fter
the general chapter for the Whitsunday in 1223 St. Francis
spoke to the Pope Onorius III making two requests. The affirmative
answers to both questions changed the history of popular spirituality
and religiosity. (1). He first gave the Pope
the final Rule to be approved, a text the Saint had written
during this chapter. The text was therefore endorsed on 29th
November. Thanks to this approval St. Francis and his Friars
could go on working with the Pope’s authority too. The
second request concerned the solemn celebration which Francis,
“egregius artifex” as well as “liber ingenio”
(2), wanted to do on the occasion of the
Christmas celebration. Amongst his biographers, only Bonaventura
di Bagnoreggio writes about this second request (3).
THE POPE ONORIUS III SUPPORTS THE CRIB IN GRECCIO
Francis informed the Pope, asking him for the
approval of this Christmas celebration, maybe because he did
not want to represent the Christmas scene in the traditional
way, i.e. putting all the characters together, just like in
the old sculptures, or paintings, (a tradition which already
existed since the early Christian times) (4).
In 1207 the Pope Innocenzo III criticized the liturgical plays
of the “Officium pastorum”, denouncing the presence
of some unworthy players, and an excessive dramatic style
(5). Disapprovals coming from several religious
people induced him to speak against this use. But Francis
did not dislike this kind of dramatic liturgical plays, provided
that the show didn’t have to offend the devotion. (6)
During the above mentioned chapter, at the presence of the
Cardinal Ugolino dei Conti di Segni, a Franciscan protector,
Francis said that he did not want his friars to act like monks.
Christmas of 1223 was therefore a good chance for him to reassert
that he did not want to celebrate the liturgical mystery in
a cold, detached, way. The traditional way was actually not
very fascinating for the people, on one hand because Latin
language was still in use and on the other hand because the
celebration was basically dedicated to the priests and the
religious men. This is what Francis said: “They [i.e.
his Friars] should serve the divine office with devotion,
and they don’t have to mind the melody of their voices,
nor the sweet songs to sing” (7). We
should therefore remember that the famous religious “Lauda”
in vernacular Italian language became world famous thanks
to the “ignorant and uneducated Francis”. He is
actually one of the most important personalities who got interested
in the popular devotional songs (the Laude) during the 13th
century (9). The charming style of these
performances did not disturb, nor hurt the popular devotion,
and Francis proved it exactly during that Christmas in Greccio.
This is his biographer’s report: “The Saint of
God stands in front of the crib, sighing, full of devotion
and joy. Then a solemn mass is celebrated by the crib, with
a priest and Francis dressed up like a Deacon, for he was
a deacon indeed, and he sings the Gospel, with his charming,
loud voice and he sweetly praises for all the people. He tells
about the poor King’s birth in Bethlehem, and when he
says this name, he imitates a sheep’s bleating, filling
his mouth with loud voice and affection. And when he mentions
‘the child from Bethlehem’ or ‘Jesus’
his tongue touches the lips, as if he was enjoying the sweetness
of the words” (10).
GRECCIO: A CRIB WITHOUT REPEAT PERFORMANCES
St. Francis did not repeat the crib in Greccio
anymore, since it was mainly a solemn mass. We must not forget
it, if we want to tell the truth about this legendary (and
literary as well as iconographic) event. When Francis asked
the Pope to endorse his crib he also meant that the Holy Communion
should have been celebrated on a moveable altar, being this
an “open air” celebration, and not in a usual
church, nor in a chapel (11). Francis told
the Pope, that he also wanted to attend the Holy mass as a
deacon, in order to sing the Gospel and to comment on it,
the way he usually did. Francis was therefore a kind of minstrel,
or a mime more than a singing clergyman (12).
Francis was aware that, as a deacon, he was going to be a
sort of intermediary between priest and noble or common people
(13).
Francis’ request was also made in order to favour the
popular participation in Greccio. He wanted Greccio to be
“a new Bethlehem” (according to his biographer,
Tommaso da Celano). He wanted to recall Jesus’ mystery
more than a performance. “Men and women joyfully prepared
lights and torches for the night when the star lit up for
the rest of the days. Some people prepared the crib; others
brought hay or cared about the ass and the ox.” (14).
The celebrating clergymen, men and women, young and old people
represented Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, and the three wise
Men. Francis taught everybody, following the New Testament
(Mt 23,37; Gal 4,19) and the Patristic Tradition (Origenes)
to be “the Lord’s mother”: “Let’s
be his mothers, when we bring him inside of us, with love,
and when we give birth to him, with our saint works”
(15).
