MANY of us remember the episode of The Vicar of Dibley from 1999, when Alice the verger had the uncharacteristically good idea of the village’s nativity featuring real-life animals. The tradition goes back much further than Alice Tinker: 800 years ago this month, St Francis of Assisi curated what is assumed to have been the primary re-enactment of the nativity scene to involve live animals.
Francis was not, nonetheless, the primary to point out reverence to, or re-enact, the nativity scene or the Christmas crib. In his time, no less than two three-dimensional representations of the crib scene existed in Rome, and relics of the unique manger had supposedly arrived in town within the seventh century.
Early performances included two groups of clerics (representing shepherds and midwives) performing a set dialogue, and pulling away a veil from a picture of Mary with the Christ-child. By the mid-Twelfth century, more complicated plays existed, during which actors played the three Magi (each with very specific and prescribed character traits), Mary, and the infant Jesus.
The re-creation was quintessential to Francis. While the caricature of him preaching to the birds is over-emphasised, animals were nevertheless very necessary to him. He placed an ox and an ass (not from the Gospels, but of Isaiah 1.3 fame) on the centre of the drama. They are the actual actors: there was no Mary, Joseph, or Christ-child. Likewise, Francis taught an lively remembrance of the Gospel events, and this recreation was a really performative mode of exegesis, allowing those present to put themselves into the Gospel event.
Five of the 13 early legends about (or Lives of) Francis feature this re-creation. Some differences were introduced within the 1260s, in St Bonaventure’s “Major Legend”, but an overall narrative will be drawn out of those texts.
IN MID-DECEMBER 1223, Francis retreated to the hamlet of Greccio, in Rieti, within the Lazio region of central Italy. There, he summoned a very reputable nobleman, John of Greccio, telling him that he wished to bring to life the memory of the Christ-child, “to see as much as is feasible with my very own bodily eyes the discomfort of his infant needs, how he lay in a manger, and the way . . . he rested on hay”.
On the night of Christmas Eve, many spectators got here because the manger was prepared, hay carried in, and the animals led to the spot. We are told that mass was celebrated, and Francis even began talking in the way of a bleating sheep; from this event, “Out of Greccio is made a latest Bethlehem.” The celebrating of mass at an event remembering the nativity underlines that the whole lot of Christ’s life is present on this scene.
One of those that attended — anonymous in 4 versions, but named in Bonaventure’s account as John himself — was granted a vision, during which he saw a baby lying within the manger: when a visionary Francis approached the kid, he woke from a deep sleep, causing Christ to be impressed on the memories of all in attendance.
The hay utilized in the event became a relic in its own right: animals were reportedly cured from disease by eating it, pregnant women who lay on the hay experienced a trouble-free delivery, and plenty of others were healed from an assortment of unnamed illnesses.
The location became (and stays) a site of pilgrimage; the development of a church on the location meant that — as Thomas of Celano tells us — where the animals had eaten hay, humans would eat the body of Christ. Francis thus each re-creates a historical event and, in doing so, himself creates a historical event that permits others to contemplate each Greccio and Bethlehem.
The most famous visual depiction was created by Giotto as a part of his so-called “St Francis Cycle” of frescoes, within the Upper Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, created in the ultimate years of the thirteenth century. While a shocking piece of art, Giotto’s work could be very different from the event as portrayed in (no less than) the sooner Lives. Francis and the Christ-child now turn into the centre of our attention, and the 2 animals are barely noticeable, each being the identical size because the Child.
Added into the scene in Giotto’s depiction is the crucifix; this (along with the celebration of the mass, present in each Giotto and the accounts of Francis’s life) again reminds us of the inextricable link between birth and death.
The event is especially famous in Italian cultural history, and the annual nativity scene in St Peter’s Square celebrates Francis’s re-creation of the crib as, this 12 months, we mark its 800th anniversary. The scene merges the Bethlehem and Greccio events. The central three figures are Mary, Joseph, and Francis, with the ox and the ass close behind; three Franciscan friars; figures representing John of Greccio and his wife; a trough filled with hay; and a Franciscan priest celebrating mass. Giotto’s fresco provides the backdrop to the cave. Just as Thomas of Celano said that a latest Bethlehem had been made in Greccio, so each Bethlehem and Greccio are remade in Rome.
FRANCIS’s re-creation of the nativity scene, and the re-creation in St Peter’s Square of each Bethlehem and Greccio, ask us not simply to call to mind the poor and displaced young family at the guts of the Christian tradition, but to assume ourselves inside the Gospel events — probably also an aim of the Dibley nativity production. We are called to re-enact the event of the nativity, and, as Bonaventure taught in his text The Tree of Life, to embrace the manger, keep watch with the shepherds, marvel on the host of angels, and take part the heavenly melody.
Eight hundred years on from Francis’s recreation, many all over the world need no reminder of what it’s wish to be a young parent who’s poor, displaced, and has a young child to take care of. Many within the Holy Land are experiencing that at this moment. Francis reminds us to place ourselves within the shoes of those whom society lays low, and who don’t have the privileges and comforts that we enjoy.
At the centre of the nativity scene in St Peter’s Square, and in Francis’s re-creation, is the empty crib — and, in Rome, a figure of the kid shall be placed there on the night of Christmas Eve. This reminds us of the deep longing that’s central to the season of Advent. Above all, we’re reminded that the world, our selves, and our relationships (with God, with other people, and with the world) should not yet what they shall be. Among many other metaphors, that is signified in Galatians 4.19 and Romans 8.22 by the image of the world as groaning in labour pain.
We are called by Francis not only to assume — or place — the Christ-child within the crib at Christmas, but additionally, as Bonaventure wrote, to desire that Christ be born in our souls.
Dr Michael Hahn is Programme Leader for Postgraduate Programmes in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College.
