Upon This Rock (Modern Apologetics Library)

 CONTENTS 

Introduction: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome 

PART ONE: 

The Apostle Peter Biblical Study: Peter the Man, the Apostle, and the Rock 

Historical Study: Was Peter in Rome, Was He the First Bishop of Rome, and Was He Martyred in Rome? 

The Opposition 

PART TWO: 

The Primacy of Peter in the See of Rome Oldest Documents: Earliest Christian Documents Reveal the Primacy of Peter in the See of Rome 

The First Five Centuries:The Primacy of Rome in the Early Church 

PART THREE: Current Church Teaching

INTRODUCTION St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome

There is little in the history of the Church that has been more heatedly contested than the primacy of Peter and the See of Rome. History is replete with examples of authority spurned, and the history of the Church is no different. As we proceed with this overview of history, we will allow the Scriptures, the voice of the apostles, and the testimony of the early centuries of the Christian community to speak for themselves. In many quarters, over the last few centuries, the din of opposition and uninformed dissent has drowned out the voices of these ancient witnesses. Novel ideas, like a voracious flood, have tried to erode the foundations and the clear historical precedents provided by the Holy Spirit’s work in the primitive Church. History has a clear and distinct voice, but it does not force itself upon us uninvited. History is prudent and waits quietly to be discovered. Conversely, the ingenious inventions of recent theologians and innovators are loud and demanding, bursting upon our ears and minds, our lives and hearts, demanding our immediate attention and loyalties. The riches of history fall quietly aside as the prattling innovators blast their trumpets and loudly parade their followers through new streets, trampling the knowledge of the ages under their cumulative feet. Here we will allow the voices of the past to speak again—for themselves. And what the reader will find is that the utterances of the past still resound with one voice, with clarity and force. To study those who have gone before us, following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, his apostles, and our Fathers in the faith is to lose interest in much of the clamor of modern notions. We find these theological innovations and ecclesiastical groups poorly devised, if not disingenuous. This is what John Henry Newman, a Protestant clergyman at the time, found as he studied the primitive Church. He concluded: “To be deep in history is to cease being a Protestant.” 1 As the Protestant churches continue to fragment and lose the fervor and orthodoxy of their past reform efforts, many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are looking to the past to hear what the early Fathers have to say today. They are beginning to listen to the unobtrusive voice of the early Church, and they are finding it is quite different from what they have been taught. Reading the writings of the early Church allows us to tap into the very heartbeat of the apostolic teaching and tradition of the primitive Church—the very Church bequeathed to us by the apostles. Sometimes silence is more eloquent than words. This is especially true in Church history. We hear so much about what the Fathers say and so little about what they do not say. This is revealing and should play a significant role in our research. William Webster has written a book that we will refer to several times in our study. Webster is an ex-Catholic who decided to abandon the Church and cast his lot with the Fundamentalist Protestants. His book is entitled Peter and the Rock and asserts that, as the blurb on the back of the book says, “The contemporary Roman Catholic interpretation [of Peter and the rock] had no place in the biblical understanding of the early church doctors.” To ascertain whether or not such an assertion is true is one of the main goals of this book. But along with what the Fathers say, we need to hear their silence as well. While reading Webster’s book, I noticed, along with his selective use of the Fathers in attempting to discredit the Catholic Church’s teaching on the Papacy, that there are no citations “revealed” in his book in which a Christian, especially a Church Father, explicitly denies the Petrine primacy or the Petrine succession. Webster collects a large number of passages that are supposed to prove that the Fathers oppose Catholic teaching, yet never is there a flat-out denial of the Petrine primacy or the primacy of Rome. This is a silence that speaks volumes! We may find differing interpretations of Peter’s primacy, which is what we should expect, according to John Henry Newman, yet we find no denial of that primacy. I wrote to William Webster and asked him if he knew of any Church Father who denied the primacy of Peter or of his successors. Mr. Webster’s response was very telling, and I wish he had been forthright about this matter in his book. His return E-mail stated, “No father denies that Peter had a primacy or that there is a Petrine succession. The issue is how the fathers interpreted those concepts. They simply did not hold to the Roman Catholic view of later centuries that primacy and succession were ‘exclusively’ related to the bishops of Rome.” 2 What an extraordinary admission; what an extraordinary truth. Many of the Fathers were in theological or disciplinary disagreement with Rome (for example, Cyprian and Irenaeus), yet they never denied Rome’s primacy. They may have debated what that primacy meant, or how it was to work out in the universal Church, but they never denied the primacy. The quickest way to achieve jurisdictional or doctrinal victory is to subvert or disarm the opponent. In this case it would have been as simple as proving from the Bible or from tradition that Peter, and subsequently his successors in Rome, had no primacy, no authority to rule in the Church. Yet, as even Webster freely admits, this refutation never occurred. Irenaeus may challenge the appropriateness of a decision made by Victor, but he never challenges Victor’s authority to make the binding decision. Cyprian may at times disagree with a decree of Stephen’s on baptism, but he never rejects the special place of the Roman See, which would have been the easiest means of winning the debate. The bishop of Rome was unique in assuming the authority and obligation to oversee the Churches. Clement and Ignatius make this clear from the first century and the beginning of the second. If the authority exercised had been illegitimate, or wrongly arrogated, it would have been an act of overzealousness at one end of the spectrum, of tyranny at the other. Yet no one ever stood up and said, “No, you have no authority. Who are you to order us, to teach us, to require obedience from us, to excommunicate us?” If the jurisdictional primacy of Rome had been a matter of self-aggrandizement, someone would have opposed it as they opposed other innovations and heresies in the Church. The silence is profound. As doctrines develop, as authority develops, as even a family or society develops, there is discussion relating to authority and its exercise. Amazingly enough, this is also true for the canon of the New Testament, which was not finally collected and codified for almost four hundred years after the death of Christ. Does the fact that there were various interpretations of what the New Testament was, or which books it contained—a discussion, by the way, that raised its head again in the teaching of Martin Luther—in any way prove that somehow the New Testament held by the Protestant is uncertain or in doubt because there were various applications or perceptions of that canon in the early years? The faithful Christian may have believed various things about the canon, but he never denied that the Scriptures held a special place. He may have clung to a different collection of books, yet he always understood that there were “apostolic” books. In the same way, early Fathers, especially Eastern Fathers, may have defined the primacy of Peter and the supremacy of his successors in nuanced ways, yet they never denied that the primacy or authority was attached to Peter and his See in Rome. Authority has always been an object of distrust and, very often, defiance. The nation of Israel refused to hear authority: they rejected the authority of the prophets 3 and rejected their Messiah sent by the Father. 4 The apostles themselves were abused and rejected. 5 Should it surprise us that many in our present day reject and demean the unifying authority God has ordained in his Church? In the primitive Church, as we learn from St. Irenaeus, the greatest theologian of the second century, many groups splintered off from the apostolic Church and “assembled in unauthorized meetings”. 6 Rejecting the Church and spurning her shepherd is nothing new to our day. Christians of many traditions are currently espousing recent Protestant traditions and modern schisms; yet they all claim the early Church as their own —asserting that they are the rightful heirs to the teachings of our Lord, the apostles, and the Fathers of the apostolic Church. Are they? Do they have a legitimate claim to the theology of the early Church? Was the early Church essentially “Protestant” in her theology and polity, or was she Catholic? Much of the distinctive character of the Church through the centuries has been based on the teaching concerning Peter and his place within the apostolic company and in the Church. Was he chosen for a special position? Did Jesus separate Peter out from the Twelve? Did Peter have authority over the body of Christ, the one sheepfold? Was the position of bishop carried on by his successors? How did the first generations of Christians relate to Peter? These are questions we will try to answer as we proceed with this study. Holy Scripture must be interpreted, since it is not laid out simply in the form of a Church manual or textbook. One principle of proper interpretation involves studying a topic or passage within its context, both the immediate context and the context of the whole Bible. If this is neglected or done poorly, a plethora of problems arises. Historical context must also be taken into account. In studying Peter and the subject of primacy, it is especially important to consider who or what makes up the foundation of the Church. The many facets of the Church are like the multiple surfaces of a diamond glistening in the sunlight. These facets are written about from different angles, and the metaphors used—foundations, builders, stones, and so on—are as varied as the gem’s surfaces. In grammar school we learn not to mix metaphors. Mixing metaphors makes clear communication difficult and can lead to misunderstandings. This confusion of context is especially pronounced in much of the Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestant understanding of the foundation of the Church. However, even George Salmon, no friend to Catholic teaching (in fact he has proven himself a hero to many opposed to the Catholic Church and wrote The Infallibility of the Church to undermine the teachings of the Catholic Church), understood the need to understand properly the metaphors used in Scripture. I provide an extended quotation from Salmon’s book to lay the foundation (pun intended) for understanding the biblical and patristic references to Peter and the foundation of the Church. 

It is undoubtedly the doctrine of Scripture that Christ is the only foundation [of the Church]: “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3: 11). Yet we must remember that the same metaphor may be used to illustrate different truths, and so, according to circumstances, may have different significations. The same Paul who has called Christ the only foundation, tells his Ephesian converts (2:20):—“Ye are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.” And in like manner we read (Rev 21: 14):—“The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.” How is it that there can be no other foundation but Christ, and yet that the Apostles are spoken of as foundations? Plainly because the metaphor is used with different applications. Christ alone is that foundation, from being joined to which the whole building of the Church derives its unity and stability, and gains strength to defy all the assaults of hell. But, in the same manner as any human institution is said to be founded by those men to whom it owes its origin, so we may call those men the foundation of the Church whom God honoured by using them as His instruments in the establishment of it; who were themselves laid as the first living stones in that holy temple, and on whom the other stones of that temple were laid; for it was on their testimony that others received the truth, so that our faith rests on theirs; and (humanly speaking) it is because they believed that we believe. So, again, in like manner, we are forbidden to call anyone on earth our Father, “for one is our Father which is in heaven.” And yet, in another sense, Paul did not scruple to call himself the spiritual father of those whom he had begotten in the Gospel. You see, then, that the fact that Christ is called the rock, and that on Him the Church is built, is no hindrance to Peter’s also being, in a different sense, called rock, and being said to be the foundation of the Church; so that I consider there is no ground for the fear entertained by some, in ancient and in modern times, that, by applying the words personally to Peter, we should infringe on the honour due to Christ alone. 7 

Our current study comprises four interrelated topics. The first two sections examine the life and ministry of the Apostle Peter from biblical and historical sources. The last two sections examine the continuing authority of Peter through the centuries, carried on through apostolic succession and the primacy of Rome. We divide the study in this way: 

1. The Life and Ministry of Peter 

A. Biblical study: Peter the man, the apostle, the rock: What is his place in the teachings of Jesus and in the New Testament? 

