having been refused -- and the other things which she herself pursues at greater length in chapter 6 of her Life, exhorting all, especially any who do not know how to pray, to believe that whatever gifts of God, and above all the gift of prayer, can be obtained through his mediation.
[61] At the same time that Saint Teresa began to turn her attention to reforming the Carmelites, the Friars Minor of the Stricter Observance. Brothers John Pasqual and soon thereafter Peter of Alcantara had begun to devote themselves to reforming the convents of Saint Francis in Spain and to introducing a stricter observance, both of them close to being decreed the honors of the Saints by the Church. They claimed Saint Joseph as the Patron of the first and mother Reformed Province of Castile, and also of others; and there is no doubt that they propagated his cult with singular fervor. Our Society of Jesus also, not believing itself sufficiently devoted to Jesus unless it were also devoted to his Foster-father, and the Society of Jesus. came into a share of this holy zeal and everywhere applied diligent effort to promote the veneration of Saint Joseph -- especially in Spain, France, and Belgium, having in each some residences and churches dedicated to this Saint; and in every larger basilica (in which there are many altars and chapels) there is no place where some altar is not seen erected and adorned under his name. But above all, it commended to him the houses destined for the third probation after the completion of studies, where the attention is chiefly directed to the cultivation of the interior man and the desire to lie hidden in humility, since in that respect the excellence of this great Saint renders itself especially admirable.
[62] Nor should what is in our church at Antwerp be passed over in silence: the marble chapel of Saint Joseph, whose founders Melchior and Gaspar de Leway are to be praised by us at our church in Antwerp, a marble chapel, not only for having erected this monument of their piety among us, but also for having left the same zeal to the nephews born of their sister as something hereditary. That they might not yield to their uncles in this respect, one of them, Louis de Romer, in the Facondi Valley of Saint Mary (which is the convent of the Canonesses of Saint Augustine here at Antwerp, where he had buried his mother and sister, and had another sister enrolled among the sacred Virgins) raised from the foundations a new chapel, and another founded among the Facondi Sisters by Louis de Romer. precious with paintings and marbles, ample in size, admirable for the height of its gilded dome, and in it a monument for himself and his most dear wife Catherine Haecx, who had predeceased him. To which the surviving sister diligently applies herself, continually enriching it with new ornaments and all the furnishings of sacred equipment, aided by the generous munificence of her own brother Gaspar de Romer, a merchant of the first name and opulence in the city of Naples, and the more inclined to this pious work because he knew that his brother Louis, when asked on his very deathbed what had first moved his soul to undertake so costly a construction in such a place, had replied that the place had been pointed out in a heavenly vision to a certain person of known sanctity, from whose most worthy and trustworthy testimony he had learned the divine will concerning himself and the work he was to build.
[63] When this chapel was duly dedicated and opened on the feast of the great Joseph in the year of Christ 1637, at whose dedication was composed, among other things, an Idyll, and a plenary Indulgence of sins, granted by Urban VIII for seven years and continued by his successors on the same day until now, was first proposed in it to excite the devotion of the faithful, a literary applause was composed by excellent Poets in various meters, of which the following idyll will serve as a specimen. In it the Blessed Virgin, at the cradle of the child Jesus, sings of her marriage with Blessed Joseph and his glory therefrom -- not inappropriately inserted in this place, since, being full of the sweetest affection, it seems able to contribute very much to refreshing and inflaming the reader's soul.
O holy elder, deemed worthy of the marriage torch of the Queen of heaven, in which the Virgin Mother If not from carved marble, such as The rich piety of de Romer destines a temple for you, We shall at least make a rustic hut Of straw and marsh reeds. Carpenters love the work of carpentry.
[64] It was night: at the cradle of the child Jesus, His mother Mary alone kept watch; a deep sleep held her husband, Weary from labors and broken by the heat and toil of the day. The most chaste Mother herself, rocking the cradle with her hand, Soothed the weeping child with this or a similar song: sings at the cradle of the child Jesus
Cease, dear child, from marring with tears Your divine eyes; whomever you do not look upon with them, Neither will the Father behold, nor summon to the kingdom of heaven. You are my life, you yourself know it; you alone are my joys. You gave me (a praise granted to no parent Since the first of men came forth from a mother's womb, The unhappy Cain, son of unhappy Eve) That I, a virgin, should bear you and, a virgin, nurse you. On your account, the holy sons of Isaac and the peoples scattered through the world Will acknowledge me as Queen; on your account, There will be no place or region so barbarous, nowhere A race of men so savage, that will not supplicate at my altars: They will make vows to me, and those bound by vows will encircle my altars with gifts. But the greatest things you have done and will do for me as Mother, We shall sing of another time. Now let me sing of this: he who, joined to me by the bond of a chaste marriage torch, Is a virgin father to you, and I am a virgin mother to you. But now close your eyes, I pray, and yield to sleep.
[65] her own marriage with Joseph, Such as the Love that binds the heavenly lovers to one another, Beautiful Love, free from earthly stain and bodily taint, Such was the love that sanctified my marriage with you. Let it not shame you, Joseph, of our modesty. Something great, previously given only to the heavenly beings, Is virginity: from heaven the great King himself Sent me to have it as a memorial and pledge of his love. This immense gift of heaven, this present of the Thunderer (This was my dowry) I made common to us both. Happy was that day, happier still was that hour of the day When I, led as a new bride to you, my husband, Came under the laws of a spouse and into these bonds. The sun had set, and heaven had yielded to the stars; Having finished the feast, and having wished me well and you well, A modest crowd of relatives had gone out from the house. Then, I remember, thus I spoke to you in the closed chamber: Love urges me to entrust to you, my spouse, The greatest secrets of my affairs, which I keep in my silent heart, Not yet known to my father, not yet learned from me by my mother. I who have been given to you as a virgin in lasting marriage and their mutual pact of preserving Virginity: Am the bride of Another; yet do not frown. No man has drawn me, captured, into his nets (For no one is dearer to me or prior to you); But the Almighty Father, whom heaven and stars obey, That God once sung of by our Fathers, Wished me to be his own, and called me his bride. To him I vowed my virginal modesty with a solemn oath, And I pledged my hand and spoke the solemn words. He himself placed a gem upon my finger and a necklace upon my neck, And said: "You shall be my virgin, as long as any blood Remains in your body; and whoever shall also have you as his spouse among men Shall keep you sacred for me and leave you untouched." These things God himself said to me: do not strive against God. When I had said such things, you gaze upon the stars with weeping eyes, And raising your hands, you speak aloud: "This is what, O Ruler of heaven, your dreams (For they were yours, so holy were they) had long been warning me. For when I laid my limbs upon the bed and took my rest, I saw roses and lilies blooming around me. When I saw them, I leaped up, and striving to grasp with my hands The virginal flowers, I caught only breezes and air. Three times I attempted to touch them; three times I felt them recede. Together from my eyes fled both the flowers and sleep; But the fragrance remained -- such as no flower on earth possesses, But perhaps, if flowers were to bloom in heaven, they would possess -- So divine a fragrance. But what man would these things have moved then, When what virginity was, and how glorious, only the angels knew? Or who would ever have believed That she who remained the bride of God would become my spouse?" When these words were said, we gave and received pledges in turn, Both calling the divine power to witness: you, that you would not claim Any rights of a husband, not to be discharged without the preservation of modesty; I to you, that provided I should know no commerce of Venus, I would for the rest of my life be your companion and spouse.
