Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/577

 JOSEPH JOSEPH the Mother of God. When the marriage took place, whether before or after the Incarnation, is no easy matter to settle, and on this point the masters of exegesis have at all times been at variance. Most modern commentators, following in the footsteps of St. Thomas, understand that, at the epoch of the An- nunciation, the Blessed Virgin was only affianced to Joseph; as St. Thomas notices, this interpretation suits better all the evangelical data. It will not be without interest to recall here, unre- liable though they are, the lengthy stories concerning St. Joseph's marriage contained in the apocryphal writings. When forty years of age, Joseph married a woman called Melcha or Escha by some, Salome by others; they lived forty-nine years together and had six children, two daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom was James (the Less, "the Lord's brother"). A year after his wife's death, as the priests announced through Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of Juda a respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age, Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old, went up to Jerusalem among the candidates; a miracle manifested the choice God had made of Joseph, and two years later the Annunciation took place. These dreams, as St. Jerome styles them, from which many a Christian artist has drawn his inspiration (see, for instance, ~Raphael's " Espousals of the Virgin~ " in The Catholic Encyclopedia., V, 542), are void of authority; they nevertheless acquired in the course of ages some popu larity; in them some ecclesiastical writers sought the answer to the well-known difficulty arising from the mention in the Gospel of "the Lord's brothers"; from them also popular credulity has, contrary to all prol> ability, as well as to the tradition witnessed by old works of art, retained the belief that St. Joseph was an old man at the time of his marriage with the Mother of God. This marriage, true and complete, was, in the intention of the spouses, to be a virgin marriage (cf. St. Aug., "De cons. Evang.", II, i in P. L., XXXIV, 1071-72; "Cont. Julian.". V, xii, 45 in P. L., XLIV, 810; St. Thomas, III, Q. xxviii; Q. xxix, a. 2). But .soon was the faith of Joseph in his spouse to be sorely tried : she was with child. However pain- ful the discovery must have been for him, vmaware as he was of the mystery of the Incarnation, his delicate feelings forbade him to defame his affianced, and he resolved "to put her away privately; but while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee >Iary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost. . . . -And Joseph, rising from his sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife" (Matt., i, 19, 20, 24). A few months later, the time came for Joseph and Mary to go up to Bethlehem, to be enrolled, according to the decree issued by Csesar .ugustus : a new source of anxiety for Joseph, for "her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered", and "there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke, ii, 1-7). What must have been the thoughts of the holv man at the birth of the Saviour, the coming of the shepherds and of the wise men. and at the events which occurred at the time of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, we can merely guess; St. Luke tells us only that he was "wondering at those things which were spoken concerning him" (ii. .33). N'ew trials were soon to follow. The news that a king of the Jews was born could not but kindle in the wicked heart of the old and bloody tyrant, Herod, the fire of jealousy, .gain "an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt: and he there until I shall tell thee" (Matt., ii, 13). The summons to go back to Palestine came only after a few years, and the Holy Family settled again at Nazareth. St. Joseph's was henceforth the simple and uneventful life of an lumible Jew, supporting him- self and his family by his work, and faithful to tlie re- ligious practices commanded by the Law or observed by pious Israelites. The only noteworthy incident recorded by the Gospel is the loss of, and anxious quest for, Jesus, then twelve years old, when He had strayed during the yearly pilgrimage to the Hol.y City (Luke, ii, 42-51). This is the last we hear of St. Jo- seph in the sacred writings, and we may well suppose that Jesus's foster-father died before the beginning of the Saviour's public life. In several circumstances, indeed, the Gospels speak of the latter's mother and brothers (Matt., xii, 46; Mark, iii, 31; Luke, viii, 19; John, vii, 3), but never do they speak of His father in connexion with the rest of the family; they tell us only that Our Lord, during His public life was re- ferred to as the son of Joseph (John, i, 45; vi, 42; Luke, iv, 22) the carpenter (Matt., xiii, 55). Would Jesus, moreover, when about to die on the Cross, have entrusted His mother to John's care, had St. Joseph been still alive? According to the apocrj-phal "Story of Joseph the Carpenter", the holy man had reached his himdred and eleventh year when he died, on 20 July (.. D. IS or 19). St. Epiphanius gives him ninety years of age at the time of his demise; and if we are to believe the Venerable Bede, he was buried in the Val- ley of Josaphat. In truth we do not know when St. Joseph died; it is most luilikely that he attained the ripe old age spoken of by the "Story of Joseph" and St. Epiphanius. The probability is that he died and was buried at Nazareth. Joseph was "a just man ". This praise bestowed by the Holy Ghost, and the privilege of having been chosen by God to be the foster-father of Jesus and the Spouse of the Virgin Mother, are the foundations of the honour paid to St. Jo.seph by the Church. So well- grounded are the.se foundations that it is not a little surprising that the cult of St. Joseph was so slow in winning recognition. Foremost among the causes of this is the fact that "during the first centuries of the Church's existence, it was only the martyrs who enjoyed religious veneration" (Kcllner). Far from being ignored or passed over in silence during the early Christian ages, St. Joseph's prerogatives were occasionally descanted upon by the Fathers; even such eulogies as cannot be attributed to the writers among whose works they foimd admittance bear wit- ness that the ideas and devotion therein expressed were familiar, not only to the theologians and great leaders of Christian thought, but to obscure preachers, and must have lieen readily welcomed by the people. The earliest traces of public recognition of the s;inctity of St. Joseph are to be foimd in the East. His feast, if we may trust the assertions of Papeljroch, was kept by the Copts as early as the beginning of the fourth century. Nicephorus Callistus tells likewise — on what authority we do not know — that in the great basilica erected at Bethlehem b,y St. Helena, there was a gor- geous oratorj' dedicated to the honour of our samt. Certain it is, at all events, that the feast of "Joseph the Carpenter " is entered, on 20 July, in one of the old Coptic Calendars in our possession, as also in a S.vnax- arium of the eighth and ninth centurj- published by Cardinal Mai (Script. Vet. Nova Colb, IV, 15 sqq.). Greek menologies of a later date at least mention St. Joseph on 25 or 26 Deccmlier, and a twofold com- memoration of him along with other saints was made on the two Sundays next Ijefore and after Christ- mas. In the West the name of the foster-father of Our Lord (Xutritnr Domiiii) appears in local martyrologiee of the ninth and tenth centuries, and we find in 1129, for the first time, a church dedicated to his honour at Bologna. The devotion, then merely private, as it seems, gained a great impetus owing to the influence and zeal of such sjiintly persons as St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gertrude (d. 1310), and St.