The levitations of Saint Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663)

The converging verdict of the historians of levitation

Three authors are regarded as the reference historians of the phenomenon of levitation in Christianity: the German historian and philosopher Josef Görres (1776–1848), author of a four-volume encyclopedia of Christian mysticism (1836–1842); the British Jesuit Herbert Thurston (1856–1939), whose foundational study The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism still carries authority; and the Frenchman Olivier Leroy (1884–1976), whose work La Lévitation (1928) remains the most comprehensive survey of all known cases and proposes a five-point critical framework for assessing the value of ancient testimonies^[5][6]. These three authors, who share neither the same generation nor the same method, agree on a single verdict: Joseph of Cupertino is the most impressive case of Christian levitation ever documented^[7].

Görres wrote, when assessing the dossier for his encyclopedia of Christian mysticism:

"There is therefore no historical fact where greater care has been taken to discover the truth; and we may place entire confidence in the things that are related to us concerning this wonderful property of our saint." — Josef Görres, La Mystique divine, naturelle et diabolique, French edition of 1861, vol. 2^[8]

This judgement did not remain isolated in the nineteenth century: in 2016, the philosopher Stephen Braude, former president of the Parapsychological Association, wrote, in the words quoted by Rickard, in the Journal of Scientific Exploration that "the case of Saint Joseph provides the earliest remarkable evidence of human levitation, and probably the best available for any period"^[9].

"He spent half his life in ecstasy in the air." — Blaise Cendrars, Le Lotissement du ciel (original edition, 1949), a phrase reported — in English — by B. Rickard (2023), p. 39^[10]

What the bull of canonisation says

The most solemn document the Church has produced on Joseph of Cupertino is not a popular account but the legal act of his own canonisation. Olivier Leroy reports that the bull would state that "no saint can be compared to him in this respect"^[11] — that is, for the number, the consistency and the quality of the documentation relating to his bodily levitations. As the text of the bull has not been found in the Acta Sanctorum, the formula is kept in the conditional, attributed to Leroy. The canonisation took place one hundred and four years after Joseph's death. One must, however, distinguish the inquiries opened after 1663, the Roman introduction of the cause in 1686, the judgement on the virtues in 1735 and the approval of posthumous miracles in 1752: these are different acts, whose sequence is given by the Acta Sanctorum.^[12]

The triggers of ecstasy

According to the testimonies collected during his lifetime, Joseph's ecstasy could be triggered by almost anything touching on the sacred: the name of God, of the Virgin Mary or of a saint, a pious phrase, a liturgical chant, an icon of the Madonna, the sight of a clear sky, a candle flame, or even a lamb or a sea urchin placed before him^[13]. Once he entered ecstasy, his body frequently rose from the ground, remained suspended, sometimes moved towards an altar or a statue, before falling back when his superior ordered him, in virtue of his vow of obedience, to return to himself^[14].

The writer Blaise Cendrars, who devoted years of personal research to the case during the Second World War, recounts that a Joseph in ecstasy could take off "from his place in the refectory, brandishing a sea urchin"^[15] — an example of the diversity of the circumstances reported, rather than an isolated demonstration of their involuntary nature.

The cry and the flight

The most constant and most unsettling feature of the phenomenon is a piercing cry, closer to a howl than to an exclamation, uttered at the precise moment the body left the ground. Many witnesses, taken by surprise, describe this cry as the first thing that alerted them, even before seeing Joseph rise^[16]. Bernini, his most complete biographer, notes that the reaction of those present varied according to temperament: "some bowed, others prayed, others wept, and others fled the scene"^[17].

When Joseph rose towards the ceiling painted by Cimabue in the basilica of Assisi, Bernini reports that "everything happened so quickly that those present were seized with a sacred terror, marvelling among themselves and remaining struck with stupor"^[18].

Reported durations and heights

The testimonies do not merely assert a phenomenon: they specify, on several occasions, its duration and height, with concrete reference points — the length of a step, the width of an open hand (the unit of measurement called a span, roughly fifteen to twenty-two centimeters)^[19]. The duration of remaining in the air varied from a few seconds to more than half an hour; some episodes of motionless suspension lasted, according to witnesses, up to two hours^[20]. One emblematic case concerns a flight in the garden of the convent of Fossombrone, where brothers saw him "hovering in the air at the height of the treetops of the garden. He remained there, kneeling in the air, for more than two hours"^[21].

