All this points to a certain weak-mindedness or arrested development,
and were this an isolated case one might be inclined to think that the
church had made Saint Joseph an object of veneration on the same
principles as do the Arabs, who elevate idiots, epileptics, and
otherwise deficient creatures to the rank of marabouts, and credit them
with supernatural powers.
But it is not an isolated case. The majority of these southern saints
are distinguished from the vulgar herd by idiosyncrasies to which modern
physicians give singular names such as "gynophobia," "glossolalia" and
"demonomania"; [Footnote: Good examples of what Max Nordau calls
Echolalie are to be found in this biography (p. 22).] even the founder
of the flying monk's order, the great Francis of Assisi, has been
accused of some strange-sounding mental disorder because, with touching
humility, he doffed his vestments and presented himself naked before his
Creator. What are we to conclude therefrom?
The flying monk resembles Saint Francis in more than one feature. He,
too, removed his clothes and even his shirt, and exposed himself thus to
a crucifix, exclaiming, "Here I am, Lord, deprived of everything." He
followed his prototype, further, in that charming custom of introducing
the animal world into his ordinary talk ("Brother Wolf, Sister Swallow,"
etc.). So Joseph used to speak of himself as l'asinelio - the little
ass; and a pathetic scene was witnessed on his death-bed when he was
heard to mutter: "L'asinelio begins to climb the mountain;
l'asinelio is half-way up; l'asinelio has reached the summit;
l'asinelio can go no further, and is about to leave his skin behind."
It is to be noted, in this connection, that Saint Joseph of Coper-tino
was born in a stable.
This looks like more than a mere coincidence. For the divine Saint
Francis was likewise born in a stable.
But why should either of these holy men be born in stables?
A reasonable explanation lies at hand. A certain Japanese statesman is
credited with that shrewd remark that the manifold excellencies and
diversities of Hellenic art are due to the fact that the Greeks had no
"old masters" to copy from - no "schools" which supplied their
imagination with ready-made models that limit and smother individual
initiative. And one marvels to think into what exotic beauties these
southern saints would have blossomed, had they been at liberty, like
those Greeks, freely to indulge their versatile genius - had they not
been bound to the wheels of inexorable precedent. If the flying monk,
for example, were an ordinary mortal, there was nothing to prevent him
from being born in an omnibus or some other of the thousand odd places
where ordinary mortals occasionally are born. But - no! As a Franciscan
saint, he was obliged to conform to the school of Bethlehem and Assisi.
He was obliged to select a stable.
