Gone Medieval - St. Francis & the First Nativity Play

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Christmas would not be complete without a nativity play: Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all watched over by an ox, a donkey and assorted bystanders in the stable. St Francis of Assisi staged the very first nativity play way back in 1223, so like all the best things in life; it's medieval!Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Professor Tim Larsen to uncover how St Francis turned worship into theatre and how a single night in Italy transformed the way the world would celebrate Christmas forever.MOREMedieval Origins of Santa Claus: St NicholasListen on AppleListen on SpotifyMedieval Midwinter TraditionsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. If there's one thing you can count on when you wander into a church at this time of year, it's the nativity scene. Front and center of the ramshackle stable you first encounter Mary and Joseph. Mary sits radiating serenely, while Joseph wonders if this really was the most sanitary place for his wife to give birth. In the manger lies the glowing newborn baby Jesus,

wrapped in swaddling clothes that often look suspiciously like a tea towel. Around them gather shepherds, who were probably just trying to mind their own business when an angel turned up in the middle of the night with a message in a light show. And then, there are the animals. The donkey still sulking

from having carried a very pregnant Mary all the way from Nazareth. The ox who's just chewing cud, oblivious to whatever is going on, and a few random sheep who have wandered in because sheep basically follow anyone with a stick. Overhead, a giant tinfoil star announces in no uncertain terms, you have arrived at your destination. It's such a cozy and comforting scene that we couldn't imagine Christmas and a million infant school productions without it. More on that later. But did you know that we have St. Francis of

Assisi to thank for the creation of the nativity scene in the 13th century Italy? Listen on. Grecchio. 1223. The Rieti Valley lies dark and silent when the first flashes of torches, carried by villagers, appear along the mountain trails. Whispers had flown from Hamlet to Hamlet that the poor man of Assisi was preparing something never before seen. Hymns echo through the winter forest. The mountain itself seems to awaken. The climb becomes a pilgrimage. Every step, a prayer.

High above the town, an ancient cave in the limestone cliffs stands ready to become the stage of mystery. For 15 days, Giovanni Velita Lord of Grecio, a soldier-turned disciple, has obeyed Francis' every word in preparing it. Hay is heaped thick upon the rocky floor, filling the cavern with the smell of harvest fields. An ox and a donkey stamped their hooves in the shadows. Cloaked in his tattered brown habit, Francis seems at first another shadow among many. but for those who knew him, his presence can never be mistaken, a gaunt figure bent by poverty and marked by illness.

His face bears the imprint of death's approach, yet his eyes shine with an untamable light. Then, from every corner of the valley, they arrive. Peasants, shepherds, mothers' cradling infants, children. and clutching candles. A river of light winding its way upward, turning darks and night to dusky day. Inside the cave, the vision of Francis comes alive. The manger, rough hewn from local stone and wood glints with golden hay. The ox and donkey stands sentinel.

The cave walls flicker with shadows. The mingled sense of hay, smoke, and living. creatures hang thick in the air. No distant altar, no golden icons here. Only the raw, living essence of the incarnation. When the crowd presses close to the cave's mouth, Francis steps forward and lifts his voice. A voice, unlike any other, they say. Clear, strong, musical, yet breaking with tenderness. Not the rigid chanting of ritual, but a man who knows the poverty of Bethlehem, who has been that child wrapped in rags. Francis preaches the nativity not as history, but as living fire. And when he

speaks the name of his lord, something extraordinary happens. His voice softens, trembling, tender. He seems to lick his lips to taste the sweetness of the name. Jesus, as though savoring honey. And then, before the stunned eyes of the multitude, as Francis kneels before the manger, a sleeping child seems to appear, lying upon the hay. Then, in Francis's embrace, the child stirs, as they're wakened from his slumber. Some swear they witness a radiant child alive in the crib. Others will later say that the veil between heaven and earth had dissolved. In this moment, Grecoe becomes Bethlehem.