Ecstatic insensitivity

A second constant feature is Joseph's total insensitivity during his ecstasies: witnesses, often to make sure it was not a trick, would pull him, pinch him, twist his fingers or bring a flame close to his face without obtaining any reaction^[27]. His biographer Roberto Nuti notes that "to bring him back to himself, they dragged him along the ground, pinched him, twisted his fingers, put candles in his mouth, and so on"^[28]. During the last levitation observed at Osimo, a troubling detail was recorded under oath by the surgeon operating on him: a fly had landed on the pupil of his open eye, and "the more I tried to drive it away, the more it obstinately returned to the same spot; in the end, I had to leave it"^[29].

Extraordinary variants: backward flights, carrying flights, high-altitude flights

Beyond simple vertical elevation, the testimonies report forms of flight far rarer in the annals of bodily mysticism. Joseph was seen to fly backwards, in a kneeling position: the most famous case concerns the visit of the Prince of Brunswick, when he "uttered a great cry and flew backwards through the air, kneeling"^[30] before a German prince who had come to consult him. He was also seen to cover notable horizontal distances: one day, at the sound of the liturgical words "Mother of divine grace", he "flew forward over three rows of brothers"^[31].

Rarer still are the episodes in which Joseph lifted another person up with him. Rickard counts four of them in Bernini's Vita: an early incident at Copertino in which he clasped a brother in a dance that continued in the air, "one beside himself with fear, the other beside himself because he was a saint"^[32]; the elevation, at Assisi in 1642, of the Custos Father Raffaelle Palma^[33]; the case of a shepherd lifted and swung "holding him by the armpit with one hand alone"^[34]; and the most famous case, that of a mentally disturbed man lifted by the hair, named Balthasar Rossi in Bernini's Vita^[35].

The first flight

After a youth marked by rejection — refused by the Conventual Friars Minor for his ignorance, dismissed from the Capuchins of Martina Franca after only a few months — Joseph was finally admitted in 1625, at the age of twenty-two, to the convent of the Grottella, near Copertino, as a lay brother, despite his reputation as "ignorant, poorly educated, barely literate"^[36]. Ordained a priest three years later, in March 1628, he immediately experienced, at the age of twenty-four, his first spontaneous ecstasies^[37].

His first public flight is said to date from 4 October 1630, at the age of twenty-seven, during a public procession: according to the Franciscan Gustavo Parisciani, who studied the archives, Joseph "rose into the air and remained ecstatic and motionless before the astounded crowd"^[38]. A rival tradition, reported by his confidant Abbot Arcangelo Rosmi, places this very first flight at Assisi, as Joseph meditated before an icon of the Virgin and Child said to have been carried in procession^[39]. Rickard honestly highlights this divergence between the two ancient traditions rather than artificially deciding in favour of one or the other; the distinction between a first ecstasy, a first public flight and a first episode at Assisi remains necessary.

Within four years, Joseph was known throughout the province of Apulia as a "new Saint Francis"^[40]. His way of life matched this reputation: seven Lents of forty days each year, very little sleep, regular bodily discipline to the point that the walls of his cell were sometimes splashed with blood, until his superior ordered him to stop^[41].

Father San Mauro's tour and the Giovinazza incident (1636)

In 1636, a new provincial father, Antonio di San Mauro, set out on an inaugural tour of fifty convents in Apulia and took Joseph with him, calculating that the prospect of witnessing a levitation during Mass would draw crowds and enhance his own prestige^[42]. Joseph, terrified at the idea of this organised public exposure, nevertheless had to obey by religious vow. The tour succeeded beyond San Mauro's hopes — but public interest focused on Joseph, not on the prelate, which provoked open quarrels between them^[43].

The tension came to a head in the town of Giovinazza, where suspicious local authorities ordered the convoy to turn back in order to observe Joseph more closely. As expected, he levitated during Mass, his cry frightening the congregation; some officials saw in it a "theatrical campaign" orchestrated by Joseph and his confrères to pass himself off as a kind of messiah^[44]. The accusation was no trivial matter in the religious and judicial context of the time: Michael Grosso notes that "recently, three men had been burned alive for having celebrated Mass in public without being ordained"^[45]. On the return from the tour, San Mauro, furious, accused Joseph of "feigned sanctity" and called him "completely mad" for having ruined his "show"^[46]. Summoned years later by the Inquisition to account for his own conduct towards Joseph, San Mauro cautiously dodged:

"I can say nothing except that he was a saint who continually fell into ecstasy and who was adored by all." — Antonio di San Mauro, provincial father, deposition cited by B. Rickard (2023)^[47]

The file brings together witnesses from different backgrounds: religious, peasants, passing faithful, diplomats, princes and practitioners. Identifying them allows their functions and their conditions of observation to be compared; social rank alone does not guarantee the accuracy of a testimony. The table below presents the accounts developed in the following sections.

