“And the Word Dwelt amongst Us”: Experiencing the Nativity in the Italian Renaissance Home

Abstract

This fragment from the biography of St Francis shows the origins of the practice of re-enactments of the Nativity.2 The poverello from Assisi visited Bethlehem, the historical birthplace of Christ, and asked Pope Honorius III for approval for his pious project of recreating the Incarnation. St Francis wished to see with his ‘corporeal eyes’ the Christ Child lying in the manger guarded by ox and ass, deprived of any luxuries. In 1223 he shared his ambition to celebrate the birth of Christ with a certain Giovanni from Greccio, who assisted him in fulfilling that spiritual desire. People from the small, Umbrian village spared no efforts in order to make manifest the saint’s vision, in such a way that ‘Greccio was transformed into a seemingly new Bethlehem’, ‘et quasi nova Bethlehem de Graecio facta est’.3 The miracle that took place during the mass at Greccio,