The hay is sanctified, to be carried away afterward to heal sick cattle, to ease mothers in childbirth, to cure the afflicted. The stones, the air, even the beasts, bear the lingering thunders. fragrance of grace. Creation itself has joined the liturgy. What St. Francis of Assisi did that Christmas Eve 802 years ago was revolutionary. He rescued worship from marble halls and placed it in the open air,

on stone and straw, where peasants and animals could bear witness, shoulder to shoulder with nobles. He gave theology real, real flesh and breath, created a drama for the senses. He made Bethlehem live again. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Tim Larson, McManus Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, Illinois, and author and editor of 20 books, including the Oxford Handbook of Christmas. So there's no one better to talk about why Christmas itself would never be the same,

thanks to St. Francis of Assisi. Tim, welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm so delighted to be here. You know, we're about to have an incredible time because we're about to talk about one of, I think almost everyone who will say things like, this is my favorite saint. I think that St. Francis of Assisi is really high up there in the saint's stakes for a lot of people. But I don't think that this kind of aspect of him is discussed very often, you know, the connection between. St. Francis and the nativity scene today. But, you know, before we get into all of that, I think it is really important to understand his spiritual journey. You know, he's got this really,

really interesting life trajectory from, you know, let's be honest, rich playboy, to one of the more devoted aesthetics who ever existed. So can you just give us a quick overview of his life before this big conversion that he has? Yes. His father was a prosperous merchant in the cloth trade, kind of high end, and he ran with these kind of elite kids who had money and had status. And I think because his father was in the cloth trade, he dressed very well and they had parties and were having fun. And at some point, there are multiple events that happen that kind of bring a turning point in his life. But he, really rejects all of that. And he wants to kind of drop out. It feels to me like the kind of rhymes a bit with some of the things that happened in the 1960s. My dad was a corporate person at this big company and I just want to be a hippie. And why I'm saying it that way is because you have to get St. Francis, like the joy that he has in this, the freedom he has in this. You know, freedom is having nothing

left to lose. And he's like, if I don't own anything, I am free. I can just be me. I don't have all the burdens of having to protect my objects, climb a social ladder, try to please other people. And so he decides quite literally to give up everything and to live a life of complete freedom, which means just trusting God for his food and his shelter in the evening and going about without objects, without money, with the clothes on his back. I mean, it's just an incredible 180, I would say, from where he was at before. But, you know, what is it that triggers this? You know, we've got this kind of period from about in 1204 to 1208 or somewhere where he's really kind of undergoing this.

Like, what is it that actually happens that flips this switch? Yes. So, again, there are a couple stories, and I think they kind of deepen things as he goes along. But he goes into a dilapidated abandoned church building, a chapel. and he looks at the crucifix on the over the altar. It's a time when actually art history was changing so that the depiction was much more visceral and realistic and emphasizing the pain. So I think he's seeing a pretty strong depiction of Christ's passion in a way that maybe

because it was newer was not taken for granted, the way it might be for people today. And the crucifix, Christ on the crucifix speaks to him and says that my My church is falling down, repair it. And there is a kind of literal streak to Francis. So he does take this as a building project initially. Most people who love him as a saint think that this was being spoken metaphorically that he was supposed to deal with abusive and church and kind of corruption and worldiness. But he starts with, well, this church is falling down.

I'm going to repair it. That brings him into conflict with his father. I don't know if you want to go there now or not. No, I mean, hey, I love to talk about it. interneasing family. You know, like, let's go. So he takes some of his father's cloth. His father's away on a business trip,

and he sells it to get money for this building project. His father comes back and is just livid. Absolutely. The conflict between this father and this firstborn son, you know, that kind of recurs throughout history and life. And it's like very visceral. And Francis is like, you know, well, I did it for God. And the father's like, right, I'll squash this.

