Joseph’s parents were pauperes sed honesti; his father was a carpenter, his mother a woman of almost virulent virtue, who kept her son in great order.  From the age of eight he was subject to cataleptic or epileptic fits and convulsions.  After his novitiate he suffered from severe attacks of melancholia.  His ‘miracles’ attracting attention, he was brought before the Inquisition at Naples, as an impostor.  He was sent to an obscure and remote monastery, and thence to Assisi, where he was harshly treated, and fell into Bunyan’s Slough of Despond, having much conflict with Apollyon.

He was next called to Rome, where cardinals testify that, on hearing sacred names, he would give a yell, and fall into ecstasy.  Returning to Assisi he was held in high honour, and converted a Hanoverian Prince.  He healed many sick people, and, having fallen into a river, came out quite dry.  He could scarcely read, but was inspired with wonderful theological acuteness.  He always yelled before falling into an ecstasy, afterwards, he was so much under the dominion of anaesthesia that hot coals, if applied to his body, produced no effect.  Then he soared in air, now higher, now lower (a cardinal vouches for six inches), and in aere pendulus haerebat, like the gentleman’s butler at Lord Orrery’s.

Seventy separate flights, in-doors and out of doors, are recorded.  In fact it was well to abstain from good words in conversation with St. Joseph of Cupertino, for he would give a shout, on hearing a pious observation, and fly up, after which social intercourse was out of the question.  He was, indeed, prevented by his superiors from appearing at certain sacred functions, because his flights disturbed the proceedings, indeed everything was done by the Church to discourage him, but in vain.  He explained his preliminary shout by saying that ‘guns also make a noise when they go off,’ so the Cardinal de Laurea heard him remark.  He was even more fragrant than the Miraculous Conformist, or the late Mr. Stainton Moses, to whose seances scent was marvellously borne by ‘spirits’.  It must be remembered that contemporary witnesses attest these singular circumstances in the evidence taken two years after his death, for the beatification of Joseph.  From Assisi he was sent to various obscure convents, where his miracles were as remarkable as ever.  One Christmas Eve, hearing sacred music, he flew up like a bird, from the middle of the church to the high altar, where he floated for a quarter of an hour, yet upset none of the candles.  An insane nobleman was brought to him to be healed.  Seizing the afflicted prince by the hair of the head, he uttered a shout, and soared up with the patient, who finally came down cured!  Once he flew over a pulpit, and once more than eighty yards to a crucifix.  This is probably ‘a record’.  When some men were elevating a cross for a Calvary, and were oppressed by the weight, Joseph uttered a shriek, flew to them, and lightly erected the cross with his