According to traditional Franciscan accounts, he was "remarkably unclever", but experienced miraculous levitation and ecstatic visions throughout his life which made him the object of scorn.

He was born the son of Felice Desa and Frencesca Panaca in the village of Cupertino, in the Region of Apulia, then in the Kingdom of Naples, now in the Italian Province of Lecce.

He then applied to the Capuchin friars in Martino, near Taranto, by whom he was accepted in 1620 as a lay brother, but he was dismissed as his continued ecstasies made him unfit for the duties required of him.

[2] After this point it was claimed that he began to levitate[3] while participating at the Mass or joining the community for the Divine Office, thereby gaining a widespread reputation of holiness among the people of the region and beyond.

He was deemed disruptive by his religious superiors and church authorities, however, and eventually was confined to a small cell and forbidden to join in any public gathering of the community.

At their command, he was transferred from one Franciscan friary in the region to another for observation, first to Assisi (1639–1653), then briefly to Pietrarubbia and finally Fossombrone, where he lived with the Capuchin friars (1653–1657) and under their supervision.

"[6] Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell concluded that: Joseph's most dramatic aerial traverses were launched by a leap—not by a simple slow rising while merely standing or kneeling—but, moreover, I find that they appear to have continued as just the sudden arcing trajectories that would be expected from bounding.