Pope Urban VIII

Summoned to Rome during his trial before the Inquisition, Joseph was brought into the presence of Pope Urban VIII (1568–1444). As he bowed to kiss the pontiff's feet, he entered ecstasy and rose from the ground. According to the account reported by Olivier Leroy, Urban VIII was "seized with fear" at the scene, but later promised, if Joseph died during his pontificate, to bear witness himself to what he had seen^[48].

The Grand Admiral of Castile and his wife (1645)

One of the best-documented episodes takes place in 1645, during the passage through Assisi of the Grand Admiral of Castile, Juan Alfonso Enríquez de Cabrera, ambassador of Spain to the Holy See. Bernini prints this date in the margin of his account, p. 176; the Acta Sanctorum repeat it explicitly. After meeting Joseph in his cell, the admiral wishes his wife to be able to speak with him too. The guardian then orders the religious to come down to the church: the scene is not presented as a Mass commissioned for the visitors.^[49]

"It was all one: entering, seeing the statue, letting out a cry and launching into flight over a distance of twelve paces above the heads of the admiral and the ladies." — Domenico Bernini, Vita, Rome, 1722, p. 177, translated from the Italian.^[50]

Joseph reaches the feet of the statue of the Immaculate, remains there a short while, then returns through the air to his starting point. Bernini distinguishes the reactions: the wife faints and is given water on her face as well as fumigations; the admiral remains standing, astounded; some members of the retinue flee. On the next page, the biographer names another attendant, the priest Giovanni Martelli of Spoleto, who reports having questioned Joseph a few days later about this encounter. The account thus has a named relay beyond the couple of dignitaries.^[51]

This scene, one of the most famous in the file, has fed the saint's iconography^[52]. The engraving reproduced here is catalogued by the Wellcome Collection as a work after F. A. Lorenzini; its dedication to Benedict XIV makes it a depiction later than the events, not an image taken from life.

The Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg: from a levitation to a conversion (1649–1651)

Prince John Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg comes to Assisi accompanied by two gentlemen. Bernini specifies that one of the companions is Catholic and the other Lutheran: the three visitors thus do not form an uniformly Protestant group. The Acta Sanctorum date the conversion to 1651, while discussing the date of the first visit; their commentary favours a stay in 1650 over the year 1649 given in the biographies by Bernini and Pastrovicchi.^[53]

Two observations made without the celebrant's knowledge

On the first morning, a Sunday, the visitors reach the door of the chapel of the former novitiate via a secret staircase. Joseph is unaware of their presence. Bernini, p. 181, specifies this arrangement; Aimé Michel takes it up in Métanoïa, p. 220, naming the companions Blume and Sittig. This arrangement is important: the account describes an observation prepared by the prince's entourage, without any prior announcement to the celebrant.^[54]

"He let out a very great cry and flew backwards into the air, on his knees, over five paces." — Domenico Bernini, Vita, 1722, p. 181, translated from the Italian.^[55]

The prince asks to return the next day. During this second Mass, the visitors see Joseph raised a palmo above the altar step during the elevation of the Host. The Acta Sanctorum, in the Vita, nos 43–44, give "uno palmo" and "octava circiter horæ parte", that is, about an eighth of an hour: it is this reading of the Latin, open to this correction, that is retained here, against the "quarter of an hour" of the reworkings (Thurston, Michel). Aimé Michel emphasises this second observation requested by the visitors: these are not two independent traditions, but two successive episodes transmitted in the same account.^[56][57]

The conversion and its consequences

The conversations that follow also matter. The prince speaks at length with Joseph, attends the liturgy and prepares his adherence to the Catholic Church. Bernini, p. 193, reports the testimony of Cardinal Cesare Facchinetti on the role of the religious's prayers and explanations. The event thus does not reduce to the effect of a spectacle: the process includes a religious dialogue and a personal decision.^[58]

One of the Lutheran companions, Blume, by contrast expresses his distress at what calls his convictions into question. Aimé Michel names him Johann Heinrich Blume and reports his conversion in 1653; the forms of his first name vary in the reworkings. Michel explicitly distinguishes the force of observation from the spiritual value of a conversion, for which he gives priority to a virtuous life rather than to the miracle alone.^[59]