[67] As she sings such things, winged youths surround the Goddess on every side, and heaven cannot hold them back. She recounts the many things to come for her Joseph, and his happy death thereafter, which she foreknew by God's revelation; for whatever anywhere exists, whatever shall always be, God alone knows all things, teaching much to men and the angels above, but most of all to the Mother. For she makes him breathe his last amid her own arms and those of the beloved Jesus, as though his limbs were released in gentle sleep; then she leads him to those gardens, the Elysian gardens, where Abraham himself and all the sons of Abraham rest while the way to heaven is being made -- so that one of his ancestors, David, with a joyful song -- King David, at once king of men and prophet of the Thunderer -- might receive him as he comes, and the vast army of the Fathers might escort the happy soul and surround it in a circle, asking much about Jesus and Jesus's Parent. Then what we, the distant descendants after many centuries, now behold: and his glory in later ages among men, what churches, what altars posterity dedicates to him, and with how great an honor his day is celebrated -- even you, de Romer, she sings of, and foretells that this temple which you build shall be one than which none in all the world will be dearer to her and to her spouse and to the child. And she promises rewards such as it befits the Mother of the Eternal King to promise, and befits the Son to bestow. The Infant nods assent from the cradle and closes his eyes.
Section X. Benefits Displayed to Those Invoking Saint Joseph in His Facondi Chapel at Antwerp.
[68] A young man freed from the affliction of a kidney stone. Henry vande Sanden, a youth of eighteen years, son of John vande Sanden and Margaret Vasseur, tormented for two full years by the most bitter pains of a kidney stone, especially in the year 1639 from the feast of Saint John the Baptist until the sixteenth of August, so that he could neither rest nor sleep, and Lazarus Marquis, a most experienced physician, judged that no health was to be hoped for him from human skill -- at his mother's urging, he commended himself to the holy Foster-father of Jesus and approached his chapel. There, while pouring forth pious prayers and vows, suddenly feeling a great anguish pressing upon his heart, he hastened to go out; and withdrawing to pass urine, he expelled along with it two small stones of quadrangular shape, of such a size as to equal one joint of the little finger. And from that time he felt no discomfort whatsoever, but has persisted in health to this day, as the Reverend Christopher Caers, Rector and Confessor of the convent, wrote on the twelfth of March in the year 1642, from the mouth of the young man himself and his mother attesting to the same, who had stood by her son as he passed the stones and brought the testimonies of neighbors who had known the miserably afflicted Henry before the benefit of that miraculous healing.
[69] Elizabeth Sillevoorts, who had joined the community of the Facondi Sisters in her sixteenth year of age, A nun miserably afflicted, had now reached her forty-second year, and for the last three complete years and as many months had been so burdened by a stone formed within the bladder that she could never pass urine except through the most extreme torments, her whole body trembling and sweating as she strained to relieve herself, often also suffering fevers from such great torment. For this reason, two sisters had to be deputed to attend her, to prevent excessive agitation of her body at that moment, by supporting the wretched woman on each side. Meanwhile, with the passages so damaged by such unusual violence, she had already for a year and a half lost all power of retention; and whatever flowed from her during the last three weeks and judged by the physicians to be dying, in which she remained thus afflicted was turbid with the foulest pus, indicating the damage of an ulcerated bladder. When at last violent fevers had arrived and had rendered her utterly feeble with her strength exhausted, the physicians pronounced that her life was over, since neither surgical instruments could suffice for the extraction of a stone so enormously large as the signs indicated, nor had the medicines applied for a year and a half for its dissolution, nor others prepared during the other year and a half merely for mitigating the pains, accomplished anything. Seeing herself therefore destitute of all human aid, she sought a better physician for herself in heaven and placed all her hope in the merits of Saint Joseph, placing her confidence in the Saint, having long cherished a loving devotion toward him. To merit his help and intercession, she began to wear day and night a belt blessed under his invocation, and when the most vehement pain pressed, to apply it to the suffering part; adding, with the consent of her Superiors, whatever she could do by herself or cause to be done by others, of pious works, sacrifices, mortifications, and vows -- with such confidence that, as she added prayers to prayers, novenas to novenas, vows to vows, even those binding for her whole life, she did not fear to say to the Mother Prioress: "Be certain, Mother, that, with the help of my Saint Joseph, I shall deliver the very stone into your hands alive and well." When, therefore, she had intensified the affection of her devotion as much as she could, and on the tenth day of June of the year 1649, bathed in her own and the Sisters' tears, she passes a stone of enormous size, kneeling amid intolerable torments and the hands of the supporting companions before the image of the Saint, through the customary urinary passages there spontaneously descended a stone so large that it equaled an egg scarcely laid by the largest hen. Drawing it out with her own hand without pain, she placed it in the hand of the Superior to whom she had so many times and so resolutely promised it. And immediately, retaining no harm or lesion in her body or in the parts through which it had passed, she betook herself with her companions to give thanks to the holy helper; and thereafter, sound and healthy, if ever anyone was, she survived for a full seven years.
[70] Concerning this matter, when with the passage of time the miraculous cure was sufficiently beyond doubt, without any incision or harm whatsoever: various public instruments were drawn up on the third day of January of the following year, by the hand of Notary Guyot, with the signatures of Sister Maria Martens, Prioress, Sister Catherine Martens, infirmarian, and Elizabeth Sillevoorts herself, in whom the miracle had been wrought. From whose own mouth I myself, who rendered these things from the German booklet (of which more below) into Latin for insertion into our work, remember hearing the same, a few weeks after the event; as well as many other notable circumstances, which I believe were omitted by the author of the booklet for the sake of brevity, and which I do not wish to add from the sole memory of so many years past at the risk of error. I say only that I saw and heard her robust of voice, strong of gait, cheerful of countenance, and retaining no trace of any infirmity besides a pallor. I also weighed and handled the stone itself, most similar to a somewhat elongated egg, as I said, and weighing three solid ounces, which had been hung up in the chapel of the Saint as a perpetual memorial of the event, and is seen there even now to the amazement of all. For (to continue both these and the remaining matters from the aforesaid booklet) when a certain heterodox Doctor of Medicine some years ago examined the same stone which even a heretic acknowledged as a miracle. and considered the manner in which the said Religious woman, without any incision of the body, harm, or pain, had been freed -- as all who had been present knew and asserted, and she herself had recounted to innumerable inquirers -- he frankly confessed that he indeed held different views regarding religion, but was clearly convinced to believe that such a cure (considering the narrowness of the passages through which the stone had to pass, and other circumstances) entirely exceeded every faculty of nature. I pass on to other matters.
