Relics of St Joseph of Cupertino

Today is the feast of the Franciscan friar St Joseph of Cupertino (the name of his birth place, a small town in southern Italy), who died on this day in 1663 at the age of 60. He is certainly best known nowadays for the fact that he levitated quite a number of times, and these acts of levitation were attested by unimpeachable witnesses as part of the cause of his canonization. The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints points out that one of the great experts on the canonization process, Cardinal Prosper Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, served for a time as the “devil’s advocate” for his cause, and after personally examining all the eyewitness testimonies, was absolutely convinced of their truthfulness.

St Joseph of Cupertino Levitating, ca. 1762 by Felice Boscaratti, in the church of St Lawrence in Vicenza, Italy. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

From 1639-53, St Joseph lived at the mother church of his order, the basilica of St Francis in Assisi. Earlier this year, I visited the church, and was taken on a tour of part of the complex which includes the rooms where he lived. Here are a few pictures of some 2nd class relics of his, and some views of the building and the surrounding countryside; fortunately, it was a particularly nice day when I was there. For reasons which remain unknown to this day, St Joseph was sent away from Assisi in 1653, and spent the last 13 years of his life being moved from one Franciscan house to another (the Roman breviary refers to this aspect of his history), so his relics are in the order’s church at Osimo in the Marches region of Italy.

A modern, Byzantine-style icon of him.  

His breviary, and the block of wood which he used for a pillow. St Joseph was well known for his prompt obedience to his superiors, but also for his constant distraction of mind from even the most necessary of earthly matters, and when he was ordered to depart from Assisi, he simply left without remembering to bring with him his breviary, or his glasses, or even his hat and coat.

“The mensa of the altar in which St Joseph of Cupertino used to celebrated Mass”, now mounted onto the wall of his former rooms to be venerated as a relic. 

These plaques mark the place where the Lutheran prince of Brunswick (misspelled in classic Italian fashion as “Bransuik”) witnessed one of St Joseph’s levitations, which would eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism; the lower plaque notes that in the same place, St Joseph was once slapped by the devil, who appeared to him dressed as a pilgrim.  

His bed and prie-dieu.

A 14th century fresco of the Crucifixion within one of the rooms near that of St Joseph.

A view of the part of the external substructures built at the behest of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), he of Sistine Chapel fame, to support the much-expanded Franciscan complex around the basilica where their founder rests. (Pope Sixtus had been minister general of the Franciscans before his elevation to the cardinalate, and as Pope, had the honor of canonizing one of his predecessors in that role, St Bonaventure.)

The basilica seen from the piazza below it.

A view taken on the sly by a friend in the lower basilica; the panel of the Madonna and Child on the right by Cimabue, painted between 1285 and 1288, is one of the oldest likeness of St Francis that exists, and is held by many to be the closest to what he actually looked like.