The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages. Mary Dzon

that Francis would have agreed with the thirteenth-century Dominican John Balbi of Genoa, who says that there are “three reasons for the institution of images in churches. First, for the instruction of the uneducated, who seem to be taught by them as if by books. Second, so that the mystery of the Incarnation and the examples of the saints may be the more in our memory while they are daily represented to our eyes. Third, to excite the feeling of devotion, which is more efficaciously aroused by things seen than by things heard.”¹⁷⁰ Balbi’s first point reiterates the ancient view of Gregory the Great, which was repeated, more recently, by Peter Comestor, who said that pictures in churches serve, as it were, as books for the laity.¹⁷¹ Drama, as a “quick” (that is, living) book, was thought to have an even stronger impact on the imagination than a picture or a series of pictures.¹⁷²

      Scholars have often suggested that Francis’s Christmas celebration at Greccio was a popularization of the Christmas plays that had been performed in monasteries and cathedrals for at least two centuries. These plays imitated the dramatizations performed at Easter, which, as is well known, originally developed from an elaboration of the “Quem quaeretis” trope—the chanted question “Whom do you seek?” supposedly posed by an angel to the women who came to Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday morning.¹⁷³ In medieval Christmas plays, midwives ask a similar question of the shepherds or the Magi.¹⁷⁴ Such plays often involved a manger (praesepe) and an image of the Mother and Child, or just the Child, placed in or near it.¹⁷⁵ According to the fourteenth-century liturgical ordinary for the Officium Pastorum performed at the cathedral at Rouen, “a manger is to be prepared behind the altar and an image of St. Mary placed in it.” When the shepherds tell the midwives that they are in search of “the Savior Christ,” the women, “opening a curtain, show them the Child, saying: ‘The infant is here.’ ”¹⁷⁶ Although Francis may have been influenced by such plays performed in a number of monastic settings, he probably borrowed the idea of having Mass said over a manger more directly from the Christmas liturgy as it was executed at Santa Maria Maggiore. Francis certainly employed props at Greccio, but his manger scene—as far as we know—did not involve performers with scripted actions and speeches. As Erwin Rosenthal stated a number years ago: “The mise-en-scène at Greccio … cannot be called a liturgical play … but it does have in common with the ‘sacre rappresentazioni’ the intention of materializing the legend, of transposing it into living image. But,” he emphasizes, “there was no dialogue, there were no players in Greccio.”¹⁷⁷

      Let us pursue the question of Francis’s liturgical props further. According to Thomas of Celano, the saint asked for a manger (praesepe); he did not explicitly request that an image of the Christ Child (or of the Madonna and Child) be brought to the Christmas celebration. I think there are two possibilities here. First: that Francis was concerned that the participants in the Mass at Greccio recognize the Christ Child on the altar, in the Eucharistic host, and so did not actually use an effigy—a hypothesis to which I will return shortly. The second, and more likely, possibility is that when Francis asked for a praesepe he meant that an effigy of the Christ Child should be brought with a manger. But this Latin word is admittedly problematic. As Rudolph Berliner pointed out, the Latin words praesepe or praesepium literally “mean ‘a stable’ or ‘a manger.’ In this special case [of the Nativity], the words can mean the whole cave as well as only that concavity which was the actual resting place of the Child.”¹⁷⁸ Although it is possible that Francis wanted a whole stablelike cave prepared when he requested a praesepe¹⁷⁹ (the mountain in Greccio on which the event occurred is indeed rocky and cavernous),¹⁸⁰ I suspect that by using the latter word he simply meant a “manger,” probably with an effigy in it. In his account of what actually happened that Christmas at Greccio (which, significantly, he describes in the present tense, as if the event were happening anew), Thomas noted that “over the manger (supra praesepe) the solemnities of the Mass are celebrated.”¹⁸¹ “Praesepe” here obviously means “feeding bin,” above (or perhaps near) which was placed a portable altar of some sort, since the Mass took place outdoors.¹⁸² Thomas describes the setting as a forest (silva), which would have been able to accommodate a large number of people, who might have gathered around an outdoor grotto. As we shall see, this rustic setting is important because it enabled people, animals, and even the natural surroundings to participate in the joyful re-presentation of the Savior’s birth.

