[1] Good examples of what Max Nordau calls Echolalie are to be found in this biography (p. 22).
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. Such is the force of tradition. . . .
Joseph of Copertino lived during the time of the Spanish viceroys, and his fame spread not only over all Italy, but to France, Germany and Poland. Among his intimates and admirers were no fewer than eight cardinals, Prince Leopold of Tuscany, the Duke of Bouillon, Isabella of Austria, the Infanta Maria of Savoy and the Duke of Brunswick, who, during a visit to various courts of Europe in 1649, purposely went to Assisi to see him, and was there converted from the Lutheran heresy by the spectacle of one of his flights. Prince Casimir, heir to the throne of Poland, was his particular friend, and kept up a correspondence with him after the death of his father and his own succession to the throne.
Towards the close of his life, the flying monk became so celebrated that his superiors were obliged to shut him up in the convent of Osimo, in close confinement, in order that his aerial voyages “should not be disturbed by the concourse of the vulgar.” And here he expired, in his sixty-first year, on the 18th September, 1663. He had been suffering and infirm for some little time previous to that event, but managed to take a short flight on the very day preceding his demise.
Forthwith the evidences of his miraculous deeds were collected and submitted to the inspired examination of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome. Their conscientiousness in sifting and weighing the depositions is sufficiently attested by the fact that ninety years were allowed to elapse ere Joseph of Copertino was solemnly received into the number of the Blessed. This occurred in 1753; and though the date may have been accidentally chosen, some people will be inclined to detect the hand of Providence in the ordering of the event, as a challenge to Voltaire, who was just then disquieting Europe with certain doctrines of a pernicious nature.