Here we can appreciate St. Francis’ pastoral boldness:
actually he informed Onorius III about the enterprise he was
going to do, in order to protect himself against any possible
charge of being too innovative in the liturgy. According to
Bonaventura di Bagnoreggio Francis told everybody about the
Pope’s approval just because he was afraid of being
considered an anarchist. In the source we can read: “Since
Francis did not want his crib to be just “something
new” he asked for the Pope’s approval, and then
he prepared the cattle shed and brought there some hay, with
an ox and an ass” (16).
CHRISTMAS: A CELEBRATION OF UNIVERSAL
BROTHERHOOD
The “Holy Mass – crib” in
Greccio should have been a joyful feast, a sort of universal
celebration of brotherhood. A feast in the name of the One
the Virgin Mary made “Lord of the Majesty, our Brother”
(17). This Mass is the liturgical –
spectacular translation of one of St. Francis’ teachings.
Tommaso da Celano writes: “In that night men and animals
became true friends” (18). The so called
“universal brotherhood in the name of Jesus Christ,
first brother of every creature” (Col 1,15) is Francis’
leading and most universal idea. We can see the fulfilment
of such a brotherhood just in this crib in Greccio, even more
than in his “Canticle of brother Sun”, because
Francis does not mention any animal in the canticle (or not
directly anyway…), while in the celebration by Greccio
even the night and the landscape by Rieti are real characters
of the play. “The wood resounds with voices and merry
choirs echo with the stones. All the friars sing songs for
the Lord, and the night itself seems to be joyful” (19).
Francis’ celebration seems to fascinate time and space,
in the name of God, who created the earth and made the history
come true.
Everybody had to participate in the joyful Christmas celebration:
men, walls, animals. “On one day the friars were talking
about the prohibition to eat meat, since Christmas was on
a Friday (“Dies Veneris!”). Francis answered to
Brother Morico: “You make a mistake Brother, if you
call Friday the day the Holy Child was born. On a day like
this I want everybody to eat meat; even the walls should do
it, and if this is impossible, let them be spread with meat!
On that day He wanted all the poor people and the beggars
to eat like the rich men, and oxen, as well as asses, had
to get a bigger ration of hay” (20).
Francis’ unusual hyperbolic behaviour (he actually promoted
a sort of “Pascha Nativitatis”) was perhaps addressed
against the Augustinian depreciation of Christmas; St. Augustine
believed indeed that Christmas was a celebration out of the
Sacrament (while Easter was inside of it), a sort of celebration
“in memory of” (like a birthday) (21).
When, later on, the Saint’s friars found a theological
category for Christmas, they described the mystery of incarnation
as “summus opus Dei”. Pope Onorius’ approval
legitimised the new liturgical event, as well as the biblical
– theological reasons of it, the idea St. Francis “novus
Evangelist” founded his creation on. (22).
LOOKING BACK ON GRECCIO’S CRIB
Francis’ emotional and friendly nature
was the best condition for him to materialize the sacred images.
“Mens in carne patuit”, this is what Tommaso da
Celano (23) said, when he talked about Francis’
participation in the Lord’s pains. This description
can also be used to explain his love for the daily Holy Communion,
as well as for his will to stage Jesus’ birth. Using
Celano’s words: “If I think of God’s son
in this world, I see nothing but his holy body and the blood
during the sacrament on the altar” and: “I’d
like to stage Jesus child born in Bethlehem, and somehow I’d
like to see with my eyes the troubles he had, as he was put
in a crib, on hay between the ox and the ass” (24).
The mystery of incarnation and the Eucharist correspond: “Every
day our Lord Jesus humbles himself, the way he did when he
came down from his royal heaven to the Virgin’s womb;
he still comes to us humbly, every single day, coming down
from his Father’s lap onto the altar, into the priest’s
hands” (25) The liturgist Valfrido
Strabone (11th century) wrote these lines talking about the
“Officium Pastorum”: “Jesus’ body
is put in a crib, i.e. on the altar” (26).
Francis might have seen the typical Christmas iconography,
event though some historians do not agree with the real presence
of a plastic Jesus figure in Grecio.
If we think of the medieval common desire to see the consecrated
Host, we should assume that such a statuette was not really
present in the crib. Anyway, some following authors write
about this statue, and assert that Francis himself saw it,
while the first biographers only write about Giovanni Velita’s
symbolic figure (a friend of Francis’ who was charged
with the scenes of the Holy Mass) (27). The
traditional vision of Jesus Child waking up was therefore
just a symbol of Francis’ 20 years long apostolate,
the years he spent
bringing the popular devotion for Christmas back to his people.
All the historians are in agreement when they say that no
one else but Francis succeeded in bringing Jesus’ figure
as a contemporary man to his generation (28).
