The Christmas nativity is born
St Francis of Assisi recreates the birth of Christ, in Italy
Today the town of Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, is a sleepy sort of place. But at Christmas 1223, it welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world’s first nativity scene.
Then in his early forties, Francis was keen to remind the people of Greccio that there was more to Christmas than fancy food and fine gifts. Then, as now, people often lamented that the true meaning of the festival had been lost. So, determined to “commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion [and] all possible solemnity”, and adamant that there must be no hint of “lightness or novelty”, Francis asked Pope Honorius III for permission to put on a little show for the people of Greccio.
Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he “prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed”. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, “the brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise”.
The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis’s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of “an Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger”. From then on, there was no looking back.