I'm going to take you to the bishop's court. Now, all the way back to the fourth century, a bishop's court is a binding legal court. It's not just telling you what the church thinks. It is making a judicial ruling that can be enforced in law, have real consequences that are enforced. And so he goes. And of course, you know, what can the bishop possibly say? you know, my son, it's wonderful that you want to help rebuild the church, but stealing from your father is the wrong way to do it. And so he rules on the father's side because like, you know,

what else could you possibly do? And this is then a key moment for understanding St. Francis and the story we're telling today. He has a very theatrical streak. And he takes off all of his clothes in the kind of very official saint's narrative about him, the kind of approved story of him as a saint that's written just a couple years after his death. It's said very clearly, including his underwear. He is stark naked. That's a direct quote but this got a very reverent life of the saint.

The bishop, of course, is disconcerted by nudity in his court and comes, you know, running to kind of cover him with his own cloak. But again, Francis, very dramatically is saying, I don't need my father's things. You're right. I shouldn't have taken them. I don't need anything from my father. Even the clothes on my back are from my father in some sense. I'm going to live my life without needing any of that. I'm going to be free of your disapproval. I'm going to be free of your goals for my life and your standards for my life. And the freedom comes by just cutting off any kind of support at all. I'm going on my own. And I find that this is really something that grabs people's

attention, right? Because in the 13th century, we've hit one of these patches, right, where they're cyclical, where the church will go through a period of reform, and then they will kind of get bored of that, start stacking cash and building really fancy things again. And people tend to dislike this when it happens, because then everyone says, oh, really was Jesus rich? And then the church will say, hey now, yeah, Jesus wasn't rich, but the Pope, that's a different guy. That's a different guy, right? And so when we have Francis showing up, like getting down to brass tacks, as it were, stirping off in front of the bishop, I mean, this really does kind of call into question the bishop sitting in front of him, who would certainly have been decked out in finery. You know, we've got the papacy at this point in time who are really shown up and showing out. I mean, like, how do you people react to this. Yeah. And there's a specific part of this narrative that you're telling so well that's about monasticism. And so where we're going with this story is the religious life. And there are lots of ironies of monasticism throughout church history. Manassism started as hermits,

individuals out in the desert. But one of the ironies is that people love to hang around hermits. So people keep on showing up and saying, can I watch you be a hermit and see how it's done? You know, it's so it ends up being a communal activity. The other one is that people love to give money to people who've taken a vow of poverty. And so, they're like, oh, God is so impressed with you because you're so ascetic and disciplined. If I give money to you, I will kind of square my own account with God, especially because some of that money I made maybe in pretty dodgy ways. You know, I rip some people off here and there and cut some corners. And maybe God will kind of make it all even if I give it.

to somebody who's very holing. So that, of course, creates a cycle in which monks and monastic institutions and orders can become worldly over time. They start to degrade their asceticism and make their life more comfortable and build nice buildings and have nice food. And on it goes. And so then a reform will come along and say, let's get back to what it's really supposed to be about, which is this radical life of self-denial. And so Francis is doing that. And he thinks he has a hack for how to not let the cycle happen again. And what he decides. So the other big moment or another big moment in his conversion process is he's in church

and he hears the gospel reading from St. Matthew. And it's Jesus's instructions to his disciples on how to go out. He's sending them on a kind of short-term mission as a kind of exercise and learning about ministry really is what's what you're reading in the gospels, what Jesus does do. And he says, I want you to not take anything with you other than the close. on your back, a staff, but you cannot take any money at all and you can't take extra clothes. I want you just to go out and trust that God will provide, that people will ask you to come to their home for the night and they'll give you a meal and you'll sleep in their house and