      The early artistic representations of the Mass of Greccio, which vary in detail, do not provide a definitive answer to the question of the actual furniture and accessory props used on this occasion (or the precise setting), nor do they help much in determining if some kind of Christ-Child statue was used. In the scene that depicts the Greccio episode in the Bardi Dossal (ca. 1245), in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, we see a priest at an altar and, in front of it, a swaddled infant Jesus lying upon a rocky mound.¹⁸³ In the fresco (s. XIV/XV) depicting the Greccio episode in the Chiesa di San Francesco in Pistoia, we see a box-like manger placed next to an altar, both of which are underneath a simple wooden structure surrounded by a leafy setting.¹⁸⁴ In a number of images, the Mass occurs within a church, as in the “Miracle of the Crib at Greccio” fresco in the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi, which probably depicts the annual commemoration of the Greccio Mass in the Lower Church, rather than the historical event itself (fig. 10).¹⁸⁵ My concern, though, is not so much with the setting of the event, but rather with the question of whether Francis used an effigy of the Christ Child in that liturgical celebration. All of the surviving depictions of Greccio show a swaddled baby, either lying in the manger or being embraced by Francis hovering over it.

      After calling attention to the saint’s preaching about the Christ Child’s poverty, both Thomas and Bonaventure speak of the sudden appearance of “a little child lying lifeless in the manger,” whom Francis “approach[ed] and waken[ed] … from a deep sleep.” Bonaventure adds that the child was “beautiful” and that Francis “embraced” it.¹⁸⁶ While both authors certainly imply that the child was Jesus, they speak about the boy in vague terms. This can be considered analogous to the way in which the Christ Child is spoken about in other hagiographical texts that recount how he unexpectedly appeared to someone, often to a holy person as a reward or to provide some consolation. For example, in the Life of St. Dorothy (appended to the Legenda aurea), right before the virgin is beheaded, a mysterious child appears to her, “dressed in purple, barefooted, with curly hair, with stars on his garment, bearing in his hand … a little basket, with three roses and as many apples.”¹⁸⁷ The beauty of the Child who mysteriously appears to a holy person usually reveals who he is (both to the saint and to the reader), and it is in this sense that we should understand Bonaventure’s remark that John of Greccio saw a “puerulus quidam valde formosus” (literally, “a certain very beautiful little boy”).¹⁸⁸ Both Thomas and Bonaventure indicate that only one of the bystanders saw the lovely child who suddenly appeared (Thomas omits the beholder’s name). The other participants’ lack of awareness of the miracle may symbolize their spiritual tepidity, but it may also be a way for the authors to indicate the special holiness of the beholder John—his being granted a special, mystical privilege to share in Francis’s intimacy with the baby Jesus. Thomas explicitly offers a symbolic interpretation of this apparition: the boy’s sleeping represents the lamentable fact that “in the hearts of many,” the Child had “been given over to oblivion.” Francis woke him as he lay dormant in the participants’ hearts, and impressed him upon their memory.¹⁸⁹ Bonaventure concurs, adding that “the truth [that the miracle] expresses proves its validity.”¹⁹⁰ Thus, both hagiographers credit Francis with reinvigorating people’s devotion to the Christ Child at Greccio. Whether he actually did this for European Christians in general is debatable, but given the tremendous influence wielded by the friars in the later Middle Ages, as well as Francis’s undeniable and very dramatic devotion to the Nativity, it seems fair to surmise that the increasing attention given to the Christ Child at that time was owing, to a large extent, to the charisma and impact of St. Francis of Assisi.

Figure 10. The Celebration