Introduction: Laughter as Veneration

From the fourteenth through the early sixteenth centuries, varieties of humor and satire increasingly lent themselves to religious images, demonstrating the many ways that sacred and profane inextricably intertwined with respect to Joseph's veneration. This chapter examines the nature, power, and purposes of popular fifteenth-and early sixteenth-century forms of humor and satire, as well as their origins in high medieval marginalia and the ‘World Upside Down’, in order to translate and contextualize their functions in Joseph's iconography. The iconographic types discussed below – which mock the saint as a frustrated, chaste old cuckold, an unenlightened, unsophisticated fool, and an unequal mate to his young wife – served an important purpose in devotional and liturgical celebration. Far from being inappropriate for a saint, these satirical types celebrated doctrinal necessities: the saint's chastity, old age, and care for Mary and her miraculous child despite his incomplete understanding of the situation. The increasing consolidation of humor as an artistic device in Joseph's depictions between c. 1400 and 1550, as his cult continued to increase in strength throughout western Europe, encourages us to reconsider humor, joking, and laughter as forms of veneration for many of his devotees.