you'll go on preaching as you go, but you can't have any money at all. And Francis is like, wow, that's the way to do it. If you don't actually take any money, you can't hit this cycle where the money becomes a problem. And so this is a solution. And they become, he helps to found a lot of this happens in parallel in the same generation with St. Dominic. And they're founding begging words. Essentially, what we take is the food that we're going to eat and shelter for the evening, but we don't take money at all. And so we can't get a problem of how money is corrupting us because we're just not actually dealing with it. And I mean, it's a pretty good thought, right? It's a nice way of having a look at the. And I think that it is, it is interesting because very clearly, I would argue, San Francisco is trying to get in front of the trouble that other people have. You know, this is, this is further than other monastic orders have gone before. It certainly is a really new way of doing monasticism because also, right, we have not just the

idea that we're not taking money, but also we have the idea that we are no longer enclosed, right? Because other older orders of monks, you know, the guys up at Monte Cassino, for example, they're not supposed to, in theory, leave their monastery, right? And St. Francis, it said, he says, I'm going out into the world. I'm really going to engage with people. I'm going to be preaching directly to people on the street. I'm not just going to be sitting behind my walls pretending I'm dead, right? And that, I think, is a really huge shift in terms of what we think monks do. And it is going to lead directly to the story that we're telling today. Again, St. Dominic is also doing this.

So I want to give the Dominic and the Dominicans a shout out as well. It's happening the same generation. But they're inventing what are called friars. And so the old model, as you've described it, is to be cloistered, to be cut off literally from the world. You're in this walled little separate world. And you can't face too much temptation because it's not there. There are no women in the side of this community. You know, there isn't the same kind of trying to get status by hanging out with lords and dukes or whatever.

All that is like you're supposed to be cut off from it and living this simple life of self-denial away from the world. Francis says, no, you have a ministry to the world. You continue to live a life of self-denial. You still are practicing poverty, celibacy, obedience, but you're living it out in the world. You're going to the people. You're preaching to them. you're ministering to them, you're helping lepers, you're helping the poor, you're proclaiming the gospel, you're an itinerant ministry going around from place to place, bringing the good news.

And so we're going to take the discipline and commitment of being a monk, but we're going to take it into ministry outside the walls to the people, which is what a friar is. So these friars, you know, we've got these new mendicant orders, that's the fancy term for the begging orders. is this something the church likes? Because, you know, do you feel threatened by it if you are a, if you're a cardinal and you're living quite a lavish life? You know, is this something that they relate to happily? No, it is a rebuke. Short answer, no.

It makes you, you know, look ashamed of yourself. It's a bad contrast. It's a bad look. It is quite possible. I don't know. Some people like counterfactual history and some people find it very annoying. so choose which one you are, but it's quite possible that Francis could have been condemned as a heretic and killed.

There are very similar stories that kind of break the other way. Someone like Peter Waldo is doing a very similar kind of thing. Let's be kind of preachers moving around in poverty, and the church decides, the Inquisition decides, this is heretical, and we're going to squash it. Some of those things get, like, you know, corrected retrospectively. We do remember that the church actually killed Joan of Arc, even though she's a great saying today and the church.

They got that call on in real time. Yeah, exactly. So that's one where the official verdict on a ministry has been revised retrospectively. So you could imagine the church being threatened in a way that it just kind of tried to squash Francis. But in the end, the Pope allows it, allows Francis to found a new order to have his own rule and to let this trajectory happen. But it is one that is uneasy. One of the things you were saying earlier,

one of the bishop says to him, this is insane that you can't own property as an order. Where will you live? How would you do anything? And Francis replies, well, if we own property, then we would have to defend it. It would lead us into lawsuits to claim this is our property

against somebody else trying to incur on it. And being involved in lawsuits is not a way to kind of get close to God and see God. We want to be free from all that. It has its own logic to it. It makes sense if you're St. Francis. Yeah, I'd love this about it.

I've been to the basilica in a Sisi, and it's got one of my favorite pieces of medieval art, and it shows Pope Innocent III who approves the rule, having a dream where Francis is holding up the church, which inspires him to come out and say, okay, no, actually, this is a fine rule. But I like it because, again, it's so literal. It is in the third has the stream. And the church, you know, the actual basilica of St. Peter is falling over, but Francis props it up. And I'm just like, I love it. I'm like, medieval people never change.

