an effigy of the Christ Child present at the celebration. By proceeding to list the manger, the beasts, and the hay (foenum), Thomas implies that all of these things made the Nativity an unpleasant, if not a painful, experience for the baby Jesus. Francis’s frequent practice of refusing “straw mattresses and blankets” and instead, sleeping naked on the “naked ground,” sometimes making use of “a stone or a piece of wood as his pillow,”201 may very well have been an attempt, on his part, to imitate the infant Jesus, who had nowhere (suitable) to lay his head (Lk. 9:58). Emphasizing the Christ Child’s uncomfortable place of repose along similar lines, the author of the Meditationes vitae Christi encourages the reader to imagine Mary “plac[ing Jesus] in the manger” and positioning “his head on a small stone with perhaps just a little straw (feno) in between.”202 In setting up the manger at Greccio, Francis might have thought that the hay provided a little, though not sufficient, padding for the baby Jesus; perhaps he also regarded the hay as scratchy and irritating to the Infant’s bare skin. Such a view is expressed in a fourteenth-century German Sister-Book, which recounts how a nun had a vision of “the Christ Child lying before the altar on stiff hay, which pricked his tender body so that it had red furrows.”203 The ox and ass were likewise regarded as indications of the Christ Child’s early suffering. The author of the Meditationes vitae Christi (likely taking a cue from Pseudo-Matthew)204 claims that the beasts “knelt, positioned their mouths over the manger and through their nostrils breathed down on him, almost as if they had reason to believe that a child so scantily covered would need warmth in a time of such intense cold.”205 By creating such wintry weather as the setting for the Nativity, the author of the Meditationes suggests that the Babe’s paltry swaddling clothes must not have done much to alleviate his discomfort. The harshness of the conditions in which Christ was born is stressed to an even greater extent by the fourteenth-century Franciscan Bartholomew of Pisa, who, like Francis, emphasizes that the baby Jesus, the Lord of the whole world, chose not to luxuriate in the lap of luxury or bask in magnificence but to suffer in the freezing cold.
Who, I ask, could keep from weeping … to see with the eyes of the mind the child Jesus, most noble, most beautiful and the very little king of all and the Lord crying out at his birth, wracked with cold, nakedness, and the unsuitableness of the place, and want of all things. For who is Jesus? Is he not the prince of peace, leader and lawgiver, king of kings … and emperor of heaven and earth? … Why therefore does the stony heart not have compassion on that little Jesus? … But since it was a time of great coldness, with what clothes was he covered up? Not, I say, those of great price but cheap and modest ones; he who clothes the whole world with variegated decoration is wrapped up with base clothes.206
To return to Francis’s representation of the infant Jesus’ discomforts: what do the earliest sources claim that Francis did and said at the celebration of Christmas held at Greccio, apart from hugging the baby Jesus? As Chiara Frugoni has remarked, we unfortunately lack a transcript of the sermon that Francis preached at this Mass, yet we can speculate about what he said, based on Thomas of Celano’s comments in this chapter. After noting that the props Francis had requested were duly brought in, Thomas remarks (probably echoing the saint’s expression of pleasure at a job well done): “There simplicity is given a place of honor, poverty is exalted, humility is commended, and out of Greccio is made a new Bethlehem.”207 While the first part of this statement speaks of God’s condescension at the Nativity and the virtues modeled by the infant Christ, the latter part references both the dramatic commemoration of the Nativity as a historical event, and its mystical recurrence in the Mass. Thomas uses another rhetorical paradox when he claims that Francis, in his role of deacon, preached about “the birth of the poor king in the poor city of Bethlehem.” Thomas here is likely summarizing at least part of the saint’s sermon; the phrase “poor king,” in particular, sounds like something Francis would say, judging from other statements attributed to him in early hagiographical writings. Recall how (according to the Vita secunda) Francis once sat on the bare floor and was “bathed in tears” when he heard about the “royal virtue” of the Christ Child and his mother—their embrace of poverty.208 At Greccio, Francis may very well have stressed this virtue out of the three that Thomas mentions (simplicity, poverty, and humility). Elsewhere, Thomas tells us why Francis liked Greccio so much: its inhabitants were “rich in poverty.”209 So poverty was clearly uppermost in Francis’s mind on Christmas Eve in Greccio.