After his conversion, the prince governs Calenberg from Hanover from 1665 to 1679. His brother Ernest-Augustus succeeds him after his death, for lack of a son.^[60]

Testimonies of cardinals, distinct from the medical findings

Rickard mentions three cardinals among the ecclesiastics who testified to their observations after Joseph's death. This indication does not allow them all to be placed in the dying man's room. The Acta Sanctorum in particular give a letter from Cardinal Cesare Facchinetti, written after the announcement of the death, and mention Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi, the future Innocent XI, among the prelates connected to Joseph: each document must be linked to its own circumstances.^[61]

Another account presents two future cardinals among the assistants at a levitation before the tabernacle. The presence of high dignitaries broadens the social milieu of the witnesses; it does not dispense one from distinguishing what they observed, the date of their statement, and the source that transmits it.^[62]

What the surgeon reports

Joseph's last illness at Osimo provides a detailed account from two practitioners: the surgeon Francesco Pierpaoli and the physician Giacinto Carosi. Bernini reproduces the former's deposition in his Vita, chapter XVII, p. 265–266. The surgeon applies a cautery to the right leg, resting on his knee, when Joseph enters ecstasy.^[63]

"I observed that he was raised almost a palmo above this chair, in the same position as before being rapt out of his senses; and, trying to lower that leg, I could not: it remained always in the same manner." — Francesco Pierpaoli, deposition reproduced by Domenico Bernini, Vita, 1722, p. 265–266; translated from the Italian.^[64]

He describes the arms open, the eyes raised, the mouth half-open and the absence of any visible sign of breathing. A fly comes back to settle on the pupil without provoking any blink. Pierpaoli kneels to examine Joseph more closely; he specifies that Carosi too observes the raised body. Father Silvestro Evangelista then enters and calls Joseph back to himself through obedience. The religious sits back down, asks that the treatment be carried out, and is astonished to learn that it is already done; the surgeon shows him the bandaged leg.^[65]

The duration and scope of the observation

The 1722 edition reads "un mezzo quarto d'hora", literally half a quarter of an hour, that is, about seven and a half minutes. The reworkings by Bouflet and Rickard give a quarter of an hour; the ancient text does not allow this doubled duration to be retained. Likewise, quasi un palmo indicates a height estimated by comparison with the hand, without instrument or exact conversion into centimetres.^[66]

This account is distinguished by the proximity of the care, the identity of the two practitioners and the gesture of verification described. It contains no passage of the hand beneath the body nor any experimental arrangement. The deposition is Pierpaoli's: it also reports what he says he observed with Carosi, without constituting two independent reports. It is these precise elements, rather than the title of physician alone, that give the observation its historical interest.^[67]

Arcangelo Rosmi's journal and the Assisi years

The most systematic witness in the file is the abbot Arcangelo Rosmi (d. 1654), who lived at the Franciscan convent of Assisi for most of the fourteen years Joseph spent there (1639–1653) and kept a journal of his observations, now published under the title I tre diari (1645-1652) dell'abate Arcangelo Rosmi su san Giuseppe da Copertino^[68]. Rosmi recorded around seventy levitations during the Assisi years; the three published journals cover more precisely the period 1645–1652^[69]. He himself specified that he considered it superfluous to note any more, so familiar had the phenomenon become:

"If [these seventy cases] do not constitute sufficient proof, three hundred more would change nothing." — Arcangelo Rosmi, journal cited by B. Rickard (2023)^[70]

Bernini reports the same observation of everyday banalisation: "every time he made his devotions, he rose up"^[71].

A similar figure concerns a different set: Bouflet states that the acts of the trial record more than seventy cases at Copertino and in its surroundings, before the departure of 1639^[72]. This count corresponds neither to that of Rosmi's journal for Assisi nor to the number of testimonies found by Parisciani. Several people may describe the same event; several sources may repeat the same testimony.