Do not become more complex than this. It's great. Wonderful. So what did Francis's career kind of look like before we get to the Greco-Nitivity celebration? He's come up with this idea. How does that translate out in the world? Yeah. So one of the most amazing things to me is how quickly and how thoroughly he attracts followers. And the followers are often, again, in the beginning, people from his own social set. So once again, these are people who have a lot to give up if they're going to live the monastic lifestyle. They have very affluent lifestyles. They're dressing well and eating well and have status and have parties.

And they're seeing him and saying, oh, I can imagine a different way of life now. And the numbers are accumulating rapidly. And it really is an extraordinary story. It's hard to get back to. It's easy to gloss over, I guess I want to say, not think about it. Like here's a man saying to you, I want you to give. up having a home, having a wardrobe, having sex, and follow me around homeless for the rest of your life. Begging for your food. And people are over again, okay, it sounds good. Let's do it.

To me, that's like, there's something magnetic about Francis. When he is living it, you're in awe. People are just transformed by just seeing him, hearing him preach because of the way that he burns so bright. the way that he's personally filled with joy, the way that he's not gritting his teeth and saying, I'm going to prove to you, I can live a life of poverty. He's like, I am having a joyful time,

living this free way of living that I have discovered. You could come along if you want to. If you don't want to, that's fine too. And so he's building up a following. They're trying to figure out what that means. Again, writing a rule. How do we govern ourselves as an order?

there are various kind of excursions along the way. Should we go to the Holy Land and try to interact with Muslims? There are various things. But part of it is this idea that we've talked about of a ministry to the people. That's really what he's building up. How can we go out and preach the gospel, bless the poor, care for lepers, do things that actually make a difference in ordinary people's lives? So how do we get from that? This is like a really practical mission, I think, is one of the things that I always really appreciate about the mendicants. You know, they kind of see that there are some problems with the institution of the church. They see that people are not necessarily getting the religious care from their local priests that they wish to be getting.

And they really respond to that. You know, I find it incredibly practical. How does the nativity scene play into that? You know, how do we get from like, let's go out and change the world, baby, to be like, you know what? Let's make a crush, you know? So the nativity scene is a form of evangelism. It's a way of drawing a crowd. And he has an instinct for that. You know, we live, you know, so many centuries later. And yet there's a Methodist church in my town that does a live nativity scene.

I am not a Methodist. I had never been in their building ever in my 25 years here until it was like, oh, they got a live donkey in the basement. Let's go see it. If there's a donkey, I'm sure. showing up. I'm sorry. I'm such a simple individual. I want to see how the Methodists put a donkey in their basement and what it's doing. Like, I'm in. You know, so, so Francis gets that. It's, it's his theatrical side that I'm going to put on a spectacle and people are going to come to witness it. And then I'm going to witness to them. So he ends the thing with a sermon. He's going to tell them the gospel, but he has gotten them there through the word spreading that this curious novelty is happening. that it's never happened before, that it's going to look interesting. Yeah. And I mean, I suppose that also we're getting to this point in Francis's career. He's

slowing down a little at this point, I would say. You know, he's been quite itinerant. And I think that to a certain extent, you could argue that putting on a spectacle is a way to get people to come to you. He's been doing it. He's been doing the hard yards. You know, like, my man's been sleeping in the open air. He's not exactly taking care of his health. He's vegan and homeless and, you know, really, really relying on people's help. And I think, you know, you kind of get to a point in time where that starts making it harder to be moving around. He's got a lot of real health issues. If you read again, the official lives over and over, they're trying to get him to specialist doctors to look at some of his conditions. He's got eye problems that