[71] In the year 1654, a certain matron had a four-year-old son, A four-year-old boy similarly aided. himself extremely afflicted by a sandy concretion; for whom, after the usual examination, the surgeon was planning an incision to be attempted within a few days. But when she had meanwhile learned how wonderfully Saint Joseph had proved himself in ejecting that stone which we have already described, she approached his chapel full of confidence, and having there ardently poured forth prayers for her son's health, returning home she found the boy, whom she had left amid torments, uncertain whether life or death was to be hoped for or feared, entirely well, as I have here described from her own narration.
[72] Likewise a man, In the year 1660, a most respectable man, bedridden for the sixth week and with medicines availing nothing, was already almost numbered among the dead on account of his inability to pass urine. When at last he raised his hope and spirit to Saint Joseph, venerated in the Facondi Valley, he passed a stone resembling a small bean; and having carried out in deed what he had resolved in his mind, he had full health, as he himself and his wife testify.
[73] In the same year, a certain woman suffering the most grievous pains from a stone a woman, declared to her Confessor her intention of imploring the patronage of Saint Joseph in the Facondi Valley. And he indeed tried to divert her devotion to some other Saint and gave her relics of the same. But she, without contempt for anyone, making it a scruple to prefer another before Joseph, however great that Saint's name and virtue, persevered in invoking him alone, as she had resolved; and within a short time she felt herself free from all pain, having passed two stones, one the size of a pea and the other of an almond, for which benefit she showed herself religiously grateful to her patron.
[74] Finally, in the year 1662, a girl, miserably confined to bed on account of combined pains of stone and colic, and a girl. asked her mother to arrange for the Sacrifice of the Mass to be offered in the chapel of the Lord Joseph in her behalf, in honor of the Saint, at which the mother herself should be present. While this was being done, the girl fell into a sweet sleep and rested most peacefully; then, awakening, she passed a great quantity of sand, feeling absolutely no pain, and cheerfully showed the returning mother the expelled cause of her pains, rendering due thanks to God and his Foster-father, whose merits she joyfully commemorated as the cause of her cure, and thereafter she persisted vigorous, without any trace of her past torment.
[75] I pass to various other kinds of needs relieved by the help of Saint Joseph. A child granted to a barren marriage, A certain woman, barren for twelve years in marriage, was brought from Brussels, where she had her residence, to Antwerp, and visiting the chapel of Saint Joseph, when she asked God for offspring through his intercession with the inmost affection of her heart, she felt her bowels stirred in an unusual manner; and not long after, having conceived, she gave birth to a son at the due time, and to present him gratefully to her patron, she came to Antwerp again with the infant.
[76] A most respectable man had a son quite unlike himself, whose dissolute morals promised nothing milder than enormous vexations for his parents the morals of a prodigal youth corrected: and disgrace for the family. The mother, seeing that her son could be brought to the right path by no one's admonitions, took refuge in the help of Saint Joseph, undertaking a nine-day devotion to be performed in his chapel. When this was completed, her son immediately began to change into a different man, and to convert the ingrained habits of a most wicked life into pious and chaste morals; and thereafter he was a great consolation and help to his mother, who professed that no thanks sufficient could be rendered by her to Saint Joseph.
[77] In this city, several merchants, having formed a partnership, a merchant ship saved from shipwreck, had equipped a ship with goods destined for Spain, and when many feared its destruction on not unfounded grounds, the owners made a vow for it and jointly offered prayers in the chapel of the Lord's Foster-father, that perhaps God, taking pity on them through his merits, would bring the ship safely into port. And indeed he did, but not without a miracle: for as the captain testified in the next letters, the ship, tossed by a terrible storm, had been driven a long distance from its intended course; and he believed that he and his ship had been rescued from so manifest a danger by no other than divine power. Therefore the merchants attributed the benefit received to Joseph and left as a testimony of gratitude a votive offering presented for this purpose.
[78] The son of a certain nobleman, afflicted with a lethal illness, a dying boy healed, was tending toward his last moments in the judgment of the physicians; but he was suddenly restored to his former health after his father looked with firm faith to the so often proven goodness of Saint Joseph. Wherefore, as a witness of the benefit received, the father hung a silver tablet in his Facondi chapel on the eighteenth of April, 1651. Similarly, a certain poor girl, judged by the physicians to be nourishing an incurable gangrene in her breast, gangrene cured, which was causing her intolerable torments, there shed tears with prayers and vowed to repay her benefactor with the daily practice of interior devotion, if through his intervention she should obtain health. Having done this, she declared that from that moment she had felt no further pain, and she repeated her testimony also on this day, the twenty-third of May, 1662,
[79] We pass over many other things because they are not yet fully known to us: such as that a certain illustrious man, apoplectically affected in all the limbs of his body, an apoplectick healed, testifies that he attributes the restored use of them to the merits of Saint Joseph -- by this very fact, that, having been restored to health, he shows himself so profusely generous toward this chapel. Likewise, that a pious virgin, pressed by the long-standing difficulties of legal entanglements and lawsuits unjustly brought against her, lawsuits ended. after a notable monument of gratitude devoted to the Saint, was extricated by truly admirable means and absolved by her adversaries.
[80] Thus far N. Omazurinus, in his German booklet on Saint Joseph and his cult at Antwerp, A Confraternity of Saint Joseph instituted there. published there in the year of the Christian era 1662, the fifth year after a Confraternity of Saint Joseph had begun to be enrolled in the aforesaid Facondi chapel, to promote the honor of the Saint and to bring assistance to the Church Militant and Suffering through common and private prayers, by the authority of Pope Urban VIII and the approval of Gaspar Nemius, now Archbishop of Cambrai, then Bishop of Antwerp, invited to exercises of piety proportioned to the said purpose by great and various indulgences, and above all to hearing the Mass which is arranged there daily, especially on certain feasts proper to that Confraternity, namely those of the Virgin's Nativity, the Annunciation, the Purification, Saints Joseph and Anne, and during the Octave of the faithful departed, as well as every Monday of the week.
Section XI. Benefits Exhibited for the Healing of Souls and Bodies by Saint Joseph in France.