B. Historical study: Did Peter travel to Rome, oversee the Church as bishop, and die a martyr’s death in the city of Rome? 

2 . The Primacy of Peter in the Early Church 

A. Earliest document study: The primacy of Rome in the earliest noncanonical writings of the Church, authored by Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. 

B. Early Church study: Peter and the primacy of Rome taught and practiced throughout the first five centuries. 

Certainly, it is not possible to compile every passage from the Fathers that pertains to the study of Peter and the primacy. This is true, first of all, because such passages are too abundant and, secondly, because many times the primacy is not demonstrated by written teachings per se, but by the actions of the Fathers in particular historical situations. Some Fathers write of the Petrine primacy and later change their stance as they move away from orthodoxy or from a literal understanding of Scripture or when they enter into a personal conflict with the bishop of Rome. Lately, several books have come out that are hostile to the Catholic Church’s teaching on papal primacy (we will discuss these books in the course of our study). A perusal of these books shows that their inability to deal fairly with the issue stems from their tendency to “proof-text”, by which they point out things that seem to support their contentions and ignore everything that does not. Another reason these opponents find it difficult to comprehend the Papacy is a perspective, inherited from the Protestant Reformation, that is essentially antisacramental, anti-mediational, and anti-incarnational. God’s economy, however, always involves mediation. The people of God, for example, stepped back and demanded that God not speak to them directly, for they were afraid and stood at a distance. Then they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die” (Ex 20: 19). Take another example—Paul. God could very well have “saved” him directly, but instead the great Paul was sent to the lowly Ananias for baptism and instructions. Paul later went to Peter for approval and to make sure he “was not running in vain”, even though he had received revelations and had even been taken up to the “third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2). No Christian baptizes himself; this is done though the mediating agency of another person. Without an understanding of how God works through mediation, it is difficult to understand the fullness of the faith. 8 It would take volumes to deal thoroughly with every biblical passage, every Father’s writings, and every argument against the Papacy. However, we will provide ample material to establish the firm foundation of Catholic teaching and to refute the opposition. In the process we will attempt to be fair with the material, analyzing not only the Catholic position but the interpretation espoused by the opposition. Much can be said about each of these topics and detailed accounts can be read from other sources listed in the bibliography. In our journey through the Scriptures and the primitive Church, we will consult our first brethren in Christ. We will conclude by looking at the current teaching of the Catholic Church as well as the widespread opposition. Now let us journey back in time to the New Testament period and the generations that followed in the footsteps and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

PART ONE THE APOSTLE PETER
BIBLICAL STUDY Peter the Man, the Apostle, and the Rock

Why should we consider someone so impulsive, outspoken, and unstable as Peter to be capable of leading the band of apostles in founding and governing the Church, the Household of God? Because he is respected and loved by Jesus, being the first among the closest associates of Jesus. Jesus often separated out Peter, James, and John for intimate times of prayer and special instruction. Jesus also specifically chose Peter to be the leader and spokesman for the apostles and the primitive Christian community. Every list of the twelve apostles in the New Testament has Peter prominently placed at the top of the list, and Judas is listed last. 1 Peter was the first of three special disciples whom Jesus included in his inner circle. 2 Peter is repeatedly mentioned by name when the others are referred to simply as “disciples” or “the eleven”. 3 He always stands out as the leader, the spokesman, and the chosen “first” among equals. The names Peter, Simon, or Cephas are used 191 times in the New Testament. Except for Christ himself, no other person receives nearly as much attention as Simon Peter does through biblical references. 4 Before Jesus called this fisherman and renamed him Peter, his name was Simon, son of Jonas. Jesus gave Simon a new, descriptive name, Peter, which means “rock” in Greek, and from that time forward he was known as Simon Peter. Jesus in Caesarea Philippi also called him Cephas (Aramaic for “rock”). 5 As we see from the naming of the twelve sons of Jacob, names were very significant in Jewish society. In the Torah and in Jewish tradition, a name change meant a change in status. Abraham, the father of the Jews who received the covenant sign of circumcision, had his name changed by God from Abram, meaning “father”, to Abraham, meaning the “father of nations” (Gen 17: 1-5). Now, at the inception of the new covenant, we see Simon’s name changed by Jesus from Simon to Kepha, Peter, signifying a new designation, a new commission, and a new status. Peter was the son of Jonas 6 and the brother of Andrew. 7 It appears from the Gospel record, and from Paul’s writings, that Peter was married and owned his own house just south of the synagogue in Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Peter may have lived with his mother-in-law and possibly his wife (Lk 4:38). The first-century stone pavement and the dark rocks of the original synagogue foundation, where Jesus taught “as one having authority” (Mk 1:21), can still be seen today. Archeologists have discovered that the site of Peter’s home was venerated as early as the first century, and several churches were later built over the site in honor of St. Peter. 8 We get bits of information from Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150-215) that provide possible enlightenment about Peter’s family. Clement writes, “They say, accordingly, that the blessed Peter, on seeing his wife led to death, rejoiced on account of her call and conveyance home, and called very encouragingly and comfortingly, addressing her by name, ‘Remember thou the Lord.’ Such was the marriage of the blessed, and their perfect disposition toward those dearest to them.” 9 Clement also mentions that the apostles Peter and Philip both had children. 10 The Apostle Paul informs us that Peter, along with the other married apostles, perhaps took his wife with him on his apostolic journeys (1 Cor 9:5). Peter and John were not highly educated; in fact, the rulers of the people and elders watched “Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men.” 11 Peter’s brother Andrew, who was a disciple of John the Baptist at the time, introduced Peter to Jesus. 12 Peter owned fishing boats and a family fishing business in partnership with James and John, the sons of Zebedee. 13 It was from Peter’s boat that Jesus chose to speak to the multitudes (Lk 5:3). Peter and his brother Andrew, along with James and John, left their everyday life and businesses to follow Jesus as his disciples. What happened to their boats and nets? What happened to their fishing business? We do not know. Maybe the business was carried on by family members, possibly by Zebedee and his hired servants (Mk 1:20). After the Resurrection, Peter and the other disciples were again fishing from a boat in the Sea of Galilee (Jn 21:3), so it is probable that Peter still owned the fishing vessels. The New Testament is peppered with biographical details about the personality and life of Peter. For three years Peter and the disciples followed Jesus as he crisscrossed the rocky terrain of Israel. Peter walked on the water (Mt 14:28-31) and pulled a coin from a fish’s mouth to pay a tax for himself and Jesus (Mt 17:24-27). Peter was the one who received a revelation from God that enabled him to confess the true identity of Jesus (Mt 16: 16), and he saw Jesus transfigured, along with Moses and Elijah, on the mountain, which he mentions later in his second epistle. 14 Peter, along with John, was selected to prepare the Passover meal, which would be transformed into the Eucharist (Lk 22:8). Peter was bold and spoke his mind—sometimes too quickly, not thinking before he did so. He was rebuked by Jesus for his wrong-headed conclusions (Mt 16:23), though Jesus loved his devotion and courage. After pledging loyalty and even martyrdom for Jesus’ sake, Peter reneged and vehemently denied the Lord three times—and then (unlike Judas) repented and wept bitterly because of his betrayal. 15 Another time, he impulsively drew his sword and slashed off Malchus’ ear (Jn 18: 10). Even though he was brash and impulsive, however, he had a gentle heart and was extremely sensitive to his sin and shortcomings. 16 There may be too much made of Peter’s impulsiveness. As a successful businessman with a prominent house in the community, Peter must also have had organizational and leadership abilities—to which the event of Pentecost added charisms of faith and leadership, grace building upon nature. He could not have succeeded in business if he had allowed impulse alone to rule him. But he may very well have overestimated his own abilities. He took it on himself to lead wherever he was, speaking often for the other disciples, and even once for Jesus. Peter was the first man to see Jesus after the Resurrection. 17 Peter was given the special commission to pray for his brethren and strengthen them and was appointed by Jesus to feed and tend his sheep. 18 After Pentecost, Peter took the leading role in the fledgling Church. 19 He preached the first gospel message (Acts 2: 14-40), and, with the assistance of the other apostles, he baptized over three thousand people that day. After exposing their deception, Peter condemned Ananias and Sapphira, who lied to the Holy Spirit and fell dead at the feet of Peter (Acts 5: 1-11). Peter changed the course of the young Church by baptizing Cornelius and his household, the first Gentiles to become Christians. Paul came to visit Cephas (Peter) and “remained with him fifteen days” (Gal 1: 18). Later, Paul again came to Jerusalem to submit his gospel to Peter and the leading apostles to make sure he was not running in vain (Gal 2:2). When confusion arose over how the law of circumcision applied to the Gentile converts, Peter made the authoritative doctrinal decision at the first Church council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), to which all those in attendance acquiesced. Peter traveled extensively, preaching the gospel and establishing churches all over the Roman Empire. 20 There are many more biographical passages focusing on Peter in the Scriptures, more than we can detail in this short introduction. How does Peter fit into the whole scheme of things? Did Jesus really treat Peter differently from the others? Did Jesus favor Peter or set him apart? What about the other disciples? Did they recognize Peter as first, in a place of preeminence? John was the disciple “Jesus loved”, the one who rested his head on Jesus’ breast while at the Passover dinner, 21 but it was Peter who was given a special place of leadership, the shepherd of the sheep and the one who “strengthens” his fellow apostles. 22 But the single event that most clearly shows Peter’s prominence in the New Testament is recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Jesus commissions Peter, and his words have probably caused more spilled ink over the last five centuries than any other biblical passage. 23 The Gospels, Acts, and the letter to the Galatians give us the most information about the ministry of Peter after the Resurrection. The Acts of the Apostles begins with Peter at the center of activity in Jerusalem; and then, after the Council of Jerusalem, Paul takes center stage in the drama. According to Michael Winter, 

After this decision [in Jerusalem regarding the Gentiles] has been reached, the book of the Acts leaves the Jerusalem community and relates in detail the mission to the gentiles. It is natural that attention should henceforth center on St. Paul, but the lesson of the first half of the book is not thereby invalidated. The picture of St. Peter is just the same as that of the gospels. Without any attempt to force the meaning of the text, he is seen in a position of particular authority, and although the precise amplitude of his powers cannot be decided without reference to the gospels he is rightly seen to be the director of the infant church. There is no suggestion here that St. Peter is about to be demoted, and although little more is said about him, no evidence can be found to show that it was the intention of Christ or the infant church that he should relinquish his position of authority. 24

 Quite the contrary. As we enter the fascinating period of the apostolic Church, we see that the place of Peter, and his martyrdom in Rome, had a universal acceptance among the writings and beliefs of the earliest Christians. Now we will plunge into the Scriptures to discover passages related to Peter and his primacy in the early Church, a primacy that was passed on in the Church through the office of the bishop of Rome.