take some pretty barbaric surgery to try to address in a medieval way. And he's got other kinds of issues. And this is before the stigmata. The stigmata is a doobilitating kind of reality that kind of is part of the endgame. But even before that, the health issues play a big part in the story. So I like your insight here that maybe part of this is just this is what I can do right now, given the condition I'm in. Catholics do not get mad at me. I'm just saying there's also practicalities here. I'm talking to you, my entire extended family. You know, it is one of these things, I think, though, as you touched on, this really is a kind of coup de grace in terms of this showmanship, this particular flair that St. Francis has. And, you know, I always try to emphasize to people that in the medieval period, a really good sermon counts as like a great night out. You know, it's the equivalent of going to the cinema or something now where you're like, ooh, that's a hot date. We're going to go see this preacher. and Francis is one of the best to ever do it.

You know, he's got a real ability to connect with crowds. So it kind of makes sense that he also comes up with this show of the nativity. He's got this way of making a theatrical performance because, I mean, this is a man who's stripped in front of the bishop. Like, Lord knows, my man can put a show on, right? Yeah, and there are many, many other stories that are like this with St. Francis. And we could tell some of them. he goes to a rich man once and asks him to donate his fur coat. And it's a valuable item.

And so you think, well, we're going to sell this and, you know, we're going to do a lot of practical good. And instead, St. Francis takes it very theatrically and finds this dirty homeless person just, like a block down the road and puts it on him. And again, it's deliberately theatrical. It is just about, like, let's think about the common humanity of this rich person and this poor person and their equal dignity. and the fact that we should be helping the poor. And the fact that I want to tell that story means it works. Like, people still told that story. Like, did you see what he did?

I can't believe it. And that's the whole point of it. It's like, I have caught your attention. That's what theater does is it gives you something a bit unexpected that you want to talk about and captures your attention. And that's what he does with the nativity scene for sure. St. Bottaventure coming later downstream in his life of St. Francis actually puts in a claim that Francis wrote to

the pope to gain permission to do this. I'm not sure if that's historically accurate, but it shows that Bonaventure thinks like this was so novel that it could have gone sideways, that he had to like had to have it endorsed by the pope to show that he was not doing something sacrilegious or that might look like a kind of a satire of sacred things. You know, theater and church have not always got along well. Church and theater have been rivals in some context and in some ways. And so he's doing something edgy enough that St. Bonaventure has to kind of cover over. Don't worry, it was all approved. Yeah, I mean, this is something that, you know, the church has really been struggling with because priests actually love to be dramatic, right? Like, priests love to put on the miracle place, you know, and things like that. And at this point in time, in the kind of high medieval period, the church is starting to say priests, you cannot do that because you're way too into it.

and you have to leave that sort of stuff to the guilds or the actors, or it depends on where you are. So there is like, you know, something inside every priest that really cries. Every priest has a theater kid inside them, you know. But this is a huge break with standard liturgical practice. You know, this isn't, it's not happening necessarily within a church. And I think that there's also something, you know, one of the things that is really effective about the liturgy is that it follows a known path. You know exactly what you're going to get when you go into a mass. You understand all the calls and responses, you know, that you're going to hear a bit from the Old Testament, a bit from the New Testament.

You're going to have a gospel reading. You know exactly the order that things are going to go in. But the nativity scene is just giving you a whole new thing completely outside of the confines of the actual church. So do you think that that plays into this? Is this like a novelty for people, would you, would you argue? Absolutely. And there's a kind of element of chaos that, again, is part of what makes it irresistible. My own home church does a nativity play with the kids in the church.

In the front of the church, exactly, with hay. And it's always chaotic kids end up in hay fights with each other. They're like, you know, like, you know, two-year-old, three-year-olds, four-year-olds, all up there wandering around in, like, you know, donkey outfits and sheep outfits. And when my own son was Joseph, he didn't realize there would be a live baby. and he was so excited. He kept on shouting, it's a lie, baby.

