Sur sa mule les ravi:
Je le vi
Paint ainsi;
En Egipte en eat alé.
"Le bonhomme est painturé
Tout lassé,
Et troussé
D'une cote et d'un barry:
Un baston au coul posé,
Vieil, usé
Et rusé.
Feste n'a en ce monde cy,
Mais de lui
Va le cri:
C'est Joseph le rassoté."[1]
This shows how familiarity led to irreverence of thought. Saint Joseph remained a comic type, in spite of the very special reverence paid to him. Doctor Eck, Luther's adversary, had to insist that he should not be brought on the stage, or at least that he should not be made to cook the porridge, "ne ecclesia Dei irrideatur." The union of Joseph and Mary always remained the object of a deplorable curiosity, in which profane speculation mingled with sincere piety. The Chevalier de la Tour Landry, a man of prosaic mind, explains it to himself in the following manner: "God wished that she should marry that saintly man Joseph, who was old and upright, for God wished to be born in wedlock, to comply with the current legal requirements, to avoid gossip."
An unpublished work of the fifteenth century[2] represents the mystic marriage of the soul with the celestial spouse as if it were a middle-class wedding. "If it pleases you," says Jesus to the Father, "I shall marry and shall have a large bevy of children and relations." The Father fears a misalliance, but
- ↑ What poverty Joseph suffered What hardships What misery When God was born! Many a time he has carried him, And placed him In his goodness With his mother, too, On his mule, and took them with him: I saw him Painted thus; He went into Egypt.
The good man is painted Quite exhausted, And dressed in A frock and a striped garment, A stick across his shoulder, Old, spent And broken. For him there was no amusement in this world, But of him People say—That is Joseph, the fool. - ↑ Le Livre de Crainte Amoureuse, by Jean Berthelemy, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. français, 1875.