 The Gospel of John —event c. A.D. 30 —written by St. John about A.D. 90-100 

“One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, ‘So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” 25 

The Gospel of Matthew —event c. A.D. 30 —written in the last half of the first century 

“The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.” 26 

The Gospel of Luke —written in the last half of the first century 

“Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. . . . Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep.” 27 

An Angel —recorded in the Gospel of Mark —event about A.D. 30 —written in the last half of the first century 

“And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, ‘Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.’ ” 28 

The Gospel of Luke 

“And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’ ” 29 

Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians —written about A.D. 57 

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time.” 30 

Jesus Christ in The Gospel of Matthew 31 

“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, 32 he asked his disciples, ‘Who do men say that the Son of man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ 33 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! 34 For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 35 And I tell you, you are Peter, 36 and on this rock 37 I will build my church, 38 and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, 39 and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ 40 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.” 41 

The Prophet Isaiah 42 

“Thus says the Lord God of hosts, ‘Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, 43 and say to him: What have you to do here and whom have you here, that you have hewn here a tomb for yourself, you who hew a tomb on the height, and carve a habitation for yourself in the rock? . . . I will thrust you from your office, 44 and you will be cast down from your station. In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, 45 and will commit your authority to his hand; 46 and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. 47 And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; 48 he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. 49 And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house. And they will hang on him the whole weight of his father’s house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.” 50 

The Prophet Isaiah 

“Hearken to me, you who pursue deliverance, you that seek the Lord; look to the rock from which you were hewn, 51 and to the quarry from which you were digged. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.” 52 

Flavius Josephus 53 —c. A.D. 37—c. 100 

“And now the Pharisees joined themselves to her to assist her in the government. . . . But these Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her [Alexandra’s] favour by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs: they banished and reduced whom they pleased; they bound and loosed [men] at their pleasure; and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority.” 54

 Jesus Christ to His Twelve Apostles 

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. . . . If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, 55 let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 56 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” 57 

Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospel of John 

“And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” 58 

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one [perfected in unity], so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.” 59 

Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew —written in the latter half of the first century 

“These twelve Jesus sent out. . . . He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” 60 

“Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 61 so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.’ ” 62

Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Luke —written in the latter half of the first century 

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you [plural], that he may sift you [plural] like wheat, but I have prayed for you [singular] that your faith may not fail; and when you [singular] have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” 63 

Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John —speaking to Peter after the Resurrection 64 

“ ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him a third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ ” 65 

The Acts of the Apostles —written in the latter half of the first century —event c. A.D. 30 

“Then [the apostles] returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying. . . . All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said, ‘Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus. . . . For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; and ‘His office let another take.’ 66 So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.’ And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, ‘Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles.” 67 

The Acts of the Apostles 

“But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, ‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words.’” 68 

St. Paul to the Galatians —written in the middle of the first century 

“I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.” 69 

Luke the Physician in the Acts of the Apostles —chronicling the Council of Jerusalem c. A.D. 49-50 

“But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’ . . . The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter rose and said to them, ‘Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.’ . . . 70 And all the assembly kept silence; and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, ‘Brethren, listen to me. 71 Symeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree.’ . . . [Peter, the apostles, and the elders wrote to the Gentiles, saying], ‘For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.’” 72 

Paul to the Galatians —written in the middle of the first century 

“Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up by revelation; and I laid before them (but privately before those who were of repute) the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, 73 lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain. . . . [A]nd when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, 74 who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship; 75 that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.” 76 

Paul to the Galatians 

“But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, 77 because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And with him the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” 78 

First Epistle of Peter —written from Rome c. A.D. 65 

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed. 79 Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading crown of glory. Likewise you that are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.” 80 

St. Paul to Timothy —written c. A.D. 67 

“I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark [foundation] of the truth.” 81 

So we come to the conclusion of the first section of our study, searching the scriptural passages relating to Peter’s commission as steward and shepherd. We have looked at the biblical passages relating to Peter and the Church. We have briefly touched upon the biographical information contained in the New Testament and the passages that affirm Peter’s special standing, his primacy in the Church. Since the Protestant Reformation, many have ignored, even attacked the ancient teachings of the Church and have tried to empty the biblical passages of any hierarchical significance. 82 The winds of freedom and democracy that have swept Europe in the past few centuries have not failed to have an impact on biblical study and perceptions of Church government. Too often the Church is perceived as a democracy instead of as a kingdom. Jesus Christ reestablished the eternal throne of David and also reestablished the office of royal steward “over the house” when he chose Peter, investing him with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Peter may have died, but his office continues, and his successors, as we shall discover shortly, continue to fill his office of royal steward and continue to preserve the sacred deposit of truth entrusted to the Church by the apostles. As we continue working from the base we have established here, we shall see how the earliest Christians, our first brothers and sisters in Christ, understood these biblical passages and the authority of the Church. We will now delve into the later life of Peter, after he escaped Herod’s persecution in Jerusalem, after “he departed, and went into another place” (Acts 12: 17). Get ready to step back into history, to become better acquainted with the great Prince of the Apostles, and to witness the rise of the persecuted Church of the first century

The Levitations of St Joseph of Copertino: Explained? Bob Rickard

 This article concerns a critique by the author Joe Nickell (Nickel, 2018) of Michael Grosso’s two books on Joseph of Copertino: The Man Who Could Fly: St Joseph of Copertino and The Mystery of Levitation (2016); and Wings of Ecstasy: Domenico Bernini’s Vita of St Joseph of Copertino (2017). Dr. Grosso (1937-) is an independent philosopher who taught humanities at several New York universities and writes on religious and other aspects of consciousness research. The idea of human levitation is, by its very nature, subversive and surreal. The phenomenon – if we temporarily accept such a thing in order to examine it – rests upon eye-witness testimony that the human body is seen to rise into the air, hover, or even move some distance on a trajectory. At the same time, the idea of levitation as a symbol of transcendence is both profound and ancient. Narrative accounts of it, usually by surprised witnesses, have been reported from most cultures and ages. Despite this historical and cultural persistence, there has been little scholarly discourse about such reports, leaving unresolved the puzzle of how to reconcile eye-witness evidence with the common experience of everyday physics. Whether ‘real’ or imagined, in many societies, levitation is the prerogative of a shaman, ascetic or holy person; a token of divine favour; and sometimes imitated by magicians and occult adepts. In the context of anthropology, it is seen as a component of a shaman’s journey (in both the symbolic and mystical senses). In the context of modern scientific discourse, however, it is aggressively dismissed as an embarrassing error made by the ill-informed, the piously credulous or the deliberately fraudulent. In my own research into the subject, it was inevitable that I would encounter the levitations associated with the seventeenth century Catholic Saint, Giuseppe Desa of Copertino (1603-1663) – to whom I will refer as Joseph – because of the exceptional nature of the deposed evidence. Joseph is of particular interest because the three major scholars of historical levitation narratives – Josef Görres (1776-1848), Fr. Herbert 1 Thurston (1856–1939), and Olivier Leroy (1876-1976) – all agree that Joseph is the 2 3 single most impressive example of a Christian levitator; a man, of whom it was said, “spent half his life in ecstasy in the air” (Cendrars, 1949, p. 137).4 His phenomena, as reported in the narratives about him, have two main interrelated components: the levitant is typically experiencing an ecstatic state of consciousness, and yet, by some unknown process, the elevation, it is claimed, is observed to be enacted bodily in our consensual reality. I offer no theories of my own here; there are, currently, only guesses and suppositions about the nature of that hypothetical process. We understand why skeptics and scientists regard this contentious subject with suspicion. Reports of it are, like those of many anomalous phenomena, exceedingly rare. It also seems to manifest spontaneously; therefore, first-hand and eyewitness accounts of it must be treated with appropriate care. In Joseph’s remarkable case, however, his levitations occurred with some consistency for more than three decades, providing many opportunities for good observation and documentation. His witnesses were of two kinds. The first were from the religious community in which Joseph was embedded, for they were able to observe the phenomenon at close quarters. This familiarity adds considerable value to their testimony and invites closer examination. Testimony from the other group – occasional visitors and the like who, despite having an expectation of witnessing a levitation (due to Joseph’s fame), were nevertheless taken by surprise by the sudden and intense nature of his flight. These must inevitably be treated with greater caution. Of course, reliability and accuracy are important considerations, especially with historical documentation. Most biographical accounts of historical saints were compiled long after they died and often include elements of mythologising, so it is only right to test their veracity. Fr. Thurston, a Jesuit scholar, acknowledged this in his influential chapter on levitations. He highlights the problem that arises when:

…the marvellous event, deposed to by a single witness in extreme old age who had heard the story in his youth from some third person unnamed, is set down as a fact with the same trustful confidence with which the biographer records the details attested independently by a dozen different contemporaries who had lived in daily intercourse with the Saint and had been the spectators of all his actions (Thurston, 1952, p. 2).5

In Joseph’s case, however, the key sources easily fulfil the second part of Thurston’s prescription; eyewitness. Eyewitness accounts were recorded during Joseph’s lifetime by people who knew him well. Joseph’s case is also remarkable for involving 35 years of nearly continuous eye-witness testimony. The number of levitations (in their various forms) attributed to him far exceeds that of any other saint in the extensive annals of Christian hagiography. In reviewing Joseph’s levitations for his encyclopaedia of Christian mysticism, the German historian and philosopher Görres declared that, as far as he knew, “with no historical fact has so much care been taken to bring the truth to light” (Görres, 1861). A more recent agreement came from a review in the Journal of Scientific Exploration by the philosopher and former head of the Parapsychological Association, Professor Stephen Braude, who wrote: “the case of St. Joseph provides the earliest outstanding evidence for human levitation and quite possibly the best from any era” (Braude, 2016). 