Gustavo Parisciani's Vatican archives

The modern Franciscan Gustavo Parisciani, who studied the depositions preserved in the Vatican archives for the Assisi period alone, found in them at least one hundred and fifty distinct eyewitness testimonies^[73] — a number of accounts which, on its own, does not provide the total of Joseph's flights^[74]. Judicial depositions must be distinguished from the biographies that use them. Domenico Bernini's Vita is a work printed in one volume, in Rome in 1722. The author refers in the margins to the trials of Nardò, Assisi and Osimo; these documentary references are not additional volumes of his biography.^[75]

The three examinations of the Holy Office

In 1638, a disgruntled apostolic vicar, Bishop Joseph Palamolla, denounced Joseph to the Inquisition of Naples, accusing him of performing healings and miracles "as if he were another Messiah"^[76]. Unable to ride a horse, Joseph covered on foot the some three hundred kilometres between Grottella and Naples, accompanied by a minder^[77]. There he underwent three distinct examinations by the Holy Office spread over several months, before his file was sent to Rome for a further examination of his motivation and his piety^[78]. During this period, in Naples as in Rome, he was ordered to celebrate Mass under the full surveillance of congregations composed almost entirely of clerics — and he levitated, before their eyes, at the key moments of each celebration^[79].

The entire process lasted nearly two years and plunged Joseph into a deep depression^[80]. He was ultimately fully cleared — not only of suspicions of heresy or demonism, but also of any affectation of sanctity or pursuit of notoriety^[81]. The Inquisitors nevertheless chose to keep him permanently away from the public, not out of doubt as to his sincerity, but for fear that an uncontrolled popular cult might develop around him^[82].

The San Mauro affair: the accuser turned suspect

The episode of the 1636 tour had a revealing aftermath for the credibility of the file: when San Mauro was himself summoned by the Inquisitors to explain his conduct towards Joseph, he found himself in a delicate position. If he persisted in his accusations and Joseph was acquitted, San Mauro risked being labelled a false accuser; if, on the other hand, Joseph's phenomena proved to be of demonic origin, San Mauro could be considered an accomplice for not having denounced them earlier^[83]. This contradictory situation illustrates the seriousness with which the inquisitorial procedure treated every party, accuser included — a context that makes the innocence ultimately recognised in Joseph all the more significant.

Prospero Lambertini, future Benedict XIV, promoter of the faith

The office of promoter of the faith consisted in examining objections to a cause of sanctity. Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), the future Benedict XIV, held it during the study of Joseph's file. In his treatise De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, book III, chapter 49, no. 9 — in the text cited by Herbert Thurston (1952), p. 17, n. 3 —, he thus credits the deponents:

"Eyewitnesses, beyond all objection, attest the most famous elevations above the ground and the great flights of this servant of God, in ecstasy and rapt." — Prospero Lambertini, De servorum Dei beatificatione, III, 49, 9, Latin cited by H. Thurston, translation from the Latin.^[84]

This judgment concerns the quality of the testimonies. The recognition of the virtues and that of the miracles remain separate decisions: the heroic virtues are approved under Clement XII in 1735; having become pope, Lambertini approves two posthumous healings in 1752, then beatifies Joseph in 1753.^[85]

For the philosopher Michael Grosso, author of a study on Joseph and associated with the English edition of Bernini's Vita, an overall explanation must take into account the repetition of the accounts, the different places, and the diversity of the deponents. His objection to the wholesale rejection of the file is cumulative: explaining one episode by a misunderstanding is not enough to explain all the others. It does not mean that every deposition is independent, nor that a collective error is logically impossible.^[86]

Beatification and canonisation

Joseph was beatified in 1753 by Benedict XIV — the pope who had once examined his cause as promoter of the faith^[87]. He was canonised on 16 July 1767 by Clement XIII^[88]. The historian of the occult Eric Dingwall, author of an exhaustive bibliography on Joseph, expressed his refusal of the hypothesis of a concerted fraud on this scale: he could not believe that all the Catholic officials who had attested to Joseph's levitations "were all lying or engaged in a system of deception designed to support the reputation of a fraudulent friar"^[89].

Distinct acts and criteria

The legal chronology sets out the content of the ecclesiastical judgment. The Acta Sanctorum, in their preliminary commentary, nos. 118–124, give the following stages:

The decree of 1752 distinguishes the examination of the evidence, the written opinions of the physicians, the debates of the consultors and the vote of the cardinals. The approved miracles are healings attributed to the intercession of the deceased, not his flights during his lifetime.^[90]

Herbert Thurston states the canonical distinction, taken up by Bouflet in Une histoire des miracles, p. 112: a levitation may corroborate the examination of the virtues, but it does not replace the posthumous miracles required by this procedure.^[91]

Milestones of the life and the cause

The Copertino file can only be fully understood by contrast. Joachim Bouflet, in his reference study La Lévitation, devotes long pages to examining cases of levitation attributed to nineteenth-century spiritualist mediums, precisely in order to establish criteria of discernment transferable to the Catholic file.