And then wanted to hug it and was kind of like strangling the baby Jesus. So like, it just like creates drama. And so, yes, people are coming to see something partly because it is like unscripted and could go in lots of different directions

and you want to watch and see what happens in the way you go to the zoo and just like, what will the animals do? Now they're there for you. But he is turning it into a kind of church service. It's not a mass by a long way, but he has his followers, the little brothers, former choir and sing carols. He preaches a sermon. And so he's like taking this thing and made a hybrid between this kind of street spectacle and this moment of worship.

I think this is pretty radical. I mean, like, as you say, we have Bonaventure and people like that later going, oh, yeah, the Pope loved that. It was totally fine. I wouldn't worry about it. But by the time you're writing something like that, you are kind of admitting to us that you're uncomfortable and you're trying to retrofit it into this particular way of thinking. I mean, this kind of radicality, would that really read in Italy? You know, I've kind of referenced already the miracle plays or passion plays that we certainly see a lot of in northern Europe. Is that also common in the Italian lens? I don't think so. I think it's much less so. Yeah, and you don't really hear about it. Yeah, that's a great reflection to think about. I think this is part of the other thing about

church is that you are meant to dress in a certain way to go to church. There's a kind of respectability aspect to it. People tend to either formally or informally sort by class in church, the rich people sit in the front, that kind of thing. And so what happens when you put on an outdoor service is the buying is so much less for people. Come as you are. It doesn't matter what kind of clothes you're wearing. It doesn't matter whether you have access to bathing and you work in a dirty job and you have dirt all over you. You can come to an outdoor service and just stand there and watch something. And so I think part of it is for France is precisely because it's not fully church.

It's going to reach people who are going to show up who might feel like, oh, I don't have the outfit to go to church or I don't want to have it rubbed in my face that I'm not one of the pillars of this community in terms of like the social structure. and those kind of things. So that's a really interesting point, Tim, because, you know, I think that that is a very Franciscan sort of way of looking at things, right? You know, we've got this kind of new radical way of taking out the class-based nature of the liturgy of ordinary church services, right? So here we are, we're in the open air. You just kind of got to muddle along with it. and you're erasing class in this really particularized way. That's an interesting point.

I love the way you are articulated that. And that is, and I get, I like what you're pushing, because the Franciscans will get in trouble with the church after Francis's time. And so, like, they are pushing boundaries in a way that the church will eventually say, okay, this whole, like, radical poverty thing, it's gotten to a point now where it's a threat to the church. And they will be breakaway movements and on and on. So, yes, I think. this idea that Francis has a vision for how to be effective, which is an edgy vision.

And maybe it can go too far. Maybe it will be contained within the system. The church, you know, throughout history is asking itself that question over over again. What can we contain within the church? When does this become a new order? When does this become a sect that is heretical that breaks away or that we force out? And those are live issues in Francis's time and after. And I think, you know, he really is someone who, who leans into this. as well because, you know, he, again, it's very hippie, right? You know, I came about in the kind of

guitar mass era of things, which was kind of like part of the kind of like new church movement. And Francis does a really similar thing. You know, he is kind of specifically looking at popular traditions around him. You know, he's looking at stuff like what the troubadours are doing. And he's like, we can sing songs. We can sing songs in for now. secular Italians. That's something we could absolutely do. And that to me is so innovative. You just do not hear medieval people saying, oh, no, we can adapt pop culture to Christianity. You kind of see vice versa. You see pop culture follow Catholic guidelines. But this is like so, I mean, it would be like, I don't know, a priest now putting a biblical lyrics to Taylor Swift song. And it's, It's wild, you know. Yeah. There's a movie from the 1970s called Brother, Son, Sister Moon, which is the St. Francis story.

And it does all this. It's like the Franciscans are like the flower children and the hippies. The Crusades are kind of like the Vietnam War. And you have this kind of vibe going on. But Brother, Son, Sister Moon is quoting Francis's own poetry. He writes this very interesting nature of poetry. He loves to personify. nature and see nature as his friends in a pretty active way. And that's like so different.

