Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/179

Rh 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."

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An unpublished work of the fifteenth century represents the mystic marriage of the soul with the celestial spouse as if it were a middle-class wedding.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