by bleating reveals, in a charming manner, his love of animals (lambs were definitely his favorite),221 he probably intended it as an imaginative cue that would prompt his audience to think of the Lamb of God who was sacrificed at the Passion (cf. Isa. 53:7), and still offered up by the priest at the altar at every Mass. The fresco depicting the Mass at Greccio in the Upper Church in Assisi may in fact represent the very moment in the liturgy when, at the beginning of the canon of the Mass, the choir chants the “Agnus Dei.” Like a snapshot, the scene captures a small number of friars singing, with opened mouths, as the priest bends over the host at the altar. Perhaps, though, the scene represents Francis seizing the baby Jesus at the very moment when the priest consecrates the host, which shortly thereafter would be elevated for adoration and viewing, with the priest saying: “Ecce Agnus Dei.” This could possibly explain why no one in the fresco (and all but one person in the written sources) seems to notice Francis’s encounter with the baby Jesus: while Francis holds the Lamb of God in his infant form, the other participants are about to behold Christ hidden under the Eucharistic species.222 At the end of the chapter, Thomas reintroduces the image of the lamb when he notes that a permanent altar was built over the manger and a church around it, “so that where animals once ate the fodder of hay (foeni pabulum), there humans … would eat the flesh of the immaculate and spotless lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ‘gave himself for us.’ ” Thomas here cites Paul’s letter to Titus (2:14), where he speaks of Christ’s giving of himself “for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity,” but he also echoes Isaiah 9:6 (“A child is born to us, and a son is given to us”), which, for Francis, as we have seen, powerfully encapsulates God’s loving plan for the redemption of the human race.
Now that we have considered how some of Francis’s earliest followers viewed his devotion to the Christ Child, it is worth reflecting on how this devotion of the saint tends to be viewed more generally and popularly. In an essay on the Old English poem Christ III, the Anglo-Saxonist scholar Thomas D. Hill contrasts the “dark” Anglo-Saxon view of the Nativity with the modern-day festive attitude toward Christmas, which he traces back to St. Francis of Assisi.223 Contextualizing the Old English poem within early medieval culture, as well as viewing it within the development of Christian piety over the centuries, Hill connects the Anglo-Saxon poet’s presentation of the infant Christ as “covered in a pauper’s clothes” and “laid … in the darkness … on a hard stone” with contemporary iconography of the newborn Christ placed on an altar-like manger, as seen, for example, in the tenth-century Benedictional of Æthelwold (London, British Library, MS Add. 49598, fol. 15v). Significantly, the image in question lies opposite a blessing for Christmas taken from a homily of Gregory the Great, an early and influential source for the conflation of the Christ Child and the Eucharist, and the manger and the altar.224 Although Hill in this article seems predominantly to have in mind the jovial side of Francis’s personality as well as his typical association with affective piety, Francis’s view of the Nativity was in fact rooted in the same patristic-based imagery that is reflected in the illuminated Anglo-Saxon liturgical book and in Christ III. Hill contrasts the “square, block-like” altar mentioned in the poem and similarly depicted in the Benedictional with Francis’s “crib filled with straw” (“comfortable enough”).225 Yet the Italian saint’s display of compassion for the “discomforts” of the Nativity and the connection he almost certainly made in his sermon between the Infant in the manger and the Child soon to be present on the altar demonstrates that Francis’s Christmas was not merely an occasion for sentimentality and merry-making. Francis was just as aware of the biblical theme of “the sacrifice of the well-beloved son” (a phrase used by Hill) as was his predecessors—a mystery culminating in Christ’s Passion and death and his perpetuation of his sacrifice in the Eucharist.226 Yet rather than glumly view the sacrificial offering of Jesus as “dark,” Francis expresses heartfelt compassion for Jesus’ suffering and, at the same time, delights in the lovableness of the “son given to us,” looking forward optimistically to the fullness of redemption, which was effected by both the birth and death of Christ and culminated in the Resurrection.
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