Francis plays a very important role in the early religious
theatre (as well as in the renaissance of popular piety) too,
at the beginning of the second millennium, in the western
world (29). His contribution to the new religious
culture, passing from a feudal to a communal system, from
a Byzantine/Greek to a Renaissance/Latin world is certainly
very important. He chose the expression “descensus Dei”
against the traditional “Ascensus Dei”, and we
must remember this, if we want to understand this epoch-making
turning point. The Christian liturgy inspired by the hermits’
spirituality (the so called “fuga mundi”) regards
the Ascension as the “Festa Dies”: i.e. the Feast
of the feasts! (30). Francis proposed a new
way to celebrate Christmas: “He [Francis] celebrated
Christmas very carefully, calling it the Feast of the feasts
(Festa dies), the day our Lord sucked his mother’s milk
like any other baby” (31). Nobody ever
doubted his orthodoxy (Francis was therefore called “vir
catholicus et totus apostolicus”). During the Christmas
celebration Francis used the typical antiphon still used today
for the Resurrection and the Ascension Day, connecting this
way the beginning and the end of the Holy Mystery (J. 8,12):
“This is the day the Lord made: let us exult and rejoice
this day” (psalm 117, 24) (32). In
the same Christmas Psalm Francis explains that the body born
on Christmas day will be the one sacrificed on the Good Friday:
“Offer your lives and bring his holy cross on you”.
Anyway it is not surprising that Francis mentions the sacrifice
and the cross during his Christmas celebration. The 25th of
March, the day celebrating the word of God, the real beginning
of the Christian calendar, was called Dies Mysteriosum! The
streets leading to Christmas are as full of blood as the ones
leading to the day of his death in Jerusalem! The mystery
of incarnation, as any other Christian mystery, doesn’t
have to be celebrated like a simple episode of the past, but
it must be revived today and for ever again.
PEDAGOGY AND MERCY IN THE FRANCISCAN CRIB
Even if our present day cribs (living or not,
mechanical or fixed) do not look very much like the one in
Greccio, a unique event in the history of Christmas celebrations,
they can recall the same religious, anthropologic and ecologic
values which were to be found St. Francis’ dramatic
and liturgical play, he was actually “one of the most
important educator of the European spirits. (33).
PASQUALE MAGRO, ofm conv.
Notes:
1- E. AUERBACH: "I tried to show (as
well as many other authors) how important St. Francis was
to renovate the fantasy, and this is well known among the
art historians” (Studi su Dante, Milano 1971, p. 25).
2- TOMMASO DA CELANO, Vita Prima di San Francesco
d'Assisi (from now on: I or II CELANO), in AA.VV. (organized
by), Fonti Francescane (from now on: FF), Assisi 1978, pp.
442 e 476.
3- BONAVENTURA DA BAGNOREGIO, Leggenda Maggiore
(from now on: LM), chap. X, 7; FF, p. 924. “Francis
was a man of true evangelisation, strong of the Pope’s
authority” (Leggenda dei tre compagni, 54; FF, p. 1106).
4- H. GRISAR, Archeologia del presepio in
Roma (V-XVI secolo), in "Civiltà Cattolica”,
59 (1908) 702-9; AA. VV., voce: Presepio, in Enciclopedia
Cattolica, Città dei Vaticano, 1952, IV, 1971-3.
5- A. POTTHAST, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum,
Berlin 1874, ad annum 1207 (8 gennaio), p. 253.
6- “Ad excitandam devotionem".
Accordino to Bonaventura this is the way Francis justified
the crib in Greccio (LM). M. APOLLONIO writes: “The
vernacular edifying daramaturgy was under the direct influence
of the Franciscan movement, and of Francis himself, with the
beginning of the Lauda and the foundation of the crib in Greccio
" (voce: Teatro, in Enciclopedia Cattolica, citata, XI,
p. 1831?3).
7- SAN FRANCESCO, Lettera al Capitolo generale,
6,52; FF, p. 166.
8- Ivi, 5,50; p. 165.
9- E. DELARUELLE, L'influenza di San Francesco
sulla pietà popolare, in AA.VV., Atti del X Congresso
Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, Firenze 1955, pp. 449-466;
R. MANSELLI, Il soprannaturale e la religione popolare nel
Medioevo, Roma 1985, passim.
10- I CELANO 86; FF p. 478. Vedi A. MANCINI,
Francesco nella lauda e nella sacra rappresentazione, in AA.
VV., Il Francescanesimo e il Teatro medievale, Atti del Convegno
Nazionale di Studi, San Miniato, 8-10 ottobre 1982, Castelfiorentino,
1984, pp. 135 e ss.
11- The privilegi Francis got on Christmas
1223 will be very important in order to have a portable alatr
in 1227 (Gregorio IX, "Quia populares", Archivio
del Sacro Convento, Bollario, I/4).
