How the nativity began 800 years ago
19 December 2023, London, UK: Eight hundred years ago, the son of an Italian silk merchant who had given up the riches of his inheritance for a life of monastic poverty and devotion, arrived in the hill town of Greccio. There, fifty miles north of Rome, he asked the local lord to provide him with an ox, an ass and a hay-filled manger.
He placed the ox, ass and manger in a cave on the outskirts of town, to which he invited other friars and townsfolk to join him in a new kind of celebration: a living representation of the birth of Christ. And so in the flickering torchlight that Christmas Eve, John of Assisi, better known by the nickname he had acquired from his father’s business interests in France, Francis, presented the first nativity play.
He placed the ox, ass and manger in a cave on the outskirts of town, to which he invited other friars and townsfolk to join him in a new kind of celebration: a living representation of the birth of Christ. And so in the flickering torchlight that Christmas Eve, John of Assisi, better known by the nickname he had acquired from his father’s business interests in France, Francis, presented the first nativity play.
St Francis’s innovation will again be staged in Greccio this Christmas, as it has for eight centuries in churches around the world.
The town of Greccio, where the first nativity play was held, was invited to create a scene for St Peter’s Square in the Vatican to mark the anniversary of the first performance, which took place in 1223
According to an early biographer, Francis said he wanted “to bring to life the memory of that babe born in Bethlehem, to see as much as possible with my own bodily eyes the discomfort of his infant needs; how he lay in a manger, and how, with an ox and an ass standing by, he was laid upon a bed of hay”.
It was recorded that “all those present experienced a new and indescribable joy in the presence of the Christmas scene”, which had previously only been depicted in static art or sculpture. One, Giovanni Veleti, claimed to have seen a miracle as a real infant appeared in the empty manager. Sick animals were said to have been healed after pieces of hay from the scene were laid upon them
It was recorded that “all those present experienced a new and indescribable joy in the presence of the Christmas scene”, which had previously only been depicted in static art or sculpture. One, Giovanni Veleti, claimed to have seen a miracle as a real infant appeared in the empty manager. Sick animals were said to have been healed after pieces of hay from the scene were laid upon them
A painting in the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi by Giotto depicts the first nativity scene in Greccio, developed by St Francis and held during Christmas Mass
Four years ago, Pope Francis visited his namesake’s monastery in Greccio to see the Nativity. He said:
“The enchanting image of the Christmas crèche never ceases to arouse amazement and wonder. A joyful tradition that rooted the Christmas story in communities. From St Peter’s Square, we think of Greccio, which in turn takes us back to Bethlehem, and as we contemplate Jesus, God made man, small, poor, defenceless, we cannot but think of the tragedy that the inhabitants of the Holy Land are living. The nativity should reawaken in us a longing for silence and prayer”.
The 800th anniversary has been marked in Italy this month with the release of a commemorative stamp showing the comet Hale-Bopp flashing over Greccio in 1997 and by the town being invited to create a nativity scene in the Vatican.
For other information or interviews please contact:
Katharine Jones
Director
St Francis Leprosy Guild
London W10 6EJ
Tel: +44 (0)7785 510474
Email: [email protected]
Katharine Jones
Director
St Francis Leprosy Guild
London W10 6EJ
Tel: +44 (0)7785 510474
Email: [email protected]
