Annotation LXII

”Is not this the carpenter’s son?” — Matthew 13:55

What kind of smith's craft Joseph practiced.

Hilary, in canon 14 on Matthew, writes that Joseph, the father of Christ, was a blacksmith, in these words: “Plainly this [Christ] was the son of a smith — [a smith] who conquers iron by fire, decocts every strength of the age by [his] judgment, and forms the mass into every work of human usefulness,” etc. Nor does Bede seem to think otherwise, in [his commentary] on Mark, book 2, saying: “For although human [things] are not to be compared with divine, yet the type is entire, because the father of Christ works by fire and by breath. Whence also, concerning him — as of a smith’s son — his forerunner says: ‘He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire’; because [God], by softening the vessels of wrath with the fire of his Spirit, changes [them] into vessels of mercy.” Thus Bede, alluding to those three [things] which blacksmiths chiefly use to tame iron — namely, fire, breath, and water. St. Thomas, in the commentary on Matthew, specially noted that Joseph did not practice the iron-craft, but the wood-craft [carpentry]; and to this subscribe Peter [de Natalibus] of Equilio, bishop, in book 3 of On the Lives of the Saints; James of Genoa [Jacobus de Voragine], bishop, in the book of Fasti; Nicholas of Lyra; and nearly the whole consensus of the scholastics. Nor does the most ancient custom of ecclesiastical painting disagree from this opinion, representing Joseph [as] an old man, together with the boy Jesus handling wooden boards. Thomas Cajetan says it is uncertain what kind of smith-craft Joseph practiced, since “smith” (faber) is a generic name, embracing goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, and stonemasons — whose judgment the Greek word of Matthew favors: ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός, that is, “the carpenter’s son.” For τέκτων, as Suidas indicates, is common to stonemasons, blacksmiths, and carpenters.