Although Thomas does not explicitly say that Francis cried on that occasion, he calls attention to the saint’s intense emotionality when he says that he stood “before the manger, filled with heartfelt sighs.” He was no doubt thinking about the Babe’s poverty, and likely reflected on his pitiful swaddling clothes, as well as his makeshift crib.210 In his account of this episode, Bonaventure, in comparison to Thomas of Celano, places greater emphasis upon Francis’s emotional response, specifically by saying that he was “bathed in tears,” a phrase which echoes the aforementioned passage from the Vita secunda.211 Along similar lines, in his Liber miraculorum, the Cluniac abbot Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), noted that “it is the custom of the same monastery [that is, Cluny] to celebrate the birthday of the Savior with a certain singular affection, more devotedly than other feast-days, and to solemnize it earnestly with the spirits of the angels, by means of the melodies of songs, lengthy readings, the burning of many sorts of candles, and—what is far more remarkable—with special devotion and much shedding of tears.”212 Although Francis was by no means the inventor of the Christmas Eve celebration, of the manger as a paraliturgical object,213 or of compassion for the sufferings of the lowly Christ Child,214 he breathed new life into the feast of the Nativity by emphasizing realistic details surrounding Christ’s birth, particularly the manger. He was also one of the first medieval Christians to manifest publicly and intentionally a tender sensibility for the Infant’s bodily sufferings and to encourage others to experience feelings of compassion as well as joyful gratitude for the Incarnation. Thus, in my view, it is fair to say that “compassion for the suffering Savior”—in both his infancy and at his Passion—“was given an archetypal expression in Francis and through him was channeled into Western devotion, art, and culture as a whole.”215
During his sermon, Francis manifests his “sweet affection” for the Child by his inability to utter the word “Bethlehem” without bleating like a sheep. Thomas says that he tasted the words “Jesus” and “babe of Bethlehem,” savoring their sweetness.216 Such gustatory imagery expresses the intensity of the saint’s loving meditation on Christ’s infancy, his experience of its immediacy, and his desire for union with the tender lamblike babe of Bethlehem, not to mention his devotion to the name of Jesus.217 Anna Vorchtlin, a nun at Engelthal, expressed this sentiment, but with more gusto, when she told the baby Jesus, whom she saw in a vision, “If I had you, I would eat you up, I love you so much!”218 Perhaps Francis’s indulgence in mystical sweetness compensated for the sorrow he experienced on this occasion when he recollected the sufferings that attended Christ’s birth.
Besides expressing his love for the infant Jesus and speaking of the incommodious conditions of his Nativity, Francis, by both his words and actions, likely reminded his audience of the presence of the Christ Child in the consecrated host. Indeed, by licking his lips, the saint may be manifesting his spiritual appetite for this heavenly food.219 In one of his “Admonitions” (which I have already mentioned), Francis emphasizes the importance of Christians seeing God in the Eucharist with their spiritual eyes. Just as, at Greccio, the bystanders (with the exception of John and Francis) were unable to see Jesus in the manger, so they, like the other participants at Mass, were unable to see Christ, in his human form, on the altar. Might Francis, during his sermon, have pointed to the manger under (or next to) the altar, telling his listeners that they would soon see, in the hands of the priest, the same child who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in the manger in Bethlehem hundreds of years ago? Perhaps he expressed, in simple terms, the metaphor that the early Cistercian Guerric of Igny (and others) had enunciated: that the sacramental species of bread and wine covered the divinity, as the swaddling bands enveloped the Christ Child.220