[81] Whence are the following favors excerpted? Thus far what is proper to the Facondi chapel. The following favors, bestowed upon the devotees of this Saint in removing various afflictions of soul and body (for we do not dare to call them miracles, just as we did not call those presented in this section, until such a name has been publicly claimed for them by the judgment of the Church), in order that they might be at hand for those who desire to promote in themselves and others the pious exercise of honoring Joseph, we have excerpted from the treatise of Father Paul de Barry on devotion toward this Saint, first published in 1639 and subsequently printed and reprinted many times. From two considerations it is exceedingly difficult, indeed impossible, to collect examples of timely assistance rendered by the holy Spouse of the Virgin to those invoking him The most efficacious patronage of Saint Joseph is proved. for subduing the disturbances of the soul and restraining the insolence of the passions: first, because such favors are very many and extremely varied; second, because they are generally kept secret by those who have deserved to receive them. "I shall therefore," says the aforesaid Paul, "bring forward a few from many, known to me through those who, having used my spiritual direction, for obtaining victory over oneself caused me to know by their faith and experience that there is scarcely any more effective protection for winning some noble victory over oneself than the patronage of Saint Joseph; and the number of those with experience grows, as one reveals his spiritual needs to another and at the same time learns what has befallen his friends whom he consults in this matter. I have known those for whom it seemed impossible so to restrain their tongue as to abstain from biting witticisms, captious contentions, and vain conversations; I have known those whom an estrangement conceived from certain persons had so exasperated that they would not admit their presence or speech with calm eyes and ears; others whom the affection of disordered love deprived of the mental attention necessary for the exercise of their duty and prayer, not without dangerous excesses of soul and body -- for all of whom it was a remedy to have invoked Saint Joseph in their vows."
[82] which is proved by a double example "There was one for whom for three full years this impure flame, kindled within the depths of the heart, was most troublesome. But when the sufferer had imposed upon himself a silence of nine days in honor of the Saint, he felt himself freed from it; wherefore, out of gratitude, he resolved to recite the Litany of the same daily; and from then on, unless he occasionally omitted them on account of the multitude of business, he never felt Satan buffeting him. Another person, agitated by the same passion, was already scarcely able to sleep and had no remaining hope of persevering in the Religious habit she had assumed; she was advised to institute a nine-day prayer to the Saint, to which other Religious women offered themselves as companions of the afflicted one. When this was completed, the girl began to fare better both in body and soul, and within a short time was entirely free from that kind of temptation."
[83] The same brings two youths of a depraved life, "But although the pitiable condition of souls so afflicted is great, far more pitiable is that of those whom passions of this or another kind render alien to divine friendship and liable to eternal damnation; but to these also, Joseph, when invoked, loves to extend a helping hand. For I knew a certain Religious of our Society who asked some friends to institute with him a Novena of Sacrifices or Communions in honor of Saint Joseph, to the end that God, in consideration of his merits, by a Religious kinsman might recall a near kinsman of his, devoted to the sacred ministries of the Church, from the disorderly license of life in which he had been wallowing for a fourth or fifth year, recoverable by no one's admonitions to the decorum of his state. And the pious solicitude of the kinsman availed for the salvation of that lost man; for while they jointly performed the sacrifices and prayers as requested, it happened just as our man had hoped and expected: he who had been so immersed in his vices that he had been unwilling to rise was laid low in bed by a most serious illness. But when he saw death imminent, about to be fortified with the last Sacraments duly administered, he conceived a desire to lead a better life. And when all the things customary in that necessity had been performed, and he had confirmed his pious resolution with a solemn declaration, he recovered without delay, and resolved to devote himself and all his goods to the promotion of the one divine glory in a certain matter that was then being conducted at Paris with the greatest consequence, in which he even now vigorously perseveres in pressing toward the desired end, keeping himself within the bounds of outstanding modesty befitting his character."
[84] A certain young man of Lyons was so devoted to piety that he resolved to dedicate himself forever to the divine service by entering some Religious Order. and having been entreated by his parents, When he saw himself impeded in his resolution by parents who had other designs, he gradually deflected from his first fervor, then even from the fear of God, until at last he was headlong cast into the abyss of shameful liberty, assuming with the military belt the confidence to dare and perpetrate anything. This matter afflicted his parents, as it should have, who were not so far from God as to have no care for their son's salvation. he leads him back to respectability. They multiply letters to recall him, enlist friends, try everything -- but in vain, for the tale was sung to deaf ears. Therefore they take the counsel of invoking Saint Joseph to their aid; and behold, they had scarcely begun when within three days that lost young man returned home, repentant of his offenses; and having asked and obtained pardon from his parents for his errors, he promised such an amendment of morals and life as he continues to exhibit to their great consolation, and will continue hereafter, as we trust, with the help of the Saint to whom he was commended.
[85] Also at Lyons, in our church dedicated to the most holy Foster-father of the Lord, the same corrects an adulterous husband, a tablet is seen, affixed by the vow of a pious woman, who, finding no other remedy for moderating the excesses of her husband after many had been tried in vain, bound herself by a vow to Saint Joseph, not in vain. For he so powerfully changed the heart of that man that, thereafter faithful to his wife, he never again returned to his habit of impure living -- he who had formerly been a known and public adulterer. Furthermore, a certain person, learning that I was composing this booklet, in the confidence she had toward me, frankly confessed by letter he grants another the grace to confess fully that, having transgressed not lightly in a grave matter concerning her vow, she had not been able to bring herself to expiate the sin by Confession. Therefore, to overcome this rebellion of inconvenient shame, she resolved to recite for nine days a hymn with a prayer to Saint Joseph; which having done, she felt herself ready to make a Confession with the due integrity, contrition, and purpose of amendment; and from that time she resolved to keep perpetually near her some image of the Saint, effective even at night against impure dreams -- which she professes has been for her the occasion and beginning of many divine graces.
[86] But these things, as we said, though frequent, are nevertheless of such a kind that they rarely come to our knowledge, By the invocation of Saint Joseph is healed unless perhaps bound by the strictest silence. People more readily allow the aids brought to infirm bodies to come to light; indeed they even consider it a matter of religious duty not to conceal them, lest they be and appear ungrateful. Therefore I shall select some of these, which are more certain to me than the rest, either because they occurred under my very eyes or because they were conferred upon others whom I personally knew in this city of Lyons, where our members, to be tested for the third year of probation after the completion of their studies before solemn profession, have a house and church which, as I said, is named after Saint Joseph.
