Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire (review)

This study assembles a wealth of material pertaining to the rich topic of the devotion, cult, and imagery of St. Joseph in Mexico and Spain during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Its theme is gendered discourse vis-à-vis mandates of the Spanish Inquisition and societal aims of Spanish Habsburg and Bourbon rule. Chapters Two through Six are accordingly entitled "Love and Marriage,""Happy Families,""Mothering Fathers," "Men at Work," and "The Good Death." Of particular merit is the discussion (pp. 151-156), appended to Chapter Six, emphasizing the association of Joseph's patronage with charitable institutions in Spain and Mexico and with the Spanish monarchy and state. These observations invite comparison with Barbara Mikuda-Hüttel's substantial study (1997) of Joseph's contemporary cult in Habsburg Austria, but Mikuda-Hüttel's work is not cited. Indeed, Black's book, based on her 1995 doctoral dissertation, is significantly flawed throughout by inattention to ground-breaking literature on Joseph's cult and imagery published during the past decade and by her exclusive treatment of Hispanic Baroque textual, devotional, and pictorial features as innovative, or isolated, without consideration of analogous developments both earlier and elsewhere in the Christian world.

Other sources not cited that bear meaningfully on points Black raises and that provide prototypes and contextual interpretation for the visual motifs and compositions she addresses include books by Jörg Traeger (1997) and Brigitte Heublein (1998). Importantly so, too, do two 1996 books by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., and mine of 2001, studies cited but without consideration of the facts, images, and observations there presented, as in our subsequent publications. Of further help to Black's anchoring of cult evidence and liturgical data would have been compendia published by Tarcisio Stramare, O.S.J. (1997), and Roland Gauthier, C.S.C. (1999, 2002). Germane are publications by Sheila Schwartz and Christopher C. (not "Dean" as on p. 248) Wilson; Black's bibliography lists only their dissertations. A reference to Barbara von Barghahn's penetrating essay in Chorpenning (ed.), (1996) (pp. 57-89) would have bolstered Black's discussion (pp. 30-33) of the association of Joseph with the Mesoamerican god Tlaloc.

Most problematic is Chapter I: "Creating the Cult of St. Joseph," along with repetition of this phrase in the book's title. Black ignores both John W. O'Malley's recent cautioning (2000) against too readily viewing the Council of Trent as a watershed for devotional and pictorial change and the abundant archival evidence of Joseph's call to the altars in pre-Tridentine Italy (Stramare 1997, Traeger 1997, and especially Wilson 2001 and my articles of 1996, 2002, 2004, and 2005). Black instead clings to the notions that Joseph's cult was unimportant prior to Trent (pp. 23-24, 33) and El Greco's altarpiece (Toledo) among the first St. Joseph altarpieces (pp. 35-36), whereas I have identified some forty Joseph altarpieces in Renaissance Italy. (Her most recent reference to El Greco dates from 1961; major exhibition catalogues [1982; 2003] are ignored.) Joseph was invoked in early Cinquecento Italy as civic and personal protector, his cult having been promoted through the policy of Sixtus IV and Franciscan Observantist preaching. That "Sixteenth-century efforts to promote St. Joseph in Europe were centered in the monastic world"(p. 24) is inaccurate.

Black neglects Bernard of Clairvaux's signal contribution to Josephine doctrine and liturgy. Bernard established Joseph's role in exegesis and defined his standing in grace as Mary's fore-ordained Davidic spouse, first witness to the Incarnation, and recipient of God's word, gifts seen by the early sixteenth century as the basis of Joseph's crown of martyrdom and capacity as intercessor. Twelfth-century commentators paved the way for articulation during the fourteenth of Joseph as protector of the Church. These themes correlate with features of the saint's evolving cult iconography and might...