Detail from nativity scene exhibited at Sant’ Andrea delle Valle, Rome, December 2024
When I went Rome recently, the Basilica of Sant’ Andrea delle Valle was on my list of churches to visit because a few weeks before I had watched Tosca in the cinema. Once inside, I didn’t see anything resembling the opera set, but instead, and much to my delight, there was an exhibition of cribs from around the world. Many of them were like miniature opera sets in which the the Holy Family and the Holy Birth happened in the midst of the every day life of some particular place and time. This image shown opposite is a detail of a much larger scene. It is night time and Mary is sound asleep while Joseph holds the baby. I have seen many paintings of St Joseph holding the child Jesus, but it was never in the context of the nativity. Images and sculptures of the nativity scene go back to the 4th century at least. They were commissioned works of art intended to adorn churches, monasteries, convents or the dwellings of the wealthy. The account is well known of how on Christmas night in 1223 St Francis created a “new Bethlehem” at Greccio, using local people and animals. But it was only with the Counter Reformation that people began to make nativity scenes of cribs in their homes. It began in Naples. St Gaetano (1480 -1547), one of the founders of the Theatine Order, saw the importance of this scene as an educational, apostolic and social tool. In 1523 he asked his Theatine brothers to encourage lay people to build nativity scenes in their Churches and in their homes at Christmas. It was his idea to combine the Nativity with episodes from every day life, setting the birth of the Saviour amid streets in landscapes filled with characters in contemporary clothes. The Council of Trent affirmed the custom, declaring its importance as “an expression of popular religiosity and an instrument of catechesis”. Other religious orders including Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites (and even Jesuits!) , helped to spread the custom across Western Europe and from there across the globe. I grew up with this custom in Ireland. My mother would make a kind of cave from papier-maché, paint it black or brown and then cover it with moss and ivy. The Sacred Heart light became the star and, as Christmas Eve drew near, the figures were put in place. On Christmas Eve itself the Holy Child of Bethlehem was solemnly installed and so he entered this world, our home, our imaginations and our hearts. Of course, as a child, I didn’t leave the child to sleep in peace. We would take him out and put him back in, and as imaginations soared, we revelled in various sub plots to the main drama. I still have that set of figures – well I have Mary, Joseph, the child, an angel and a wise man. The other figures did not survive the multiples and varied performances of this child’s nativity plays. And yet, here I am all these years later, still at it! Happy Christmas!
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The Catholic Chaplaincy is also a parish of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh (the Parish of St Albert the Great) and all Catholic students and staff are automatically members of this parish.
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