Joseph Desa and his Elevations

Joseph’s spontaneous ecstasies began “immediately after his ordination” as a priest at the age of 25, in March 1628 (Acta Sanctorum, cited by Thurston, 1952, p.101), and increased gradually to occur nearly every day – sometimes several times a day – until his death in 1663 (Bernini, cited by Grosso, 2017, p. 272). These levitations would proceed from a singular state of consciousness, described in the accounts as a rapture (rati). Joseph’s diarist and close friend, Don Arcangelo Rosmi (d.1654) – who stayed at the Franciscan sanctuary in Assisi for most of Joseph’s 14 years there (ie. 1639–1653) – reckoned that he had recorded around 70 of these elevations by Joseph during that period alone (Bernini, cited by Grosso, 2017, p.137). When Joseph was moved to Pietrarubbia his ecstasies were observed daily; and, again, in his stay at Fossombrone, these ecstasies were described as “uninterrupted” (Bernini, cited by Grosso, 2017, pp. 97,101-104). In emphasising this remarkable continuity, Abbot Rosmi makes an extraordinary statement: he felt that it would be superfluous to record any more of Joseph’s elevations because they had become so frequent and so familiar. He reasoned that “if [70] is not proof enough another three hundred would be meaningless.” Many of these events would 6 have been in the privacy of Joseph’s tiny cell where, according to Bernini. “Every time he would say his devotions he would go up." Who knows what important details have been lost to this unfortunate (but quite understandable) decision? By the time Joseph died, Rosmi’s 70 examples were certainly exceeded. The modern Franciscan scholar Fr. Gustavo Parisciani, who studied the witness depositions in the Vatican archive for Joseph’s time in Assisi, noted that they included at least 150 eyewitness accounts (Grosso, 2017, pp. 224-225). This is just a fraction of Joseph’s almost daily manifestations over 35 years, and many of them – as the pictorial references remind us – were outside, in the open, and in the midst of many people. Joseph was also observed levitating nearly every time he said Mass. On other occasions his levitations were spontaneous, apparently triggered by his heightened aesthetic sensitivity. Whenever he noticed something beautiful or heard some pious phrase or inspiring music, he was thrust instantly into an intense ecstasy. Invariably, as he rose into the air, he would utter a great cry – more of a scream than a shout – which frightened onlookers. Many of these first-hand narratives describe clear observations made under good conditions by different types of observers in a variety of environments and were deposed under solemn oath by serving Catholics, during his life or within a few years of his death.7 

These oaths are significant because they were usually administered by a person’s Superior or Confessor under solemn caution of eternal peril to their souls. In the Catholic milieu of those days there could hardly be a more serious vow. It was common, too, for such evidence to be sealed until after the death of both the witness and the levitant. Therefore, Fr Thurston argued, this evidence was “often more remarkable, and notably better attested, than any to be found in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.” 

Send in the Clown

It is not my intention, here, to make a case for the reality of levitation; instead, I argue that the historical narratives of Joseph’s elevations are of a quality that deserves an impartial discussion. My critique was precipitated by two short articles by Joe Nickell for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), in which, without much research and with 8 assumptions beforehand, he dismisses the voluminous and complex subject of human levitation, and Joseph’s elevations in particular. In both of his articles, Nickell makes it clear that he attaches very little importance to the authority or the reliability of the extant documentation of Joseph’s elevations. In fact, he employs the same rhetorical strategy that CSI publicly deplores in its campaign against the proponents of ‘pseudoscience.' This is sometimes called the ‘straw man’ technique – in which parts of the testimony are cleverly adapted, or omitted, to set up a false argument, making it all the easier to demolish later. In Nickell’s method, this is to show how his own 9 ready-made hypotheses are correct. Nor does Nickell show much intellectual curiosity about the subject, apparently more concerned with discovering Joseph’s fraudulent activities for which there is not the slightest evidence. Why is it important to challenge Nickell’s explanations? The debate might benefit the study of religious experience by improving our understanding of religious experiences and their deniers; for example, there is a distinct possibility – due to the impressive outreach of CSI propaganda – that Nickell’s errors and misconceptions will enter public consciousness as ‘received wisdom’ and a lauded example of how to combat ‘superstitious’ beliefs. A natural scepticism should offer a balanced alternative to the extremes of disbelief as well as of belief. It is logically a sounder strategy to suspend 11 judgement until better information or further investigation can establish the grounds for a more decisive acceptance or rejection. If rejection is made simplistically, frivolously, or with prejudice beforehand, it is neither fair, nor honest, and clearly ‘unscientific’ scholarship. Of course, Nickell and the CSI are correct in demanding a good standard of evidence for extraordinary claims such as human levitation, but they lose the plot in demanding that only “extraordinary” evidence is permitted. Nickell’s own upfront claim to 12 have explained Joseph’s phenomena is itself an extraordinary statement, and one that falls apart upon examination. Writing in 1951, Thurston’s common-sense proposition was that levitation “is a matter peculiarly suitable for investigation” because “the fact, if it be a fact, requires no expert evidence to attest it” [my emphasis]. He explains:

Given sufficient day-light and fairly normal conditions the most uneducated witness is competent to declare whether a particular person was standing upon the ground or elevated in the air, the more so because, owing to the state of trance in which the subject of the inquiry is found, it is quite possible for the witness to approach and satisfy himself by the sense of touch that the spectacle presented to his eyes is no illusion (Thurston, 1952, pp. 2-3).13

In short, I would argue, with Thurston, that there are no ‘degrees’ of proof. Evidence either proves something or it is not evidence. In both articles – and before he has formally begun his argument – Nickell rejects all that the vouchers would have us believe, arguing that Joseph’s ‘levitations’ are simply hypothetical. At best, he declares, that if they happened at all, they are the product of pious fraud; or else the result of misperceptions and misunderstandings, or what the Bollandists call ‘hagiographic exaggeration.’ Nickell chooses the worst case, that the 14 phenomena in these accounts are down to fraud, deception, and dishonesty. I can agree that this might sometimes be possible, but not that it is inevitable, or that this is Joseph’s motivation. To properly show why Nickell’s short shrift is simply wrong, I need to provide an overview of the key documentary sources; some biographical information on Joseph, and then step through Nickell’s most serious misinterpretations and distortions.

 The Key Biographical Sources

Of Joseph’s few biographers, the earliest, was Fr. Roberto Nuti whose Vita di Ven Giuseppe da Copertino (1678), included many eyewitness accounts. A new edition by the Historical Society of Lecce in 2013 – titled Fra Giuseppe Desa da Copertino, Processo Assisano di Beaificazione (1666) – also contains Arcangelo Rosmi’s invaluable diary. The most important biography is by Domenico Bernini (son of the famous sculptor) of which Grosso recently commissioned a translation. Although Bernini’s Vita was not published until 1722 – 59 years after Joseph’s death – Bernini had collected testimony that had been recorded during Joseph’s lifetime from 1628 onwards, as well as 15 documentation in support of Joseph’s beatification. Bernini had taken a personal interest in Joseph’s doings ever since, in his youth, he had been taken to see Joseph in his cell, where he witnessed Joseph in an ecstatic trance that lasted half an hour (Grosso, 2016, pp.146, 219-223; and Grosso, 2017, pp. 222-223). The key historical archive in the Vatican library, houses the 13 volumes of Bernini’s Vita; the legal briefs (processi) and minutes of the official Inquisitions for Joseph’s beatification and canonisation; as well as collected letters, diaries and memoires of those who knew him in life (Bernini, cited by Grosso, 2017, pp. 224-225). The closest most of us can get to these primary narratives is in the various modern volumes published (in Italian) by the Historical Society of Lecce, compiled by the Fr. Parisciani and his colleagues.16 Besides Michael Grosso’s two-part analysis of Joseph’s life, I must add two other comprehensive commentaries on Joseph and his phenomena that I have found very helpful. The first is by the anthropologist and historian of the occult Dr Eric Dingwall (1890-1986), who compiled an invaluable bibliography on Joseph (Dingwall, 1947, pp. 9-37). Next, the Swiss-born French novelist Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961), who kept a literary diary during the second world war of his own extensive research into Joseph’s levitations (Cendrars, 1992, pp. 25-148).

Joseph’s Character 

For his own discussion, Nickell selected a small number of incidents out of the very many (and often more instructive) narratives available. His choice is narrow and curious, appearing in retrospect to be selected because they could be reduced to a few telling phrases that are, by his method, easier to ‘explain away.' Nickell opens his case with the disingenuous statement that Joseph “laid claim to the power of levitation." Perhaps others made this claim about Joseph, but nowhere in the records of Joseph’s (or Grosso’s) words does Joseph make such a claim himself. If he had, it would have been quite out of character and contrary to Joseph’s well-documented spiritual humility. Like St Teresa of Avila and many other levitants, Joseph never sought the upliftings and prayed fervently for them to cease, especially when he was in public. The evidence supports Joseph’s claim that the sudden onset of his raptures and their intensity, completely dominated any sense of self or will that he might have had. From childhood, his purpose in cutting all physical attachments to this world, was to “dissolve” himself into the God he adored. Those moments in which he felt subsumed into the Divine presence were utterly private. He would feel unable to have any ability to do or will anything by or for himself, oblivious to anything except his ecstasy. Sometimes, the only voice that could reach him was a call to return from his Superior to obey under his priestly vows. Everyday life in the friary became unpredictable, if not genuinely surreal, such as – as Cendrars delightfully puts it – when an entranced Joseph could unexpectedly launch “from his place in the refectory, brandishing a sea urchin!” (Cendrars, 1992, p. 41). 