[87] An incurable pleurisy Sister Joan of the Angels, Prioress of the Ursulines of Laon, brought into present danger of her life by a mortal pleurisy, with the physicians despairing of her, was restored to health by an evident miracle. Which, however, because it was duly approved by the Bishop of the place and published in a printed report in the year 1637, I forbear to describe more fully through all its circumstances; I thought it sufficient to briefly append at this place, from the letter of the very one who was healed, the manner of the healing itself. Thus she says: "I began," she says, "to suffer lethal spasms as though about to expire at any moment, deprived indeed of the use of all external senses, yet fully in possession of reason. While I was in this state, a vision was presented to me of a great white cloud, after an apparition of the Saint himself, within which on one side sat my guardian Angel, having the appearance of a handsome youth of eighteen years, adorned with long blond hair and bearing a burning wax candle in his hand; on the other side, my glorious Father Saint Joseph, his face shining like the sun and conspicuous with more than human majesty, otherwise resembling a man in the middle of his age, between forty and forty-five years. His hair was comely and long, of a chestnut color; and gazing most gently and lovingly at a certain one of those standing around my bed, he then seemed to turn to me and to place his right hand upon my side and anoint it with some oil or liquid, and the anointing performed by him, from which I also found my side moist even after the vision, having been restored to health at that same moment, and I signified it to others who were present." She who relates this rose without delay from the bed in which she had already lain for fourteen days, driven to the point of death by continuous fever, amid the most acute pains of the affected side, and so utterly exhausted of all her strength by a ninth bloodletting that she could not even move herself. All marveled at so sudden a change, but none more than the heterodox physician from the school of Calvin, when, entering the room, he saw the bed empty and all around prostrated on their knees, and then beheld her, whom he had left dying, coming toward him from a corner
in her Religious habit, with a cheerful and smiling face. Seeing her thus healthy and strong, he stood for some time astonished, and at last, professing that nothing is impossible for God, he withdrew in confusion.
[87] From this miracle another followed, namely that the linen undergarment by which the cloth it touched, which had absorbed the celestial unction from the affected side, not only consistently preserves a remarkable fragrance (of which I myself was a witness, having experienced it when that Religious woman passed through Lyons) but also the power of curing diseases in others, and even communicates it to rosaries, medals, and small paper images applied to it with the invocation of Saint Joseph. Thus, a few weeks after the aforesaid prodigy was accomplished, and this in turn another thing of any sort, when a pleurisy attacked Madame de Laubardemont, who was four months pregnant, for a woman in childbirth abandoned by physicians, and the four physicians attending her did not dare to repeat the remedies they had applied without success, lest they hasten the death of both mother and child, God inspired her husband to wish to test with faith the power of the medicine recently brought by Saint Joseph. They therefore send to Laon, to ask the Ursulines for the aforesaid linen in this danger, to be applied to the sick woman. She, receiving it with the greatest joy and confidently applying it to her afflicted side, immediately obtained perfect health; and within a few hours she delivered the fetus, already dead in the womb for a month before, as the physicians judged.
[88] A boy named Claudius, residing at Labergement, which is a castle of Bresse, and for a dangerous tumor, was suffering from a severe and quite unusual swelling of one hip, which, extending even to the kidneys, was generating a burning fever in the patient, and causing the experienced to fear that either the boy would remain lame for the rest of his life, or that the enormous tumor, bursting on account of the abundance of humors, would bring some more serious harm. All who visited the sick boy, who was able to lie only prone on his stomach, were seized with immense compassion; but especially his uncle, a Religious of our Society, who, as he himself told me, when he learned that nothing had been accomplished by the medicines applied by the physicians and apothecaries of Macon, resolved to place all his confidence in preserving his nephew in Saint Joseph, they effect a cure. and immediately, having offered the Sacrifice of the Mass in his honor, he refreshed the sick boy, who had confessed his sins, with the Lord's Body. Then, plucking small pieces from the paper that had touched the aforesaid unction, he gave one to the boy to swallow and applied another to the affected part. The boy, immediately relieved, was that same day abandoned by the fever, with the swollen parts so subsiding that within three or four days he was ready and fit to undertake a journey of seven leagues on horseback.
Section XII. Benefits of Health Restored at Lyons, and Certain Other Things.
[89] Sister Margaret Rigaud, Professed at the Monastery of Saint Elizabeth at Lyons, A nun who fell from a height, freed from incurable pain, fell from a higher story to the lowest pavement of the house, not without present danger to her life, on account of a severe contusion of the head, which was indicated by a copious effusion of blood, even through the ears, and the loss of the use of all external senses. Although death was postponed for her by the application of remedies appropriate to the ailment, she nevertheless remained with so weak a head and all the faculties residing in it that she could neither rest nor incline her head to the pillow for many months afterward; and she could operate intellectually only with the greatest difficulty. Accordingly, the surgeons and physicians summoned for consultation all agreed in this judgment: that she would die shortly unless a remedy were promptly applied through the opening of the skull itself. But since the sick woman, seized by vehement dread, refused such an incision, without incision of the head, it was deferred for some days; and meanwhile the Superior of the monastery adopted a far gentler and safer counsel, ordering all the Sisters of her house to receive Holy Communion nine times for the sick woman's health, to be obtained through Saint Joseph. Nevertheless, the pains persisted at the same level for many days, so that as the day of the ninth Communion approached, some of the Sisters, despairing of Saint Joseph's aid, brought up the name of Saint Anthelm, to whom such cases are not unprofitably commended. Another, more devoted to Saint Joseph, did not suffer this, with vows made for her by the Sisters, and approaching him with greater fervor, she begged him not to allow the honor due to him to be transferred to another; and she implored him to come to the aid of the sick woman, by whatever was great and dear that he possessed in heaven; adding that she would pay him a second novena of certain devotions and mortifications if the sick Sister recovered. A wonderful thing! While the said Religious multiplied her laments and loving complaints, and the day of the last Communion was already at hand, the other was suddenly so thoroughly healed that she could not contain herself, but, almost beside herself with joy, ran through the house crying out: she is perfectly healed. "A miracle! A miracle! I am healed by the merits of Saint Joseph." And that she was, the event itself proved; since from that day she began to be present in the choir with the rest, to which she had not even come before, her ears not bearing the chant of the psalmody or any other louder sounds. And she continued to perform all other domestic offices as if she had suffered nothing, attributing to Saint Joseph not only the health of her body but also other singular favors by which her soul is disposed to progress, which every prudent person ought to esteem above the former.
[90] In the same monastery, around the year 1630, Likewise another freed from an infirmity of the head, a recently professed Religious was oppressed by so great a pain of the head that she always had her rest interrupted by severe torments, and could by no means attend to prayer. Her Superior gave her the counsel that on Tuesday, recurring nine times in turn, she should refresh herself with the Eucharistic Bread in honor of Saint Joseph and ask to be freed from so great a trouble. She obeyed; but when the fourth recurring Tuesday also brought the annual feast of Saint Joseph itself, and a sacred orator was speaking about his praises in their oratory, she felt all her former pains doubled with such excess that she could neither keep herself in her place except with the greatest difficulty, nor fully discern where she was. She persisted, however, even after the sermon was finished, at the common prayers with the others, healed on the feast of Saint Joseph. able to say or think nothing other than these two words: "Saint Joseph." As she turned and returned these words again and again, she was gradually suffused with incredible joy at the thought that so great a Saint was Joseph; and equally free from all pain, she suffered nothing of the sort thereafter.
