THE NATIVITY SCENE: THE CRADLE
 

"And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travellers lodged."
Saint Luke's Book in the Bible (2.7)

According to Saint Luke's Book (2.7), Jesus was born in a stable or similar place where animals are fed. In fact "crib" or "cradle" comes from the Old German word krippia that had the meaning of manger; this Old German word is also at the origin of the name of the Nativity scene, for example, in German and English: "Krippe" and "crib" respectively.

In other Latin languages, like Portuguese, the word for the Nativity scene comes from the Latin word praesaepium that also had the same meaning of stable or place where animals are kept. This word praesaepium was used for the first time with regard to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, known since the seventh century as "Sancta Maria ad praesepe" because tradition says it was here that the relics of Jesus cradle were brought.

Generally speaking, we may consider that the plastic representations of the cradle began in the fourth century with Saint Helaine, the mother of emperor Constantin. However, the oldest Nativity scene known dates back to the second century: it can be seen in a fresco found in the catacombs of Saint Priscilla; it portrays the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus, the Three Wise Men and Saint Joseph, and a star with eight points above the scene. Later in the fourth and fifth centuries, the figures of shepherds began to appear in bas-relief work on marble sarcophagi; gradually, the cradle came to include also the ass and the cow. Later these same scenes were painted on windows and mosaics.

In 1223 Saint Francis of Assisi decided to celebrate Christmas Mass in a different way: instead of holding it inside the church, he went to a cave in the neighbourhood of Greccio - a small village where he had his monastery; he took a manger and filled it with hay, tied a real ass and ox near it, and with a crowd of people from all over the neighbouring countryside he celebrated the Mass in front of the crib. This representation of the Nativity scene can be regarded as an evolution in Christian liturgy.

From the following year onwards other churches carried out his example, and this tradition was soon everywhere in Europe. With time, the figures were replaced first by statues in actual size; then by smaller ones; other figures were introduced as well: shepherds, angels, the Magi.

From the fifteenth century onward the Nativity scenes leave the walls of the churches and enter the bourgeois homes as a luxury object of interior decoration that can be mounted and removed as many times as people so wish.

During the baroque period cribs reach their greatest splendour, and the impressively beautiful cradles created by the great Portuguese sculpteur Machado de Castro date back to this period. One of these cradles can be seen at the Basilica of Estrela in Lisbon.

Following this period of splendour, the tradition of the cradle experienced a period of decadence, but the nineteenth century brings it back into fashion although with different characteristics: the cradles are produced in terracotta, plaster, papier-mache or other cheap materials, thereby meeting at a convenient price the demand of an ever larger public. And the cradle becomes a popular tradition gradually extending to all social classes.

© Dulce Rodrigues