The return from these raptures – suddenly finding himself in an awkward position, surrounded by fussing and curious people – left Joseph completely confused. What was a deeply personal moment became a public spectacle that left him exposed and embarrassed. It also left him open to the accusation of ‘showing off.’ All clergy are warned against the ‘sin’ of presuming their own sanctity or claiming to have God’s special attention. Indeed, when Joseph was later examined during several sessions with the Inquisition, he would have been scrutinised very carefully for such signs of ‘selfimportance.’ Instead, Joseph was completely exonerated. Whatever was causing Joseph’s aerial trajectories was not the kind of comic-book superhero ‘power’ that Nickell enjoys lampooning. Nickell’s misdirection, then, sets the tone for what follows, and its effect is to undermine Joseph’s character and, by association, any ‘ridiculous’ suggestion that “levitation” might merit honest and serious investigation or discussion. There is no sensitivity in Nickell’s caricature of Joseph as a slightly furtive priest, whose pretend humility hides an athletic skill with which he deceives his susceptible religious brothers by performing ‘impossible’ feats. Cendrars’ portrait of Joseph, by contrast, is a joyful celebration of the phenomenal surreality of levitation. To counter Nickell’s caricature of Joseph, it is necessary to provide some additional insight into Joseph’s character and background. From an early age, Joseph’s humility was apparent. He was known for eschewing any personal possessions and privileges and throughout his life readily accepted the most menial and degrading of tasks. In his simple view, his ordination allowed him to fulfil priestly duties and so better serve his God. Inevitably, this intensified his raptures. However, in Nickell’s sardonic interpretation, because Joseph’s levitations began “only” after his ordination, they “therefore seem contrived.” Then, Nickell implies that Joseph ‘performed’ his ‘fake’ levitations because they “secured his evolving notoriety” [my emphasis]. This seems to refer to a specific time in Joseph’s life when he was exploited by a superior (which I will mention later). By taking it out of its context Nickell has made it seem incriminating. Contrary to Nickell, the records consistently demonstrate Joseph’s humility and deference to his superiors. During the decades that he was under ‘official’ observation, Joseph had to ask permission for most acts, including leaving his cell. His raptures isolated him from this world and it often proved very difficult for his colleagues to bring him back to ‘normality.’ Time and again, we read in the accounts that he seemed impervious to every effort to ‘revive’ him except one; he responded only to the command of his superiors who reminded him of his priestly vows to obey them. This ‘obedience’ was Joseph’s only remaining link to the everyday world except, as Joseph himself said, when the rapture was ended by God. Finally, it seems that Nickell has fundamentally misunderstood the Catholic processes of beatification and canonisation when he asserts that the ‘saint-making’ process itself required “evidence of miracles.” The legalistic process does not require miracles, considering them to be a non-essential supplement to the primary criterion; which is, simply, a demonstrable and heroic level of holiness. In the modern Church, ‘miracles’ are invariably seen as a distraction; their circumstances critically examined; and steps are taken to see that no unofficial cult status develops around them.17 

A Saint is Born and Made  

Joseph was born in Copertino (in the ‘heel’ of Italy) on the 17th of June, 1603. A sick child in a disadvantaged but pious household. His father was in hiding from debtors and his mother worn down by poverty and the deaths of several children. Of his very early years little is known except that for long periods Joseph was bedridden. Lying in the dark, isolated, emaciated, and weak, he became increasingly preoccupied with the inner world of prayer, sometimes kneeling for hours at the small family shrine. By the age of five, he was said to be “holy” and already practising fasting and even, some say, self-mortification. Joseph’s ecstasies began in his eighth year. His mother would carry him to daily Mass because his knees were infected from constant kneeling to pray. He would cut the swellings himself to relieve them, but that only made them worse. These ruined knees troubled Joseph for the rest of his life; yet Nickell has shone a spotlight on them to make them useful in his ‘theories.’ He suggests that the young Joseph’s habit of praying on his knees “so often and so long” had, instead, strengthened Joseph’s athletic abilities so that they would “later prove useful in his ‘levitations.'” A short period of schooling was curtailed because Joseph appeared to others to be “mentally retarded, dazed, detached” – a characterisation that goes back beyond Görres to the earlier records. This is still a common description of Joseph in many publications (even those approved by the Church), suggesting ‘laziness’ or ‘stupidity.’ Frequently, we see Joseph described as socially and mentally backward, unable to complete the simplest task. However, I agree with the modern opinion that it is far more likely that this impression is due to Joseph’s persistent states of deep dissociation which were evident from childhood. His later life showed he could indeed function with some degree of social and mental normality. Eventually, Joseph was briefly apprenticed to a shoemaker, then sent to tend a convent’s donkey in Altamura. After that he was moved on to the Capuchin Friars, in Martina Franca, to be a lay brother. At each place he was branded as “ignorant, untutored, barely literate.” His periods of dissociation were interpreted as ‘wilful laziness,’ for which he was frequently punished. Nevertheless, he never complained. In 1625, aged 22, he was accepted by the Friars Minor at La Grottella, on the outskirts of Copertino, where despite his supposed ‘backwardness,’ he was welcomed for his humility, “natural simplicity and detachment.” Three years later, he was ordained as a priest. For the first time in his life, he felt happy and had a vocation. Joseph’s early ‘raptures’ emerged from his prolonged trance-like praying. Experienced several times a day, every day, they could be triggered by the slightest hint of wonder, beauty, innocence or holiness. The sight of a leaf, a clear blue sky, a lantern at night, a lamb (even a sea-urchin), a doll of baby Jesus, candles on an altar, Catholic phrases, names of saints, or singing – especially icons of the Madonna – would bring on intense ecstasy. At Grottella, these ecstasies increased in frequency and duration as he spent more time ‘adoring’ a particular icon of the Virgin Mary and Child. His first levitation happened on 4th October 1630, when he was 27. According to Parisciani, it was during a public procession. Joseph “soared into the air and remained ecstatic and immovable before the eyes of the stupefied crowd.” This point illustrates our evidential difficulty well. It implies 18 that Joseph was seen clearly, by large numbers of the public, in the open air, to rise off the ground and remain there for some time, not ‘flying’ or falling back down, but stationary in the air … but, alas, we have no more solid evidence of it. Within four years, Joseph was known throughout Apulia as a “new St Francis." The records for this period show that Joseph spent most of his year fasting like St Francis (i.e. seven drastic fasts of 40 days each in a year). He hardly slept, and regularly mortified his body with a scourge and a celice. These whippings were sometimes so 19 severe that the walls of his cell were spattered with blood. His Superior had to order him to cease. That Joseph was able to function with any degree of normality in all this was itself a kind of miracle; and yet Nickell fails to show us how his fantasy Joseph could be super fit and ready in an instant to perform feats that exceeded Olympic records. 

One Trail, Three Trials

In 1636, Joseph’s idyll at Grottella came to an end. A newly appointed Father Provincial – Fr. Antonio di San Mauro – wished to make an inaugural tour of 50 friaries around the Apulia region taking Joseph with him. He calculated that the prospect of seeing a levitation during a Mass would swell the congregations, thereby bolstering his own standing. Joseph was horrified by the prospect of public exposure, but was ordered to obey under his priestly vows. The year-long tour of the province certainly succeeded, but the prelate had underestimated the public interest in Joseph – rather than, as he had hoped, in himself. Joseph’s innate reluctance to ‘stage’ his Mass angered San Mauro and they had argued publicly to Joseph’s dismay. The idea of deliberately invoking God’s presence for a reason he considered both trivial and impious terrified Joseph. Nor could Joseph find any words to describe the overpowering intimacy of that sacred moment in which he elevated the Host and surrendered himself to Divine will. San Mauro would not accept that it was something over which Joseph had no conscious control. The region of Apulia was known for being religiously conservative, having a residual dislike for characters such as Joseph, whose notoriety disrupted the status quo. Some of the rural clergy became disturbed by the excitable talk of ‘miracles.’ The tension climaxed in a town called Giovinazza, where officials ordered the prelate’s party to return to the town so that they could scrutinise Joseph more closely. Inevitably, during his Mass, Joseph levitated, his scream frightening the congregation as he rose into the air. As Nickell was to do some six centuries later, the officials fell back upon the idea that it was a “theatrical campaign on the part of Joseph and his confreres to present him as some sort of messiah.” But such an unlikely act would be completely reckless, if true. The peril was real; as Grosso notes of that time: “Recently, three men were burned alive because they said Mass in public without having been ordained” (Grosso, 2016, p. 25). When he returned to Assisi, an angry San Mauro accused Joseph of “feigned sanctity,” calling Joseph “downright crazy” for ruining his ‘show.’ Several years later, when Joseph faced the Inquisition in Rome, that accusation placed him in genuine peril. San Mauro was also summoned by those inquisitors and asked to explain his behaviour towards Joseph. The prelate dodged cleverly, replying: “I can say nothing except that he was a saint who went into ecstasy continually and was adored by everybody.” Nickell, triumphantly, calls this, “hardly a ringing endorsement of one who purportedly flew like a bird.” 

The Expected Inquisition 

Nickell writes that the Vatican sent Joseph “into a sort of exile” and that, for the rest of his life he was deliberately ‘hidden’ by the Church. The facts behind this complex situation are not quite the sinister cover-up by the Church that Nickell implies. Not only did Joseph want to avoid public exposure, he welcomed his isolation as an opportunity for proper ‘humiliation.’ In 1638, a couple of years after the notorious chaos at Giovinazza, a 20 disgruntled Vicar Apostolic of a vacant diocese – Monsignor Joseph Palamolla – sent a formal notice to the Inquisition at Naples drawing attention to the hermit of Grottella, accusing him of performing healings and miracles “as if he was another Messiah.” It was the Inquisition’s job, after all, to keep a watch for would-be messiahs, and head-off heretical threats to official dogma. Joseph was ordered to report to the Inquisition in Naples. Unable to ride a horse, he walked there – some 300km from Grottella – with a companion minder. Charged with ostentation – not deception or heresy – he faced three separate Holy Office examinations over several months. His case was then forwarded to Rome, where Joseph was questioned further to determine his motivation and piety. San Mauro was in as much jeopardy as Joseph. If Joseph was cleared, San Mauro risked being labelled a ‘false accuser,’ and if it was determined that Joseph’s phenomena were of demonic origin, San Mauro risked being implicated as an accomplice. Evidently, San Mauro had not bargained on the third outcome: that Joseph was vindicated as guileless and that, by implication – if not by actual observation – his phenomena were genuine. While Nickell acknowledges that Joseph was finally declared blameless, like San Mauro he never processes precisely what that meant for the validation of Joseph’s phenomena. Nickell continues as though Joseph had, instead, fooled the Inquisitors the whole time their unblinking attention was upon him. In all, this period lasted nearly two years and plunged Joseph into a deep depression. The examination period took so long, in part because the Inquisition simply did not know what to do with him. At both Naples and Rome, Joseph had been ordered to conduct Masses under their full scrutiny before congregations of mainly clergy. During these Joseph was seen by all to levitate at the key moments. The Inquisitors decided, therefore, to keep him away from public attention completely – whether Joseph wanted it or not – lest heresy or a cultish following should spring up about him. For the remainder of his years, he was moved around in secret and monitored at each location.  