The counter-model of Daniel Dunglas Home

The Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), nicknamed the "prince of mediums", is the most famous case of claimed levitation outside the religious setting. His séances, which impressed witnesses of rank — Lord Adare, Lord Lindsay (future president of the Royal Astronomical Society), the physicist William Crookes and the writer Leo Tolstoy — were held under varying lighting conditions; the famous episode between two windows in December 1868 in particular raises the question of the available light^[92]. A witness to the séance reports:

"We heard the window of the next room being raised and, almost immediately, we saw Home floating in the air outside the window." — Lord Lindsay, witness of the séance of December 1868, cited by J. Bouflet (2006)^[93]

But Bouflet at once notes the fragility of this account: "one of the best current specialists on Daniel D. Home, the historian John Sladek, undertook a comparative study of the three versions [of the same episode] and drew devastating conclusions"^[94], including material contradictions as to the exact date of the event.

Bouflet also mentions a brightly lit room in the Home file, p. 47. His argument therefore does not reduce itself to the opposition between light among the saints and darkness among the mediums. He quotes Leroy's comparative judgement:

"Not even Home, who among the mediums seems to be a replica of Joseph of Copertino, produces phenomena as clear and intense as those of the Friar Minor." — Olivier Leroy, La Lévitation, p. 288–289, cited by Joachim Bouflet, 2006, p. 47.^[95]

Eusapia Palladino, the unmasked medium

The Neapolitan medium Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), studied by scientists as serious as Camille Flammarion, Cesare Lombroso or Charles Richet, was finally unmasked during her American tour of 1909. The investigators discovered that:

"She hides in the folds of her ample black skirts the material that allows her to produce ectoplasms [...] and above all she has devised a clever technique for simulating the remote movement of objects." — Joachim Bouflet, account of the American tour of 1909, La Lévitation, 2006, p. 40–41^[96]

Bouflet quotes her cry "Meno luce!" ("less light!") and describes the substitution techniques of hands or feet by which certain controls were deceived. This finding concerns specific séances and arrangements; it does not allow the same methods to be attributed automatically to Home or to Joseph.^[97]

What Leroy's comparison allows

Bouflet's table, p. 68, adapts Leroy's and sets the "mystical" and "mediumistic" types against each other according to will, circumstances, publicity and personal conduct. To compare historical cases, the most verifiable criteria are the conditions of each observation:^[98]

The value of the comparison is that it puts the accounts to the test on common criteria. The frauds observed in Palladino do not by themselves explain the episodes of Copertino; conversely, the virtue of a witness does not turn his estimate of a height into an instrumental measurement.^[99][100]

The case closest to that of Copertino in the history of Catholic mysticism is that of Saint Peter of Alcantara (1499–1562), a Spanish Franciscan who died forty-one years before Joseph's birth. Bouflet draws a direct, dated parallel between the two men, noting that they share the most singular feature of the phenomenon:

« He was subject to numerous and impressive levitations, very similar to those of Joseph of Copertino; like the latter, he let out a great cry at the onset of the phenomenon. » — Joachim Bouflet, La Lévitation, Le Jardin des Livres, 2006, p. 177-178^[101]

The testimonies concerning Peter of Alcantara, recorded in the Acta Sanctorum, state: « it was not rare for him then to let out terrifying cries, to the point of filling with horrified fear the brothers who heard them »^[102]. Like Copertino, he was seen « lifted from the ground up to the ceiling of the conventual choir, or else he was seen hovering in the convent garden at the level of the highest branches of the trees [...] at times, he was hurled like an arrow through cloisters and corridors [...] passing unharmed through the narrowest doors »^[103].

One detail particularly holds Bouflet's attention: Saint Teresa of Avila, a direct witness to the ecstasies of Peter of Alcantara, whom she took as her spiritual director, never mentions the slightest bodily elevation in her writings — a silence that Bouflet explicitly notes as remarkable, given that as attentive and sincere an observer as she « would not have failed to report it had she seen it »^[104]. This silence therefore prevents Teresa from being counted among the direct witnesses of his levitations: what she attests here is a rapture, whereas the bodily elevation rests on other accounts.