[91] The Prefect of the Congregation of the Incarnate Word, afflicted for some years with a serious infirmity of the eyes, and another from weakness of the eyes. so that, with them darkened, she could no longer read anything, when the experienced judged the ailment incurable, made a vow to the more powerful physician of reciting his Little Office daily throughout the circle of the year; and with her eyes suddenly healed, she acknowledged herself bound by her vow. Furthermore, if I wished here to review the other kinds of admirable cures of which I am aware, and of which we see the tablet witnesses in our church, I should need to extend myself further than I have planned. For I have known many whom Saint Joseph, when invoked, freed from great torments, dangerous fevers, troublesome bleeding, and other ailments when a vow was made. Yet I cannot entirely pass over some of those who, in this recent pestilence, were freed from the contagious disease. For At Lyons during the time of the pestilence, the city of Avignon ten years before had congratulated itself on having been freed from the extreme desolation which the contagion threatened, after a public vow had been made to observe the feast of Saint Joseph; the example had such force among many of the Lyonese that in a similar necessity they had recourse to him, and the pious prayers of the supplicants availed with the holy man -- which I declare with these few examples.
[92] Master Augerij, an Advocate in the Parlement of the Dauphine, on July 15, 1638, a seven-year-old boy healed, seeing his son Theodore, then in his seventh year, struck by the plague -- the indication of the malady being a gland swollen in the right groin with a violent fever -- and on the following day observing the disease increased by a manifest carbuncle, bound himself by a vow to a nine-day devotion in his church, hearing Mass daily and offering candles at the altar with a tablet indicating the benefit, if the holy Foster-father of God would keep his son and family safe from the plague. Meanwhile the delegated surgeons visited the sick boy and ordered him to be taken away as one certain to die within two hours, to the house of Saint Lawrence, designated for those infected with the plague. But when he arrived there, the boy was suddenly healed; and the rest of the family, comprising nine persons, remained unharmed. Wherefore the father, bound by his vow, acknowledged the benefactor and offered a tablet which, representing the likenesses of himself, his wife, and his children, testified to the feeling of a grateful heart; moved by which, he also handed over all these things written in his own hand for me to insert in this place.
[93] A Priest of the Society of Jesus, Father Melchior du Faug, a Religious of our Society, after he had devoted himself to the service of those who, suspected of contagion, are kept away from the company of others for forty days, had scarcely spent a month in that ministry when he himself was seized by the plague and was shortly beyond hope of life, and struggled with death for three full days. A certain friend of his, compassionate, and himself of our Society of Jesus, vowed to invite the sick man, should he escape the danger, to nine Masses to be celebrated in the Church of Saint Joseph under his invocation, at which the one who vowed would serve; and at the very hour the vow was made, the sick man recovered the faculty of speech, and shortly recovered so well that he was out of danger of death.
[94] Stephanettus, a good old man, from the parish of Saint Lawrence d'Anyer, near the city of Lyons, an old man, seized by the pestilence, asked the Vicar whether he knew any way by which he could escape from that danger. "No other," said he, "than if you have recourse to Saint Joseph and make a vow of annually celebrating his feast and instituting a nine-day devotion in which, after the sacred names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you recite the Our Father and Hail Mary seven times daily." The old man did as was suggested, and could not marvel enough at being so suddenly healed, with no signs of the swelling and the venomous carbuncle appearing anywhere.
[95] Martin du Bau, a four-year-old infant, contracted the plague in his very cheek, a four-year-old infant, whence his life was held in despair, with the inconsolable grief of his mother. When someone suggested to her that she should devote her son to Saint Joseph, "Rightly do you advise," she said, "for he was indeed born on his feast day." She therefore began to invoke the Saint and commend the little one to him. Nevertheless, after two hours, the boy's father, observing certain signs of approaching death in the sick child, called his wife; who, also believing these to be the last breaths, and invoking Saint Joseph with a plaintive voice, approached the one lying ill and found him somewhat better. And shortly afterward, having been restored to full
health, and asked for food and wished to rise, with no trace of the illness remaining. This event, soon spread throughout the whole district, whose name is Guillottiere, seized all with amazement and confidence to be placed in the Saint. and his father. The parents, mindful of their vow, brought a tablet to the church, with the image of the boy and of his father himself; for the father too had been similarly freed from a similar illness by applying to the diseased part cotton that had been applied to the miraculous unction of which we treated above.
[96] Benedict Goutelle, a gardener in the place that lies nearest to the church of Saint Joseph, of the seventeen persons whom he numbered in his household, was the only one remaining there with a servant, Those in peril preserved from the plague, his wife and children and the rest of the household having been taken either to the houses for the infected or to those for purification, and nine or ten already having died. Wherefore he promised himself no better lot; but a certain Religious of ours persuaded him to make a vow to Saint Joseph, to which I myself (since my own concern was also at stake on account of the proximity) a gardener with his servant, added the promise of several Communions to be arranged for that purpose; and the vows were heard, as were those of the Health Prefects, who, created by public election, had each privately vowed the same for themselves. For although, by reason of their office and their charity exposed to all, they were in daily danger, none of them was touched; and therefore in the past year 1638, all together came to the church of Saint Joseph, and the Health Prefects. where, after Confession and Communion, they offered their candles, giving thanks for the health preserved to themselves and restored to the city.
[97] Nor does Joseph, when invoked, hear the prayers of Religious families any less than the vows of cities. Saint Joseph favors the filling of monasteries, Thus the Carthusian Fathers, assembled for the General Chapter in 1567, when they considered their houses empty of novices and their institute therefore greatly endangered if, as veterans departed in great numbers, no or very few recruits should succeed them, resolved to have recourse to the patronage of Saint Joseph and to observe his feast solemnly each year. And from that time there was no lack of suitable persons who either presented themselves on the spot or were sent from elsewhere requesting admission; and indeed most recently the house of those Fathers at Lyons, suffering from a scarcity of persons, after a vow of one sacrifice to be made by all the Priests each week, shortly had, and has had since, as great a supply as it could wish. He is also usefully invoked by those laboring for the conversion of barbarians. The most holy Joseph is also usefully invoked by those who labor for the conversion of barbarians, and with this in view, our Fathers in Canada in 1638 gave the name Joseph to the first Iroquois baptized by them, for good omen. Likewise New France, where our members established him as Patron of the new plantation, ascribes the happy cultivation of that wilderness to his intercession. The same can be said of Paraguay, a province of South America, especially in that Reduction which bears its name from this Saint, where in 1626 two hundred families were baptized, instilling in six neighboring villages the desire that the inhabitants, drawn by the hope of similar happiness, should wish to be added to that Reduction.