Ironically, it gave Joseph the privacy for which he yearned. Instead of being sent back to Grottella, Joseph was ordered to stay at the monastery in Assisi. After five years there, in 1653, he was transferred to the Capuchins at Pietrarubbia for three months, and thence to Fossombrone, where he stayed for three years. Each relocation was prompted by an increase in local interest in Joseph. At Fossombrone, for instance, parts of the church were removed by the public to better see Joseph’s Masses. Eventually, Joseph arrived at Osimo, in 1657, where he died among his fellow Franciscans on the 18th of September 1663, aged sixty. Among the many clergy who came forward promptly to declare under oath their own observations of Joseph’s flights, were three Cardinals (who, in all probability, had also attended his Inquisitions). 

The Levitations of St Joseph: Explained?

Like many saints, Joseph’s life was full of mysterious concomitant phenomena: bilocation, prophecy, telepathic diagnosis, healings, and so on; but we are concerned here solely with reports of his elevations. Joe Nickell’s critique of Joseph’s levitations begins with a visit to the friar’s small cell by a boys’ choir; their sublime singing sending Joseph into ecstasy and elevation. Nickell boldly promises to the reader that he will explain Joseph’s levitations “as a probable trick,” “assuming,” he adds in a rather disingenuous and patronising manner, “that the account is not merely hearsay and embellishment.” Presumably, these three – a trick, a rumour, or a confabulation – are the only explanations Nickell is willing to consider. Parisciani, summarising Bernini, describes what happened when the Choirmaster of the Assisi’s Sacred Convent… 

…brought three young singers of outstanding talent to Joseph’s room to perform. Upon hearing the boys sing, he immediately went into ecstasy, falling into a kneeling position, then rising and floating above the ground. To confirm what they were seeing, all three boys ‘put their hands between Joseph’s tunic and the ground (Nickell, citing Parisciani, 1963, p. 443). 

Nickell quickly diverts our attention by declaring that these boys were “compliant, not aggressively skeptical.” Certainly, they would have been cautioned to be on their best behaviour, and it is likely that they might feel some awe while singing for the famous ecstatic wonderworker. But Nickell does not mean that kind of compliance. He is setting the stage for the boys to be cast as poor witnesses. He feels certain that they would be so credulous that they saw what they were conditioned to see and not what they actually saw. 

Nickell somehow knows that what they ‘actually’ saw was someone taking advantage of their ‘compliance.’ But why should they have been “aggressively skeptical”? They were not there as CSI investigators, they were there to sing. Nickell quite rightly points out that, in this period, other cases of saintly levitation were well-known and publicly discussed; therefore, he deduces, the boys and any adults present were “credulous seventeenth-century peasants” who “would, in all good faith, unintentionally exaggerate what had actually happened.” Nickell is not yet done with patronising. “Note,” he continues, with a knowing 21 wink to his readers, “that the friar’s feet are never mentioned.” 

Recall my earlier suggestion…that Joseph could subtly move from kneeling to a pre-crouch position by placing the bottoms of his toes flat on the floor…then moves slowly into a crouch using his well-developed muscles (you see where this is going), the still-apparently kneeling friar is witnessed rising upward—or rather his knees are seen to rise, giving that illusion. The rest is child’s play, literally. The boys are invited to place their hands between the tunic and the floor. It would probably not occur to them to reach far back and search for the actual placement of Father Joseph’s feet (Nickell, 2018).

 Deceptively simplistic, or simply deceptive? Had Nickell bothered to read further into Joseph’s career, he could hardly have failed to notice the many accounts in which witnesses gather around an enraptured Joseph while he remains stationary in mid-air. Inevitably, some of them would press forward to touch his robe or even to kiss his elevated feet. Often, ingenious methods are mentioned – by reference to nearby objects – to estimate the distance of his feet from the floor. Sometimes they did much more; testing the extent of Joseph’s ecstatic anaesthesia by burning, piercing, or even striking him (Nuti, cited in Grosso, 2017, pp. 116-117).22 Nickell underestimates the intelligence and ingenuity of the people of those days, even though a great many of the witnesses were not peasants or illiterate. Even the ordinary countryfolk were capable of natural curiosity, and the narratives include many an ingenious attempt to, for example, measure the distance between Joseph’s feet and the ground. 

A typical example is the following incident – summarised from documents by Thurston – deposed by Tobias, a “gentleman” who was waiting outside the room of St Bernardino Realino, in the region of Lecce, in 1616: 

As he sat with his eyes on the room door, he noticed that the door was not completely shut and that through the aperture a certain glow or radiance of light was streaming. The appearance puzzled him, and he began to wonder whether there could be a fire within. He drew near and pushed the door a little further in order to peep into the room. Thereupon he perceived Fr Bernardino in a kneeling attitude before his prie-dieu, his face turned towards heaven, his eyes closed and his whole body lifted a good two and a half feet above the floor, while rapt in ecstasy (Thurston, 1952, pp. 22-24). 

Thurston notes that Tobias “gazed for a while” with feelings of “reverence mingled with fear” before silently creeping away. Later, in giving his testimony, Tobias was asked “to take good heed and bethink himself whether all of what he had described was not rather a hallucination or fancy of his brain and whether the radiance and light was not a reflexion of the sun’s rays or an ocular deception of some other natural effect.” Tobias replied: 

The thing was so clear…I noticed the light…not only once but twice, thrice and four times…and so I began to debate with myself how there could be any fire in the room, since the rays which issued from it could only have been made by a great fire [likened to a blacksmiths] and so I stood up and pushing the door saw with my own eyes Fr Bernardino raised from the ground as unmistakably as I now see your Lordship (Thurston, 1952). 

Tobias was then “again admonished and bidden to be careful not to be led by any mistaken sense of devotion to exaggerate or to represent the facts otherwise,” which he did. Thurston then adds, “in looking through the score or so of such printed processes, I have found very little trace on the part of witnesses or commissioners of a desire to manufacture evidence of marvels.” 

The Joy of Illiteracy 

Nickell’s next selection focuses upon the accounts of Joseph soaring through the air towards an altar and apparently hovering in the air above it before landing on it. One Christmas, Joseph invited some shepherds to bring their music into the church. Entering the nave with them, he began to sing and dance, and the excitement grew. Bernini records what the shepherds believed they had observed: 

[Joseph] suddenly sighed and loudly screamed and flew up in the air like a bird, halfway to the ceiling, where he continued dancing above the main altar, and went to embrace the tabernacle that was a considerable distance above the main altar… for about fifteen minutes… (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 26., my emphasis). 

Surely observing someone in the air for that length of time would be able to replace any reservation with some assurance. Being ‘compliant’ is now not enough; Nickell states with astonishing certainty that these shepherds “were probably illiterate." “It is apparent from 23 [Joseph’s] movements,” he writes confidently, “that [Joseph] bounded in increments, onto the altar” [my emphasis]. Bernini’s account implies no such thing. Joseph’s aerial dancing – above the altar, not on its top surface in any normal sense – becomes the suggestion that Joseph must have “rested” on brackets that held the candles and, by “embracing” them, supported himself in the appearance of ‘mid-air.’24 “In other words,” Nickell writes, “[Joseph] was never simply floating in air, as sources may seem to imply.” The witnesses had deposed under oath, so that is precisely what they were implying. He doubts that witnesses who watched this aerial ‘dance’ for fifteen minutes could tell the difference between a man hanging on to something and one who was hovering in mid-air where there was nothing to hold on to. Nickell has a response ready and waiting. Rather too triumphantly, he telegraphs, ahead of his ‘reveal’, that he has figured out Joseph’s “rising and floating.” The answer when it comes, seems anticlimactic, inadequate, and pure supposition:

I  would wager that [Joseph] mimed this by stretching himself upward until he artfully stood on tiptoe, then danced lightly in place so as to create the illusion of ‘hovering’ just above the ground.

The matter of how Joseph got up there in the first place, is quickly evaded or re-imagined. Nickell, dazzled by his own revelation, bounds onto the altar of his newfound theory. Where the narrative says Joseph “flew up” rather gracefully, Nickell would have us believe it was by energetic, incremental “bounding through the air to some elevated perch.” Yet there is some mystery surrounding Joseph’s ‘take-off’ method. The narratives seem to imply that it was instantaneous, whether Joseph was kneeling or standing. Nickell suggests otherwise; Joseph must have simply moved from where he was standing or kneeling. That this movement was not noticed, he says, is because it happened quickly and is forgotten, by the distracting shout or when eyes begin to follow Joseph’s astonishing aerobatics. Nickell is thinking conventionally, looking for some kind run-up, crouching to spring, or backing-up to make that “bounding” leap forwards. He cannot find the clue because it is not there in the sworn narratives. Just to be clear, in the entire archive available there is no mention of anyone spotting Joseph – athlete or not – practicing or rehearsing such circus-type movements as “bounding through the air.” Nickell could have asked instead, why wasn’t Joseph spotted cheating?, but that would have undermined his own brilliant theory. 

The Sound of Sandals Falling 

Nickell, next, fusses over what he calls Joseph’s “extreme defiances of gravity.” The first of these “defiances” is when Joseph sometimes appears to hover in-place in mid-air (suggestive of a ‘freeze-frame’ in a video or still photograph), much as Rosmi describes happening during Joseph’s very first levitation in 1630 in Assisi. At other times he would be, as witnesses describe, travelling through the air while unnaturally ‘frozen’ in a particular pose (eg. kneeling). The duration of Joseph’s ‘hovering’ during flights towards, or above, the altar, varied between a few seconds to thirty minutes or more of “sustained floating” in position. Nickell emphatically disagrees:  

Our analysis revealed that Joseph did not hover in the air but, after rapidly ascending, he then rested on some support such as a tree limb or held onto some fixed object such as a statue.25

We understand that anomalous phenomena do pose a questionable challenge to scientific materialistic rationalism; and this is compounded by anomalies that contain other anomalies within them. Bernini provides an account of a paradox. On this occasion the whole congregation and choir (including two later Cardinals) saw Joseph soar “through shutters of the choir to stop suspended in the air before the tabernacle.” His face was brightly radiant. Bernini describes this flight as moving “slowly” through the air (cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 145). As he stopped in that mid-air kneeling position, they saw an even more astonishing detail. Joseph’s sandals fell to the floor (ibid.). In that moment, it appears, normal gravitation was restored, but only for the sandals, not for the levitant. How this datum would have delighted Charles Fort. When Grosso suggested that these mysterious suspensions “seem to point to the reality of an unrecognized force of nature,” and that their astonishing duration is “enough to render implausible the claim that they were tricks of perception” – Nickell, rather petulantly, accused him of “gushing.” 

