A saint rife with paradox, and the seemingly antithetical combination of satire and devotion, guides this study of humor in devotional and ecclesiastical art made between c. 1300 and 1550. Frequently the butt of medieval jokes as the quintessential cuckold, yet simultaneously admired for his familial piety, Joseph of Nazareth became a venerated figure made powerful not merely by the endorsement of the Church, but equally, rendered potent by the humor integral to the saint in popular thought. From the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, depictions of Joseph in various media attest to the humorous and bawdy as inextricable facets of the saint's cult, even as he came to be taken more seriously as an object of devotion. Relying on extant plays, legends, tales, hymns, devotional manuals, jokes, and rhetorical theories of humor, as well as satirical paintings and prints, the following chapters explore the beneficial role of what could be called devotional humor in establishing St. Joseph as an exemplar in Germany, the Low Countries, eastern France, and northern Italy. In this regard, they reconcile two strands of interpretation that have polarized the saint into distinct early and late manifestations, one comical and derogatory, and the other sanctified and idealized.

Scholarship on St. Joseph's pre-Reformation representation has offered two very different and conflicting interpretations with respect to humor.