[98] In arranging marriages, Finally, to touch on many things in a few words: favoring marriages, he conciliated for a certain merchant of this city, after an alms of a hundred gold coins devoted in his honor, the love of the desired girl, although she had not previously suffered even the mention of such a marriage in her presence. He hears the prayers of pregnant women, as a votive tablet testifies which a matron offered, healed at his invocation from a desperate labor with a dead fetus. In danger during childbirth, A similar aid was received the previous year by a woman of Trevaux, who, after three fruitless days of labor, was persuaded, with the intention of receiving the Sacraments in the Saint's honor, to swallow a small piece of the paper that had touched the sacred unction of Laon. The Saint, helping no less readily when chastity is in danger, and when chastity is threatened. restored quiet to an honest girl upon whom demons, driven by the spells of sorcerers, had been more importunately pressing, as soon as she commended herself to Saint Joseph and took something from the aforesaid paper. Likewise another, who, subject to similar temptations, vowed to carry his image for nine days, and, as she herself confessed to me, soon experienced his help.
Section XIII. Favors Bestowed by Saint Joseph upon Certain of His Principal Devotees, and Especially upon Saint Teresa.
[99] In the same year in which the above-cited Father Paul de Barry was preparing to send his little work on Saint Joseph to the press in France, Saint Teresa most devoted to the Lord Joseph, one of the Discalced Carmelite Order in Belgium, Brother Elias of Saint Teresa, published a notable work which he entitled The Embassy of the Church Triumphant to the Church Militant for the Liberation of the Souls of Purgatory, and wishing to dedicate it to the most blessed Spouse of Mary, the Foster-father of Jesus, the Patron of the Order, he prefixed a lengthy preface, in which, after he had eloquently and learnedly expatiated upon the praises of the Lord Joseph and commemorated his outstanding beneficence toward his various devotees, "finally," he says, "in our one holy Mother Teresa we have examples of almost all the graces that could be desired; for she relates in chapter 6 of her Life that she was miraculously healed of the most violent and dangerous illnesses, by him she is miraculously healed, by which she had been tormented for three and a half years and had lain abandoned by the physicians. These were not only most grave but also very numerous, inasmuch as nine or ten of them individually would have sufficed to bring her to death."
[100] "In chapter 32 she writes that she was commanded by the Divine Majesty she is commanded to found a convent under his name, to press forward with the greatest possible haste in the erection of her first Monastery at Avila; for it would come about that this would be happily brought to completion and that he would be well served in it. Furthermore, she should give the convent the name of the Lord Joseph, for he on one side of the gate and the Virgin Mother of God on the other would remain as most faithful guardians perpetually. In chapter 33: 'When once,' she says, when in need of money she is aided, 'I was in great necessity and did not know what to do or where to find the wages for certain workers, Saint Joseph, my true Father and Lord, appeared to me, promising that money would by no means be lacking, and therefore I should come to terms with the workers about their wages -- which I did, without having even a farthing at hand. The Lord moreover provided me with the necessary money in such ways that all who heard of it were utterly astonished.'"
[101] "Indeed, in the same chapter, shortly after, she adds: 'When at about the same time, on the feast of the Assumption of the Mother of God, I was in the church of the Dominicans... I seemed to be clothed in a certain white and very splendid garment. Through a vision she is clothed in a white garment, At first I did not see who was putting it on me; but afterward I saw standing at my right side the most holy Virgin Mary, and at my left my father and guardian Joseph, who were wrapping this garment around me; at the same time it was also given me to understand that I was now cleansed of my sins. After I had been clothed and filled with great delight and glory, she is praised by the Mother of God because she is a devotee of Joseph; it immediately seemed to me that the Mother of God, taking hold of my hands, told me that I was doing something most pleasing to her by being a devotee of the glorious Confessor Joseph; that I should therefore firmly persuade myself that the very thing I had conceived regarding the erection of monasteries would be brought to completion. She added that the Lord Jesus and she herself, together with her spouse Joseph, would be especially honored in them.'" Thus far Saint Teresa on herself in her Life.
[102] Nor are other, and indeed very rare, details lacking which the other writers on her Life have brought forward. who protects her and her companions It will suffice to have related two or three. The Most Reverend Bishop of Tarragona, Diego de Yepes, in book 2 of the Life of the holy Mother, chapter 27, narrates that she, together with her nuns, was freed from a most evident danger of drowning and death by the Lord Joseph appearing to them; for when the holy Mother was being carried by cart to begin a certain foundation in honor of the same Saint, and the driver, leaving the royal road, took a path through steep and inaccessible precipices, she thus addressed her daughters: "Come, daughters and most beloved sisters, this alone remains for us: that we humbly turn our eyes to the Lord and beseech the patronage of the most holy Joseph, he frees them from a precipice: and in this great danger implore his help." Without delay, from the deepest abyss a human voice was heard, crying out in approximately these words: "Stop, and do not proceed further; otherwise you are all going to perish together in the precipice." And when he whose voice was heard was asked by them what they should further do, he ordered them all to take the road toward one side, which indeed seemed no less dangerous. When therefore they saw themselves rescued from the precipice and sought the man to give him due thanks for his counsel, the holy Mother, recognizing the divine benefit and bathed in tears, assured her nuns that the man was sought in vain by the drivers: "For it was," she said, "my most holy Father Joseph, who freed us from these dangers." And the outcome of the event itself confirmed this; for although they descended to the very depth of the abyss, they found neither a man nor any trace of a man.
[103] likewise on another occasion from the blow of a wheel, The Reverend Father Francisco Ribera of the Society of Jesus, Doctor of Theology, in book 3 of the Life of the holy Mother, chapter 9, says that through the intervention of the Lord Joseph, Teresa, violently thrown to the ground by the blow of a certain wheel, remained unharmed not without a miracle. In the same book, chapter 14, he testifies that the convent of Burgos fell to her in a wonderful manner on the very feast of the Lord Joseph, even though long and fruitless effort had been expended in that matter and very little hope of obtaining it had shone forth. Others, finally, set forth at great length the other benefits that Teresa obtained from Joseph; but we refer the reader to the full volumes written on these matters, and add only this one thing (which is nonetheless most worthy of observation, The same is renowned for miracles in all Teresian churches; and ought to animate the whole Christian world to the cult of this most holy man): that as many, as it were, propitiatory pools for curing infirmities of the body, as many propitiatory shrines for obtaining whatever benefits for souls, seem to have been assigned by a most merciful God as the perpetual patrimony of the Teresian heirs, as there are churches founded and altars erected among them.