The Backwards Boy 

We are not yet done with the “defiances of gravity.” Besides vertical and ‘floating’ elevations, there are other important variants which are extremely rare in the already rare annals of human flight. Although Grosso provides several instances of each, Nickell (probably wisely) makes no attempt to exorcise them. As Leroy points out, the Bull of Joseph’s canonisation, acknowledges that “No saint can be compared to Joseph in this respect” (Leroy, 1928, p. 89). For example: in a choir, Joseph heard the phrase Mater Divine Gratie, and promptly flew forward up and “over three rows of friars” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 152). Another is Joseph’s eerie flights backward, which challenge reason as well as gravity, and certainly defy Nickell’s comic hypotheses about ‘kneeling’ and ‘bounding’  launches. While helping to clean a relic of St Francis, in Assisi, he shot up and backwards over the heads of the brothers behind him (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 144). The most famous of these retro-flights occurred in 1650, when Prince JohanFrederick of Brunswick visited Assisi to consult Joseph about his career. During the service, Joseph “gave a great scream and flew into the air backward in a kneeling position” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, pp. 82-85, my emphasis). Equally well-observed, were the moments when Joseph carried another person into the air with him. It is difficult to believe that these flying companions were also athletes, complicit in the ‘act’? I counted four of these double levitations in Bernini’s Vita: an early incident in Copertino when he lifted up a friar he was hugging. Bernini describes Joseph’s “spinning dance” on the floor which continued into the air as Joseph carried the man upward: “one out of his mind because he was afraid, the other out of his mind because he was a saint” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 70). In Assisi in 1642 he raised the Father Custos Raffaelle Palma (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, pp. 68-69). In another instance, he lifted a shepherd into the air and swung him around by holding only “one hand under the arm” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 80). The most famous of these incidents happened when he lifted a ‘lunatic’ into the air by his hair and hovered there for some time (Bernini, cited by Grosso, 2017, p.152; also cited in Leroy, 1928, p. 95).26 

A Host of Troubles 

Officiating at daily Mass presented a serious trial for Joseph. Most times, he would fall into deep rapture at several points of the service, but when he raised the Host, his body nearly always followed. Stranger still, this was a type of proto-levitation in which he ‘froze’ just 27 prior to the moment of ‘take-off’ – as recorded by Bernini and Parisciani (of an incident in 1647) – “his whole body” was observed in this strange suspension:

It was normal for his body to rise up in the air during [Mass]. He would rise with his feet barely touching the ground; only the tip of his big toe touching, a position not only unnatural but incredible…and continued this way until the end of the sacrifice.” (Parisciani, ciarde in Grosso, 2016, p. 75, my emphasis).

We might keep an open mind on Joseph’s tableau, but I would like to make a slight diversion of my own to say that this possibly anomalous variation of levitation is not unique to Joseph, having been clearly observed in three other mystics. One of them, Maria von Moerl (1812-1863) – the celebrated stigmatic of Kalten, in the Tyrol, who was studied by Görres – was often seen in a kneeling position, but leaning further forward than seemed natural. Although there are no reports of her levitating, an observer noted that it seemed as though she was floating over the bed without pressing on it. And, like Joseph, she too was ‘frozen’ in her pose for some time beyond the moment an observer might expect her to fall. One account describes her “almost daily” rapture: 

It is recorded that often she did no more than touch the surface of her bed with the tips of her toes. M.D. de Moy, professor of law at the faculty in Munich, wrote a letter to Monsieur Bore describing the position in which he himself had seen the ecstatic: ‘Her hands were joined together, her head and eyes raised toward heaven, she was on her knees, her body leaning forward as if supported by the invisible angels who held her up, for the angle of her body was contrary to all the laws of balance, and her knees left hardly any impression on the coverlet of the bed’ (Cendrars, 1992, pp. 118-119, See Figure A).28

Once again, the difficulties we face in identifying genuine phenomena when there is so little evidential detail is highlighted. Where Nickell seems willing to toss the baby out with the bathwater, others, aware of the danger of being too premature, are willing to look deeper and further for significant details. In the case of Joseph, Maria and others, that significance is in the anomalous duration of the pose or movement beyond the moment we would expect any natural pose to collapse, plainly seen by her observers. Nickell, however, accepts none of this, suggesting that Joseph had mastered the art of misdirection: 

That he could stand on tiptoe and even seem to slightly rise and hover may only indicate wonderful strength, balance, and acting; I suspect such acts were fundamentally stunts that may have led credulous seventeenth-century peasants to believe it was accomplished by levitation [my emphasis].

The Mass, argues Grosso, is a solemn religious rite, a species of sacred performance. It is a pity Nickell cannot see past the word ‘performance’ without thinking someone is trying to fool him. For Joseph, the Mass was more than a symbolic performance; it was an intense participation with divinity itself. At its end, he would sink to the ground groaning, as he returned to the depressing weight of earthly flesh. In the presence of sin – as Joseph described it – the Host wafer sometimes became (for him) as rigid and heavy as iron, and he would fall to his knees weeping. He told his brothers that at these moments, he felt the withdrawal of the divine presence. Sadly, Nickell sees in Joseph’s collapse only “a prerequisite” to “levitate backward.” 

The Trembling Branches 

Nickell rages most of all at the seemingly trivial reports of Joseph springing high into the topmost branches of a tree only to remain there for some time. For example, just moments before one such incident, a priest walking alongside Joseph had mentioned the beautiful sky. Nickell continues (citing almost correctly): 

These words seemed like an invitation for Padre Giuseppe to fly up into the sky, and so he did, letting out a loud cry and bounding from the ground to fly up to the top of an olive tree [where he] stayed up there about a half hour (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 138).29 

We know that Joseph did not need much encouragement to soar above this world, but Nickell’s purpose here is to remind us of his pedestrian theory of Joseph’s prowess at kneeling and leaping, which he now takes for a proven fact. Nickell establishes (via Wiki) that that olive trees are “short and squat” – as if that proves that Joseph’s tree was likewise – and was therefore within the reach of “bounding.” 

He acknowledges the witness’ observation that Joseph had “landed on his knees on a branch that kept shaking gently, as though a bird were perched on the branch” and yet has nothing further to say about the nature of the ‘mundane’ feat of leaping upward, say a man’s height, to land in a kneeling position (with ruined knees?) on a branch so slender that it “kept shaking,” and, even more astonishingly, maintaining that balance and position for nearly 30 minutes. Instead, Nickell mocks the “prowess of the supposedly catlike friar” who, when he came out of his trance (after half an hour up there) and, realised his predicament, cried for help. Joseph’s companion Antonio had to fetch a ladder to help him down. In a similar incident, during his stay at Fossombrone, Joseph was in the garden with some brothers. They watched him “soaring through the air on a level with the crowns of the trees in the garden. He remained there, kneeling in the air, for more than two hours” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 138, my emphasis). 

Numinous Screams 

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of Joseph’s elevations – as Nickell notes – were the great screams he made as a prelude to taking off. Without much reasoning, Nickell believes that this association – scream and ‘leap’ – demonstrates that Joseph’s phenomena were not spontaneous; that he “was not caused to leap by some force but chose to” [my emphasis]. Nickell wonders whether these shouts “may have been to help him focus on and commit to the act and so dispel fear.” I assume Nickell means Joseph’s own fear, because there is no doubt the screams did frighten his witnesses. Nor is Nickell the first to consider whether these sudden bursts of intense sound might be “analogous to martial artists who yell when executing some technique.” It is certainly an interesting association and can be explored further; but then Nickell’s cynicism kicks in again, suggesting that: 

…it might also have served to turn all eyes on him, [so that] if he yelled, not when he first started moving, but only the instant before he left the ground, people would be more likely to think they saw him simply rise up. 

Again, this sounds fair, except that it presupposes Joseph’s duplicity, for which there is simply no evidence. It also directly ignores Joseph’s own (very rare) comment on the screams, when he told his companions that they seem to relate to the sudden increase in the intensity of his ecstatic state as he is instantly and completely overwhelmed by the Divine presence (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 137). Nickell is certainly correct in recognising the disorientating effect of Joseph’s scream upon those who heard it, but not convincing about Joseph using it to distract from his imminent ‘bounding.’ While Joseph himself did not seem particularly aware of its effect on others, those hearing it for the first time were profoundly shocked by its unexpected unearthliness. It was very loud and weirdly frightening and no one who heard it ever forgot it. As Bernini noted, some people bowed, some prayed, some cried, and some ran from the scene. A few examples would be appropriate here. When Joseph rose up towards the Cimabue ceiling painting in the basilica at Assisi, Bernini recorded: “It all happened so quickly that those present were filled with sacred terror, marvelling to each other, and 30 remaining in a stupor” (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, p. 62). Even a pope was not immune to that reaction. When Joseph was brought into the presence of Urban VIII, he bowed to kiss the papal feet and promptly rose into the air. Urban was said to have been “frozen with fear,” but later vowed to depose his evidence (cited by Leroy, 1928, pp. 97-98). Perhaps the most famous example of the reaction to the chaos caused by Joseph in full shriek and flight, was the visit in 1646 to see him by the Grand Admiral of Castile (who was also the Spanish ambassador) and his family, which left them – in Thurston’s words – “dazed” and “stupefied.” The reluctant Joseph was ordered to say Mass as usual. The visitors watched as he entered through a small door, and as soon as he saw a statue of Virgin Mary above the altar: 

[Joseph] screamed and flew a distance of twelve steps above the heads of the Admiral and the women, to embrace the statue…After remaining in that pose for some time, he gave another scream and, still flying through the air returned near the little door…leaving everyone dazed if not traumatized. The wife of the Admiral fainted, and [he] had to revive her splashing water in her face…The Admiral himself…did not faint but became weak-kneed and flustered (Bernini, cited in Grosso, 2017, pp. 80-81; also, Thurston, 1952, p. 98; see Figure B).

