ABSTRACT
Humor is a “dweller on the threshold,” testing, subverting, and occasionally strengthening any number of symbolical, social, and conceptual boundaries, even as humor stretches the limits of good taste and orderliness to the breaking point. In some ways, ecclesiastical authorities were quite right to worry about the unpredictable and unruly qualities of humorous laughter, especially when brought into with religious doctrines and ecclesiastical rules. Evaluating the nature and the type of religious targets that humorists have singled out since the time of Dante, we notice a progressive encroachment of the comical spirit upon domains once deemed too sacred to laugh at. Surveying the course of religious comedy in Western Christianity from Dante to Javerbaum indicates just how problematic it is to discredit so-called negative. Humor’s inherent tendency to offend some people while pleasing others has been repeatedly made the subject of public debate.
