Francis’s overall approach to the Nativity, which is simultaneously rustic and mystical, should be kept in mind when trying to understand the attention he gives to the ox and the ass at Greccio and his wish, expressed on another occasion, that these beasts be given double fodder on Christmas.227 Scripture does not mention the presence of these animals at the manger, but the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew does, going so far as to describe how they bent their knees and adored the Infant who had been placed in their feeding bin,228 after the Holy Family had moved from the cave to the stable on the third day after Jesus’ birth. The anonymous author of that apocryphal text was by no means the first Christian to link Luke’s mention of the manger with Isaiah’s statement (Isa. 1:3) that “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib (praesepe domini sui).”229 Early exegetes had already interpreted this passage as a prophecy of Christ’s Nativity, typically seeing the ox as the Jews, chained to the law, and the ass as the Gentiles (pagans), who bore the burden of idolatry.230 Artistic representations of the Nativity rendered the passage from Isaiah literally,231 which had the effect of lodging the presence of these two animals at Christ’s manger even further in the popular imagination. René Grousset claims that the ox and the ass gradually lost their symbolic meaning,232 but it is not self-evident that literal and metaphorical views of the beasts could not coexist in the mind of the same person (or within the culture at large), at the same time. For Francis, the beasts around the baby Jesus were probably both reverent, rustic animals, as well as symbols of humans who were meant to feast on the bread that had come down from heaven at Christmas and is present at every Mass.
I wish to close this section by responding to two insightful scholarly treatments of the Greccio episode, which I have already mentioned in passing. Chiara Frugoni, who offers an ecumenical reading of the scene at Greccio, bases the crux of her argument on Francis’s inclusion of the ox and the ass, which, for her, represent the peaceful coming together of Christians and non-Christians (particularly Muslims).233 Frugoni notes that the Greccio incident took place shortly after the approval of the modified Rule of St. Francis (the Regula bullata), which eliminated Francis’s earlier instructions for dealing with the Saracens. In chapter 16 of the earlier Rule, Francis had suggested two approaches: one more ecumenical (the friars could live peacefully among the Saracens and other unbelievers, subject to their authority), and the other more directly missionary (they could preach the Gospel openly).234 Lamenting that these options (particularly the first) were removed from the later Rule, Frugoni claims that Francis erected the Christmas manger to encourage his fellow Christians to heed the message of peace delivered by the angels to the shepherds at Christ’s birth (Lk. 2:14, a biblical passage which Francis, judging from his own writings and from his devotional performativity described in the early legends, does not seem to have emphasized at Christmastime).235 The Christmas Mass at Greccio, from this perspective, was a protest against the Church-sponsored warfare of the Crusades, which were proving to be a failure by that time.236 Though Frugoni’s historical and ideological contextualization of the Greccio episode is illuminating, her insistence upon the connection between this event and Francis’s concern about inter-faith relations seems reductionistic. Moreover, while Francis’s bleating at Greccio would have made his audience think of a lamb, we actually do not know if he explicitly referred to the ox and the ass (let alone the message of the angels to the shepherds) in his sermon—and it is on the symbolism of these latter animals that Frugoni’s argument is based.
Lisa Kiser, for her part, considers Francis’s emphasis upon the ox and the ass in light of his well-known love of nature.237 She argues that the novelty of the Greccio incident was that Francis had real, live animals brought to the (para)liturgical performance centered around the manger. The wording of Francis’s instructions, which John of Greccio faithfully carried out, supports this view: “the manger is prepared, the hay is carried in, and the ox and the ass are led (adducuntur) to the spot.” Although Kiser emphasizes Francis’s inclusion of real animals at Greccio, she does not focus on the ox and the ass qua animals, but rather as representatives of the working classes who habitually employed them to help carry out their work. In my view, while there is certainly basis for associating Francis with ecumenism, environmentalism, and contemporary efforts to promote social justice, it would be misleading to ignore or seriously downplay the saint’s devotional aims in orchestrating the Mass under the stars at Greccio. His main goals were, in all probability, to inculcate a more tender devotion to the child Jesus and to remind his fellow friars and the laity of Jesus’ swaddled presence, so to speak, in the consecrated host.
Michael Robson captures a key element of the Greccio incident, which is easy for us to lose sight of, due to our familiarity with the story: Francis “wished to share with others his own sense of wonder. He was impelled to communicate to them the riches he had unearthed in the Gospel.”238 The newness of Greccio, in the most important sense, consisted in the participants’ experience of wonder, which Francis, like a child, seems to have possessed in great abundance and been able to share with others. As a cleric with an intuitive pastoral sensibility, Francis devised a plan for spreading his own enthusiasm for the Nativity, recognizing the impact that a multimedia presentation of a touching Gospel story would have upon ordinary people. Thomas of Celano conveys a sense of the excitement experienced by the participants when he says that they were delighted by the brightness of candles and torches that lit up the night, and “ecstatic at this new mystery of new joy.”239 The event at Greccio entailed not only an eye-catching spectacle, but also loud sounds: the singing of God’s praises, which, mixed with animals’ utterances, reverberated against the boulders, so that all of nature seemed to rejoice in the Nativity, just as it sorrowed at the Passion.240 In the previous century, Aelred of Rievaulx had expressed disapproval of elaborate singing at Mass.241 He lamented that a practice that was “instituted to awaken the weak to the attachment of devotion” had the effect of causing people to lose a sense of the sacred—to fail “to honor that mystical crib … where Christ is mystically wrapped in swaddling clothes, where his most sacred blood is poured out in the chalice.”242 Francis of Assisi, in contrast, seized the opportunity to embellish the liturgy with sights and sounds (and even smells), which would catch people’s attention and make an annual feast seem like a “new mystery”—without apparently worrying that the engagement of the senses would detract from the Real Presence. In the broadest sense, the “novelty” of the event at Greccio, which both Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure underscore, was the combination of the tangible and the everyday, with the mystical and the sacred. In my reading of the episode, Francis emphasized both the actual conditions of Christ’s Nativity, as it occurred hundreds of years ago, and the repeated sacramental embodiment of Christ upon the altar of every church.
The Meek and Ordinary, Though Peculiar Christ Child of the Meditationes vitae Christi
Francis of Assisi was so intensely focused on the Nativity and Passion of Christ—the central events of the Gospel—and the Lord’s enduring presence in the Eucharist that he might not have speculated much, if at all, on what Jesus did during the so-called “hidden years” of his childhood and adolescence. But, hypothetically speaking, if Francis had wondered about Christ’s “hidden years,” he would probably have reflected on the hardships that that phase of his life entailed and the virtues, such as humility, that Christ manifested at that time. Before moving on to consider, in the next chapter, the apocryphal portrayal of Jesus as a boy who displays his wisdom and power so dramatically that he calls much attention to himself, I will close this chapter by discussing the main features of the treatment of Jesus’ early life in the Meditationes vitae Christi, a Franciscan text I have already mentioned.243 The anonymous author of this popular devotional text owes much to Francis of Assisi and probably also to Aelred of Rievaulx, as regards the virtues of Christ he emphasizes, and the types of responses he hopes to elicit, when recounting the infancy and childhood of Christ. Although the Meditationes vitae Christi was not the only extensive treatment of Jesus’ youth in the later Middle