A Cure for Dualism and Disbelief 

Significantly absent from the testimony of most primary witnesses is any sense of disbelief about the levitation they had just seen; to the contrary, witnesses were struck with an authentic recognition of ‘otherness.’ Their difficulty was not one of belief but of processing the implications of what they had witnessed. No one ever shrugged and said “look, he’s only bounding!,” “I saw him take a run up,” or “he’s only hanging on to those candlesticks.” For most witnesses, instead of disbelief in their own perceptions, the experience left an immediate and powerful feeling that they had perceived or been affected by a different kind of ‘reality’ from the one they were familiar with. Some witnesses (mainly Catholics) reported (as we might expect) with “their faces bathed in tears” that it confirmed their belief in miracles. Some even claimed that the super-reality of Joseph’s levitations was “the cure” for Cartesian “dualism”; and others were immediately converted.31 The only significant account of such ‘disbelief’ that I have found (to date) is not straightforward either. It requires another diversion, but I believe it will illustrate the point. It happened during the aforementioned occasion in 1649, when Johan Frederick, the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg – then aged 25 and heir to the Holy Roman Empire – changed his faith from Lutheran to Catholic after a visit to see Joseph in Assisi. He was accompanied by two attendants and stayed for several days in which the party could closely observe Joseph in flight on multiple occasions. I take the following account from Fr Thurston’s translation of the Latin original in the Acta Sanctorum: 

[The Duke] was led, with his two chamberlains, next morning to the door of the chapel where Joseph was saying Mass. From there the visitors could see Joseph, a little before Communion, with his loud cry, in kneeling posture, fly five paces from the altar and return there with the same cry in like manner. On the next morning the Duke wished again to assist at the Mass said by Joseph, and this time he could see him raised a palm off the floor and remain thus suspended about a quarter of an hour, elevating the Host. On seeing this, the Duke began weeping. [He] conversed with Joseph till midday; and returned to visit the saint in his cell after Vespers…and assisted at Compline, and following the procession [declared] himself ready to become a Catholic…He then returned to Brunswick to arrange his affairs, and the following year he came back to Assisi, where he abjured Lutheranism in the presence of Joseph and [two] Cardinals (Acta Sanctorum, op.cit., 1024, 43-44; cited by Thurston, 1952, p. 98).32

Both of the ‘chamberlains’ were Counts; and the one we are concerned with was, like the Duke, a Lutheran. When the Duke seized every opportunity to witness Joseph’s elevations over several days, the Lutheran Count, somewhat anti-Catholic, became thoroughly disturbed by the events. The record continues, describing how Joseph, sensing this disbelief reacted as he held the wafer: 

[Joseph] began to wail, gave a great scream, and then flew into the air backward in a kneeling position. [He] then returned to the altar where he remained in ecstasy for some time…Questioned afterwards by the superior, but still unaware that strangers were listening, he could only tell that he had fainted; that before the swoon he had been trying in vain to break the holy wafer…The Duke, startled by Joseph’s “great scream,” asked for an explanation. Joseph tried to explain his struggle with the wafer and sudden faint. He told of having such feelings before, when he felt the presence nearby of “some hard-hearted heretic.” Unknown to him, among the witnesses was the Lutheran Count who had complained to the Duke’s company that: “It was a cursed day that I came into Italy. At home I always enjoyed a quiet mind; but in this country, puzzles about faith and conscience keep pursuing me (Acta Sanctorum and Thurston, 1951, ibid). 

This conversion is hardly mentioned in conventional political histories, and was, at the time, embargoed even by the Duke’s family. But a rare history of Catholic conversions – footnoted by Thurston – tells us that this doubter was Henry Julius Blume, who barely three years later, was himself converted to Catholicism (Räss, 1868, pp. 450-452, 558-571).

The Lunatic Gets a Lift 

Having criticised Nickell’s choice of weak cases, I thought it only just to offer a few that I think are evidentially more impressive and which defy Nickell’s theories. Joseph, as previously noted, is one of the very few saints who have publicly lifted other people along with him into the air. This should be an impossibility – even for a specialist in “bounding” and “dancing” –unless it is alleged that Joseph prearranged it with an accomplice and had practised it to perfection; for which, there is not the slightest evidence. Of Joseph’s handful of incidents, I choose the famous incident of him healing the ‘lunatic.’ Leroy’s translation of the account given in Bernini’s Vita, as recorded in the Acta Sanctorum reads: 

A lunatic had been brought to the monastery for Joseph to cure him. This lunatic was a noble citizen of Assisi named Balthasar Rossi. He was led to the saint bound to a chair, for he was dangerous and used to assault people, saying they were mad. Joseph ordered the man to be set free, made him kneel down in the oratory, and, laying his hand on his head. Said: “Do not fear, Chevalier Balthasar; commend yourself to God and his Holy Mother.” With these words, he clutched the lunatic by the hair, uttered his usual cry, and was raised off the floor with Balthasar, whom he held for a time in mid-air to the amazement of the bystanders. Then, after a quarter of an hour, he sank to earth again and dismissed the nobleman with these words, “Now, cheer up, Chevalier! (Bernini, cited in Leroy, 1928, p. 95; Cendrars, 1992, p. 28; and Grosso, 2017, pp. 69-70, my emphasis, see Figure C). 

The Operation 

Secondly, in the following account, two doctors are attempting to treat a sore on one of Joseph’s legs. The incident occurred shortly before his death and is important for being carefully observed at very close quarters, for fully fifteen minutes, not by “credulous peasants,” but by the two medical professionals. Here is the deposition made by one of them, the surgeon, Francesco de Pierpaoli: 

At the time of Brother Joseph’s last illness, I had to cauterize his leg, in compliance with the orders of Dr. Giacinto Carosi. Brother Joseph was sitting on a chair with his leg resting on my knees. I was already applying the iron to carry out the operation; I saw that Brother Joseph was in a state of bliss, unconscious and completely abstracted. His arms were extended, his eyes open and gazing toward heaven, his mouth was agape and his respiration seemed to have ceased completely.

I observed that he was elevated about a span above the chair, but 33 otherwise in the same position as before the rapture commenced. I tried to lower his leg, but without success; it remained stretched out. A fly had settled on the pupil of his eye, and the more I tried to chase it away, the more obstinately it seemed to come back to the same place; in the end, I had to leave it there. 

In order to observe Brother Joseph more closely, I went down on my knees. [Dr. Carosi] was also examining him, and we both recognized the fact that Brother Joseph was very visibly transported, out of his senses and, furthermore, he was indeed suspended in the air as I have already said. 

This situation had been going on for a quarter of an hour when Father Silvestro Evangelista, who lived in the convent at Osimo, came in. After observing the phenomenon, he commanded Joseph, by his holy vows of obedience, to come back to himself, and he called him by name. Joseph smiled and came back to his senses (Bernini cited by Leroy, 1928, p.100; Grosso, 2017, p. 122).

 

Conclusion 

Nickell’s underlying argument – unreasoned and unreasonable – is that ‘human bodily levitation’ does not, cannot, exist; therefore, there is no scholastic or scientific value in studying it, regardless of the supporting depositions. When Nickell announces that there is “nothing to see here” it is because, when he looks, he sees only trickery and “compliant” illiterates or peasants.34 Nickell’s explanations conceal one last rhetorical trick; a form of that special pleading that William of Occam called “multiplying the entities.” For Nickell to be correct, he would have us believe there was widespread collusion at all levels of the Catholic Church and related political hierarchies. Is it conceivable that Joseph would be so bold and foolhardy to continue performing ‘tricks’ during inquisitions? If so, the slightest slip would have been the end of him and his burgeoning legend, and a great blow to Catholicism. For quite different reasons, the Church discretely concurred and drew the curtains (albeit ineptly) around Joseph. As Grosso puts it: 

To explain the whole mass of reports and claims as pie in the sky, we would have to assume that large numbers of people were having the same illusion, systematically misinterpreting the movements of one friar for thirty-five years, and that all grades of people were swearing in public that they saw things they only imagined. We would have to assume that numerous Church authorities were lying or exaggerating and for some unknown reason hiding and shunting around a completely innocent, nonmeditating friar. One would have to posit an incredible amount of mendacity and stupidity on the part of Rosmi, Nuti, Bernini, Lambertini, and all the process deposers who recorded their observations (Grosso, 2016, p. 87).35 

Most damning for Nickell’s argument is that despite acknowledging in his opening sentence that Joseph’s phenomena were “supported by records citing eyewitness testimony,” throughout his critique he provides no justification for why any part of this voluminous body of sworn evidence should be so frivolously dismissed. Nor does he provide any explanation for why so many witnesses agreed upon what they had deposed they had seen. 

Finally, Nickell follows the flawed methodology of many of his eminent forebears and colleagues by taking a phenomenon out of its context to criticise it with a priori assumptions. Whether Joseph actually levitated or not, the narratives of those who believe he had acquired some evidential value from their social, religious and folkloric context. The Church has openly declared that it has no interest in levitations as ‘evidence’ only for physical phenomena (as a scientist might). In their 1638 examination, the Inquisition, for example, paid more attention to Joseph’s moral virtues – such as his indifference to poverty, his ready obedience and serenity – than to his strange screams or backward flight. Yet the legalistic hagiographic processi meticulously recorded the whole evidence (including the physical phenomena). If there were no heretical or demonic associations, a levitation naturally became a testament to the Catholic faith and the catechism.36 Obviously, Nickell is writing for his followers; anyone else might not be so easily swayed. In his article’s opening statement, he boasted that he “determined to look more deeply” into Joseph’s “strange life.” It is remarkable how quickly that determination evaporated, to be switched with the bait of his favourite suppositions. On one of the CSI websites, Nickell formally declares “that mysteries should neither be hyped nor dismissed, but instead carefully investigated with a view toward solving them.” Regarding this work on Joseph, Nickell begins with apparent dismissals, did not appear to have investigated much (and that not carefully), and far from solving anything has only added misdirection and confusion. This is hardly the fair or rigorous treatment we might expect from the grand inquisitor of CSI. The levitations of St Joseph, explained? I don’t think so.