12- Tommaso da Spalato, an eye witness of
Francis’ presches in Bologna (1222) says that Francis
did not ptrach the way the priests did. (FF, p. 1932). Ma
vedi: B. LUISELLI, Omelia e dramma sacro, in AA.VV., Dimensioni
drammatiche della Liturgia medievale, (Atti del Convegno di
Viterbo, 31.V-2.VI. 1976), Città di Castello 1977,
pp. 217 e ss.
13- "It’s meaningfull that Francis
was populary considered as "alter Christus", creating
a new agiografy just for him. " (MANSELLI, Il soprannaturale,
opera citata, p. 40).
14- I CELANO 85; FF, p. 478.
15- Lettera a tutti i fedeli, 9,53; FF, p.
155. Cf. H. RAHNER, L'Ecclesiologia dei Padri, Roma 1971,
pp. 37, 15 e ss.
16- LM X, 7; FF p. 924. It is important to
remember that Bonaventura writes about the crib in Greccio
in his chapter dedicated to the prayer ("De studio et
virtute orationis"). Francis often mentions animals in
his prayers. He knows very well Apocalypse 5,13: “May
every creature in the sky, on earth, in the sea glorify the
Lord, honouring and blessing him” (Lettera a tutti i
fedeli, 10,61; FF, p. 156; Lodi per ogni ora. 7; FF, p.179.
17- II CELANO, 198; FF, p. 711. St. Francis
often calls Jesus “brother”. See his Letter to
all the believers, 9,556, where the expression “To have
a brother” is followed by eight adjectives: saint, dear,
nice, humble, peaceful, sweet, lovely and above all desirable.
(FF p. 155). The Benedictine monks considered instead the
liturgy as “Opus Dei” par excellence, and its
ascetic way of life had been inspired by the “fuga mundi”,
its centre was therefore the divine nature of Christ, stressing
his transcendent majesty. In the Benedictine Rule we never
find the word Jesus (…) St. Benedict never spoke about
Christ considering him ‘Jesus, our Brother’. He
often calls him Dominus or Christ” (Cf. J. LECLERCQ,
La contemplazione di Cristo nel monachesimo medievale, Milano
1994, pp. 71-76). See also P. MAGRO, Maria Dominum maiestatis
fratrem nobis effecit. The relationship between Francis and
the Holy Virgin in Tommaso da Celano, in AA.VV., Frate Tommaso
da Celano storico e santo, (Atti di Convegno, 1994), Tagliacozzo
1995, pp. 104-105;
18- I CELANO 85; FF, p. 478 e ivi, 77; FF,
p. 472. Scrive A. VETTORI: The Franciscan peculiarity which
wanted to link every creature to a familiar bound in order
to stress – maybe for the first time in the Christian
tradition – the new state of salvation got through the
Incarnation. Thanks to the common Communion with Christ, the
‘alter christus’, Francis was able to see the
nature in its original purity, passed through the Christian
redemption” (L'armonia ricreata: le fonti bibliche del
Cantico francescano, in "Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi",
XI/1 (1994) 192-93).
19- I CELANO 85; FF, p. 478.
20- II CELANO 199; FF, p. 712.
21- A. BERGAMINI, Cristo Festa della Chiesa,
Roma 19833, p. 344.
22- I CELANO 89; FF, p. 482
23- III CELANO, 2; FF, 739.
24- In: Testamento, 12; FF, 131 e I CELANO
84; FF, p. 477.
25- Ammonizione I,16; FF, p. 138.
26- Glossa ordinaria, ad Lucam 2,7.
27- We can read in a very popular Franciscan
biography: “On a blank page Francis saw a white baby,
cold as a dead corpse. He took him in his hands, keeping him
close to the earth, warming him like a father, so the baby
felt him, opened his eyes, and touched with his small hands
Francis’ pale face.” (M. STICCO, San Francesco
d'Assisi, Milano 196316, p. 256).
28- Cf. P. CODA-J. CASTELLANO CERVERA, La
comprensione di Cristo nella Teologia e nella Spiritualità
dei Medioevo e dell'epoca moderna, in AA.VV., Gesù
Cristo, Roma 1982, pp. 185ss.
29- Vedi, tra l'altro, E. ROSENTHAL, The
crib of Greccio and Franciscan Realism, in "Art Bulletin",
36 (1954) 57ss; J.H. STUBBLEBINE, Assisi and the Rise of Vernacular
Art, New York, 1985; G. HOLMES, Florence, Rome and the origins
of the Renaissance, Oxford 1986, pp. 45-69 ("Religion:
the Model of Francis of Assisi”).
30- J. LECLERCO, La liturgia e i paradossi
cristiani, Milano 1967, p. 29.
31- II CELANO 199; FF, p. 711.
32- Salmo per Natale, 6; FF, p. 199.
33- M. SCHELER, Essenza e forme della Simpatia,
Roma 1980, p. 15
