{"id":18988,"date":"2019-12-18T20:11:29","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T20:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18988"},"modified":"2019-12-19T20:42:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T20:42:38","slug":"how-st-francis-created-the-nativity-scene-with-a-miraculous-event-in-1223","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-st-francis-created-the-nativity-scene-with-a-miraculous-event-in-1223\/","title":{"rendered":"How St. Francis created the Nativity scene, with a miraculous event in 1223"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vanessa Corcoran<\/a>, Georgetown University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Around the Christmas season, it is common to see a display of the Nativity scene: a small manger with the baby Jesus and his family, shepherds, the three wise men believed to have visited Jesus after his birth and several barnyard animals.<\/p>\n

One might ask, what are the origins of this tradition? <\/p>\n

Biblical description<\/h2>\n

The earliest biblical descriptions, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, written between A.D. 80 and 100, offer details of Jesus\u2019 birth, including that he was born in Bethlehem during the reign of King Herod.<\/p>\n

The Gospel of Luke says<\/a> that when the shepherds went to Bethlehem, they \u201cfound Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.\u201d Matthew<\/a> tells the story of the three wise men, or Magi, who \u201cfell down\u201d in worship and offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.<\/p>\n

But as my research on the relationship between the New Testament and the development of popular Christian traditions<\/a> shows, the earliest biblical descriptions do not mention the presence of any animals<\/a>. Animals first start to appear in religious texts around the seventh century. <\/p>\n

A series of early Christian stories that informed popular religious devotion, including what\u2019s known as the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, attempted to fill in the gap between Christ\u2019s infancy and the beginning of his public ministry. This text was the first to mention<\/a> the presence of animals at Jesus\u2019 birth. It described how the \u201cmost blessed Mary went forth out of the cave and entering a stable, placed the child in the stall, and the ox and the ass adored Him.\u201d <\/p>\n

This description, subsequently cited in several medieval Christian texts, created the Christmas story popular today. <\/p>\n

Start of Nativity scenes<\/h2>\n

But the Nativity scene now recreated in town squares and churches worldwide was originally conceived by St. Francis of Assisi.<\/p>\n

Much of what scholars know about Francis comes from \u201cLife of St. Francis<\/a>,\u201d written by the 13th-century theologian and philosopher St. Bonaventure. <\/p>\n

Francis was born into a merchant family<\/a> in the Umbrian town of Assisi, in modern-day Italy, around 1181. But Francis rejected his family wealth early in his life and cast off his garments in the public square. <\/p>\n

In 1209, he founded the mendicant order of the Franciscans<\/a>, a religious group that dedicated themselves to works of charity. Today, Franciscans minister by serving the material and spiritual needs of the poor and socially marginalized.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n St. Francis of Assisi preparing the Christmas crib at Greccio.<\/span>
\n Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Bonaventure, Francis in 1223 sought permission from Pope Honorious III to do something \u201cfor the kindling of devotion\u201d to the birth of Christ. As part of his preparations, Francis \u201cmade ready a manger, and bade hay, together with an ox and an ass,\u201d in the small Italian town of Greccio.<\/p>\n

One witness, among the crowd that gathered for this event, reported that Francis included a carved doll which cried tears of joy and \u201cseemed to be awakened from sleep when the blessed Father Francis embraced Him in both arms.\u201d <\/p>\n

This miracle of the crying doll moved all who were present, Bonaventure writes. But Francis made another miracle happen, too: The hay that the child lay in healed sick animals and protected people from disease.<\/p>\n

Nativity imagery in art<\/h2>\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Adoration of the Magi.<\/span>
\n Fra Angelico<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Nativity story continued to expand within Christian devotional culture well after Francis\u2019 death. In 1291, Pope Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope, ordered that a permanent Nativity scene be erected at Santa Maria Maggiore, the largest church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Rome. <\/p>\n

Nativity imagery dominated Renaissance art.<\/p>\n

This first living Nativity scene \u2013 which was famously depicted by Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone in the Arena Chapel of Padua, Italy \u2013 ushered in a new tradition of staging the birth of Christ. <\/p>\n

In the tondo, a circular painting of the Adoration of the Magi by 15th-century painters Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, not only are there sheep, a donkey, a cow and an ox, there is even a colorful peacock that peers over the top of the manger to catch a glimpse of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Political turn of Nativity scenes<\/h2>\n

After the birth of Jesus, King Herod, feeling as though his power was threatened by Jesus, ordered the execution of all boys under two years old. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were forced to flee to Egypt.<\/p>\n

In an acknowledgment that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees themselves, in recent years, some churches<\/a> have used their Nativity scenes as a form of political activism to comment on the need for immigrant justice. Specifically, these \u201cprotest nativities\u201d have criticized President Donald Trump\u2019s 2018 executive order on family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border. <\/p>\n

For example, in 2018, a church in Dedham, Massachusetts, placed baby Jesus, representing immigrant children, in a cage. This year, at Claremont United Methodist Church<\/a> in California, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus have all been placed in separate barbed-wire cages in their outdoor Nativity scene. <\/p>\n

These displays, which call attention to the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers, bring the Christian tradition into the 21st century.\"The<\/p>\n

Vanessa Corcoran<\/a>, Adjunct Professor of History, Academic Counselor, Georgetown University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanessa Corcoran, Georgetown University Around the Christmas season, it is common to see a display of the Nativity scene: a small manger with the baby Jesus and his family, shepherds, the three wise men believed to have visited Jesus after his birth and several barnyard animals. One might ask, what are the origins of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[2849,387,3768,7413,3205,3884,7412,6610,6168,6169],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18989,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18988\/revisions\/18989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}