[104] Omitting others, and especially at Antwerp, let our convent at Antwerp serve as an example: how many remedies for diseases and afflictions are usually obtained there is not easy to say. Let the votive offerings, which are daily brought to the Saint's image, speak; let those testify who gratefully acknowledge themselves freed from infirmities and other ailments or endowed with benefits of every kind; let the authority of the local Ordinary confirm it, to whom the approval of miracles has been assigned by the ordinance of the sacred Council of Trent. where a workman fell from on high without harm. It was not enough that, after this our church was completed and consecrated, the Lord Joseph should begin to exhibit his aid therein; even before it was finished, a certain John Verstrepius, having fallen from a height of sixty-six feet, was miraculously preserved alive through the invocation of the Lord Joseph; and there exists on this matter an authentic diploma of John Malderus, Bishop of Antwerp, dated May 28, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1631.
[105] After these things collected by Brother Elias concerning his Order and its holy Reformer, Miraculous favors are rewarded let us see further from Paul de Barry in what ways those devoted to Saint Joseph have earned his favors. He himself proposes various examples in chapter 6, and first the example of the often-mentioned Teresa, who teaches that one should always have an image of this Saint upon one's person or in one's room and venerate it religiously; how useful this is, Isidore de Isolani proves with this story: "We have learned," he says, "from a venerable man in the renowned city of Venice in Italy, one who piously venerates the Saint's image, that a certain nobleman was accustomed on each day to kneel before an image of Saint Joseph painted on the wall of a certain church and to venerate the holy Joseph with prayers. After a rather long observance of such a practice with a sincere and noble heart, he took to his bed, pressed by a grave illness. Here, while awake, with sound eyes and a sound mind, he saw Saint Joseph, in the likeness of the aforesaid image, entering his room; at which sight he was moved by a wondrous contrition for his sins. Immediately, having summoned a priest, he made Confession in the Catholic manner, and so fell asleep in the Lord, invited, as is piously believed, to the heavenly realms by the presence of the most holy Joseph."
[106] A second practice proposed by the lauded author is to be singularly devoted to one of the mysteries from the life of Saint Joseph; one singularly devoted to contemplating his flight into Egypt, as that pious Religious in the monastery of Montserrat, of whom Diego de Aranda relates that he was accustomed to venerate more religiously than others the journey of Joseph fleeing into Egypt with the child and mother. That this was useful to him and pleasing to the Saint, the following outcome made clear. He happened to be returning on foot to the monastery as evening was falling, and having strayed from the right path, had begun to wander among those rough crags, so that he already thought he would have to spend the night in the open, not without fear of wild beasts, when behold, he perceived a man who seemed to be leading a noble matron embracing a child in her arms and sitting upon a donkey. Refreshed by this encounter, the good man received still more consolation when, being asked about the way, the man told him to follow, saying he would lead him to the required place. Thus, amid conversations of marvelous sweetness, he arrived at the village to which he had directed his journey; where his joy was quickly turned to astonishment, as those whom he had had as guides and companions of the way were nowhere to be seen; nor did any other thought occur to his mind than that it had been his holy patron who, appearing to him in this guise and company, had declared by no uncertain sign that he regarded his devotion with favor. A similar practice can be suggested by what is read in the other Life of Blessed Catherine of Bologna, number 59, on the day of March 9, as having been rewarded with a notable favor from Saint Joseph; to which, for the sake of brevity, we refer the reader.
[107] A third practice is to recite his Office; a fourth, to recite litanies woven from his eulogies, Ursulines reciting his litanies, which you may find arranged in alphabetical order in the same Barry. The usefulness of this practice will be taught by the Ursuline Virgins, who, when they hoped to establish a seat at Lambesc in Provence, enticed by the specious promises of certain pious persons, found everything there so unripe and contrary to expectation that not even a house for them to lodge in could anyone be found willing to rent; wherefore scarcely anyone doubted that they must return to Aix. But before they returned frustrated, they resolved to have recourse, by means of a nine-day task, to Saint Joseph, whom they had chosen as the patron of their expedition, and to recite his litanies together after Mass. The ninth day had not yet dawned when an honest priest, who had caused a church sacred to Saint Teresa to be built near that very city, approached the Superior of the Ursulines, offering his church and the house annexed to it, together with certain possessions pertaining thereto. Thus the efficacy of the invoked patronage was manifest, when those good Virgins saw themselves received into his house -- she who among those singularly devoted to the Lord Joseph especially deserved to be called his daughter.
[108] I pass over other inventions of pious devotion, to come to that of which the Saint himself was the author for two Franciscans who were shipwrecked, and who for three days among the storms, those recalling his 7 sorrows and joys, as one reads in John of Fano, were floating on a single plank. To them, invoking his help, he appeared in a youthful form and habit, was their guide to a safe shore, and when asked his name by them, said he was Saint Joseph, and admonished them to recite the Our Father and Hail Mary seven times daily, in memory of his seven sorrows and as many joys; for from this it would come about that both they and anyone who should undertake this exercise of piety would undoubtedly experience his patronage in all their necessities. What those sorrows are and what joys, since it is easy to reckon from the first paragraph and the words of the Gospel, we omit to enumerate here. and a hospitable merchant prompted by his inspiration. Pertinent here also is what Saint Vincent Ferrer relates in a sermon on the Nativity of the Lord: "A Valencian merchant, every year on the day of the Nativity of the Lord, used to invite a poor man, an old man, and some woman having a small child, who represented to him the Virgin with her Son and Joseph. Concerning this man it was revealed that at his death they appeared to him and said: 'Because you received us in your house, therefore we shall receive you in our house.'"
[109] More can be read in the aforesaid Paul de Barry, especially from the History of the Ursulines of Laon, Other writings on the glory of Saint Joseph, by a hidden judgment of God possessed by a demon, and miraculously aided by Saint Joseph; whence that account also bears the title On the Glory of Saint Joseph. But since it has not yet come into our hands, and the things which the aforesaid author excerpted from it on various occasions and scattered throughout his booklet cannot conveniently be gathered into one, let what has been said suffice, both to excite the confidence of the faithful toward the most holy Patriarch, and so that in this most recent century there may seem to have been fulfilled what Isidore de Isolani predicted, as if prophesying: and the prediction of the expansion of his cult fulfilled. "The Holy Spirit will not cease to move the hearts of the faithful until the whole empire of the Church Militant pursues the divine Joseph with new veneration, founds monasteries, and erects churches and altars in his honor; feasts will be celebrated, and all will make vows to him. The Lord will open the ears of the hearts of the understanding, and great men will search out the interior gifts of God hidden in Saint Joseph, and they will find the best treasure, such as they did not find among the holy Fathers of the Old Testament."