Joachim Bouflet does not attach the same value to all levitation accounts. He sets aside several poorly established attributions and judges the Copertino dossier as a whole to be particularly consistent. This favourable judgment, however, coexists with the mention of discrepancies between certain testimonies: one must therefore distinguish the overall assessment of the dossier from the validation of each of its details.

Bouflet thus rejects an isolated levitation account attributed to Padre Pio: « the phenomenon is reported in the life of the Capuchin saint only once, on the basis of little-credible documents from a single witness; and the eminent connoisseur — and friend — of Padre Pio that was Ennemond Boniface does not mention the levitation in the rigorous study he devoted to the mystical phenomenology of the stigmatist. The account of it is copied almost word for word from a popular biography of Saint John Joseph of the Cross »^[105]. He deals in the same way with an alleged levitation of a 20th-century Italian priest, Don Carlo Monclin, whose attribution is judged gratuitous « on verification », the accounts disappearing after the priest's removal by his bishop^[106]. Bouflet finally recalls that Herbert Thurston and Olivier Leroy themselves set aside, after critical examination of the sources, the levitations traditionally attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Dominic and Saint Ignatius of Loyola, for lack of solid contemporary testimonies^[107].

Bouflet nonetheless places Copertino among the cases he retains and writes:

« Joseph of Copertino, the flying saint, is the best-known example of it. » — Joachim Bouflet, La Lévitation, Le Jardin des Livres, 2006, p. 177^[108]

He places Copertino within an entire category of priest-saints observed in levitation during the celebration of Mass — among whom Saint Vincenzo Pallotti, Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Saint Michel Garicoïts, the Curé d'Ars, Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo, Saint Bernardino Realino or Blessed Francisco de Posadas^[109] — and proposes a theological explanation for the common trigger: the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist « in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, in assisting at Mass, its celebration, for the priest » appears to be « the starting point, if not the cause » of the elevation^[110]. Bouflet notes, moreover, that this same feature links Copertino to another little-known figure, the Santinha of Arrifana, a Portuguese mystic whose near-daily levitations over twenty-nine years were likewise most often triggered after communion: « the facts observed both in the Santinha of Arrifana and in Saint Joseph of Copertino are, in this respect, exemplary »^[111].

Bouflet does, however, discuss one episode from Copertino: the carrying of a large cross near the Grottella. He notes that the testimonies were collected more than thirty years after the incident and diverge notably as to the distances; he then disputes the negative conclusion Thurston drew from them^[112]. His judgment remains favourable to the levitations as a whole, and his disagreement with Thurston concerns the weight to be given to these discrepancies, not their existence.

The Copertino case has never ceased to be discussed in modern times. In 2018, in the Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the American investigator Joe Nickell published a critique titled "Secrets of the Flying Friar: Did St. Joseph of Copertino Really Levitate?", in response to the two books by philosopher Michael Grosso on the subject^[113]. In 2023, the independent researcher Bob Rickard, a specialist in anomalous phenomena, answered him point by point in the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, comparing the accounts of the ancient biographies through their editions and the studies of Leroy, Thurston and Grosso^[114].

Joe Nickell's skeptical thesis (2018)

Nickell combines two explanations: movements interpreted as flights and the amplification of accounts through memory or devotion. He therefore has no need to assume all the witnesses were lying.^[115] As for physical mimicry, Joseph would, in his view, have developed exceptional leg muscles through his prolonged genuflections, allowing him to rise subtly onto his toes while apparently remaining kneeling, thus creating an illusion of levitation for witnesses deemed "credulous"^[116]. For flights to greater heights — the top of an olive tree, the vault of a chapel — Nickell puts forward the hypothesis of an athletic "leap", comparing Joseph to an acrobat able to "spring" toward a concealed foothold, such as a tree branch or a statue bracket^[117]. He also interprets Joseph's characteristic cry as a deliberate device intended to divert the witnesses' attention at the precise moment of the "jump"^[118].

Bob Rickard's responses (2023)

Rickard acknowledges the very principle of the skeptical demand — extraordinary evidence deserves extraordinary scrutiny — but points out that Nickell's explanation fails to account for several elements of the case that it ignores or downplays^[119]:

1. No trace of training. In the whole of the available record, no witness, even a hostile one, reports having caught Joseph practising such acrobatic movements — despite years of shared life and supervision. This is an argument from the silence of the sources, not from continuous observation of his every gesture^[120].
2. Qualified witnesses, not mere "credulous peasants". Nickell describes some witnesses as "credulous 17th-century peasants"; yet the case includes, as we have seen, a pope, an admiral-ambassador, a duke, cardinals and two practitioners observing during close-care treatment^[121].
3. Durations incompatible with an athletic pose. Remaining balanced on one's toes, in a kneeling position, on a branch "that was trembling", for nearly half an hour, or motionless for two hours in a garden, requires an explanation distinct from a simple leap^[122].
4. The 1663 medical testimony. The surgeon and the physician observe Joseph during a treatment; the former reports a rise of almost a palmo; the Bernini edition gives a quarter of an hour and an unsuccessful attempt to lower his leg. This is an estimate and a close-range observation, with no instrumental measurement described^[123].
5. The absence of any credible motive. Joseph never sought public exposure, prayed for the phenomenon to cease, and was repeatedly plunged into shame and confusion by his own public ecstasies^[124].
6. Explaining the whole. An orchestrated fraud spanning several cities and social settings would be a cumbersome hypothesis. But Nickell also invokes error and embellishment: the relevant response, then, is to test these hypotheses against the close-range observations, the repeated episodes and the transmission of each account, rather than to impute to him the need for a general conspiracy.^[125][126]

Rickard finally stresses that the inquisitorial procedure itself never focused on proving the physical phenomenon, but on examining Joseph's moral virtues — indifference to poverty, immediate obedience, absence of any pursuit of prestige — deemed more decisive than the extraordinary itself in establishing his sincerity^[127]. His conclusion is direct:

"The levitations of St Joseph, explained? I don't think so." — Bob Rickard, "The Levitations of St Joseph of Copertino: Explained?", Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2023, p. 71^[128]

What the disagreement makes it possible to establish

The leaps, footholds and perceptual errors proposed by Nickell can be tested against the details of each scene. They do not account for, without additional hypotheses, the surgeon attempting to lower a leg, the backward flight observed from a doorway, or the movements carrying another person with him. These are the most demanding points of the case, provided the distinction between event, deposition and printed retelling is maintained.^{[129][130][131]}

The number of witnesses is not sufficient on its own: three biographies copying the same passage do not make three independent attestations. The strength of the case lies in its named sources, its precise circumstances and the possibility of discussing their divergences. The Catholic reading finds in them serious reasons to believe in Joseph's levitations, without making every transmitted detail a condition of his holiness.

Catholic theology has never granted levitation the status of a proof in itself. Olivier Leroy sets out this doctrinal position in a summary taken up by Bouflet at the end of his own chapter:

« Traditional Catholic theology refuses to give levitation a natural cause. It makes of it a divine prodigy or a demonic artifice. The levitations of the possessed or of mediums are a parody, sinister or burlesque, of the charism of his saints. As for those of non-Catholic or even pagan mystics, it does not deny them a divine origin a priori. » — Olivier Leroy, La Lévitation. Contribution historique et critique à l'étude du merveilleux, Paris, Librairie Valois, 1928, p. 350, cited by J. Bouflet, La Lévitation, Le Jardin des Livres, 2006, p. 199^[132]

The virtues and the signs

The canonical distinction set out by Thurston makes it possible to understand the place of these accounts: the extraordinary can support the examination of a life, while the recognition of holiness concerns the person and his virtues. In Joseph's cause, the two healings approved in 1752 are kept separate from the levitations during his lifetime.^[133][134]

Obedience runs through the testimonies: an order from the superior calls Joseph back to him while physical solicitations remain without effect. This constant appears both in the account of the audience with Urban VIII and in that of the care at Osimo. It links the bodily phenomenon to the religious life in which it is set.^[135][136]

John Paul II's spiritual reading

In his message for the fourth centenary of Joseph, John Paul II mentions the ecstasies, then insists on Eucharistic prayer, simplicity and the obedience of the Franciscan. His portrait highlights the joy he passed on to those he met:

« He was a man of joy, affable and cordial with everyone. » — Saint John Paul II, message to the Conventual Friars Minor, 2003, no 8.^[137]

The levitations thus take their place in a life turned towards Christ: they draw attention to Joseph, but the example proposed to the faithful remains a holiness lived out in prayer, charity and the fulfilment of daily duty.^[138]

• Saint Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) — complete biography, spirituality and posterity.
• Levitations — general overview of the phenomenon in Catholic mysticism.
• Bilocations — another mystical bodily phenomenon frequently associated with the same saints.
• Discernment of supernatural phenomena — Catholic criteria for examination.
• What is a miracle? — definition and theological prudence.