That's not what you read in the liturgy. That's not the kind of passed down set piece texts of worship and liturgical action. It is something new. I tell my students all the time, like there are, once you decide somebody's a saint, then you have in your mind things that probably happened or likely to happen. And they sometimes get shoved into the life of saints because it's like, oh, this kind of thing happens. A lot of Zane. So we'll put that story in here. So you pay attention to the stuff that is quirky and distinctive as particularly telling and more likely to be authentic and historically accurate. And this connection with nature that Francis has and animals in particular is very strongly a story that's about him. Yeah, everybody lives the animal bits, don't they? You know, it's everybody's favorite day of the year when you get to. bringing the animals to church for St. Francis of the Cece's Day and get them blessed because then there's like dogs in the church. Yeah. It's great. Exactly. So another story that rhymes with this one,

the nativity story of St. Francis, is him preaching to the birds. If you look at kind of like standard kind of paintings and kind of murals of St. Francis, you often get a scene of that event, which is also captured people's imagination, him preaching to the birds. And it's very similar. It's like, here are these animals involved in this preaching and it's memorable, it's quirky, it gets people's attention, why, you know, and it's a kind of provocative act of deliberate teasing, trolling kind of ministry. You know, you see some of that, the Old Testament prophets, they do outrageous physical things sometimes just like so people will go away and talk about it and say, what does it mean? How do we think about this? How do we think about,

ministry differently, the gospel differently, nature differently. And so him preaching to the birds is drawing in animals and doing ministry in a way that gets people talking. Yeah. And I mean, then he's doing this again with the negativity, right? Because here we go. We've got don't know, we've got don't know, who's hanging around the joint? You know, like, just go grab some animals, bring them in here. And it reinforces this connection between St. Francis and the animal kingdom. him, you know. Do you think that he's predisposed, I guess, to bringing animals in because that's just sort of his thing? Or is this like something that we should look at as a scriptural something that he's relating to? So part of it is his very literal side. He explained himself what he wanted to do. He said, I wanted to see with my bodily eyes. So just like the stick. Mata is Francis's deep desire to know what it was like to receive the five wounds for Christ.

The nativity scene is him, it's not enough just to like theorize about it or think about it abstractly. I want literally to see what it must have been like to be here with the animals and the manger and all together. And then part of that in his mind connects to his ministry of poverty. What the nativity means to him is the king of kings and lord of lords chose to live a homeless life. There was no room in the end. They get kicked to wherever the animals are where their feeding troth is. This is how the king of kings comes into the world. He is choosing to embrace poverty.

He's in choosing to embrace humility and simplicity. And I want people to get that message to understand. what God actually values, what the true way is. And I think that there's also something here, right, in terms of the way that Francis relates to the presence of animals at the birth of Christ, you know, as looking at them as though these are, I think that he calls oxen and things like that are sister animals. And I find this really quite profound because it does have reflections, for example, in Buddhism, right, where you're meant to understand that all. sentient beings are connected and experiencing the same thing. So, like, where is he getting? Like, buddy, where'd you get this from?

This is distinctive to Francie. He treats animals like, I like what you're saying. I haven't thought of this. But like the way that we think of who are the main characters in the sensitivity story? And we think about the shepherds and the magi. And he thinks that the animals as characters in that story in the same kind of way. He tends to treat animals like people. They are also somebody who deserves respect, who I can talk with and interact with.

There's a famous story of a town that is having its livestock be killed by a wolf, and they ask St. Francis to help. And he becomes a mediator, and he goes and makes a treaty with his wolf, like he's treating up like a person, and saying, this is the deal. They're going to feed you if you don't bother their animals anymore. and he tells the town, I've sorted it out with the wolf, just put some food out here in this place, and the wolf becomes a kind of pet character in the town. Archaeological evidence has shown that it was literally buried in the church. So it was treated like a person.

You know, that's burial in church is what you do for people. They did it for the wolf because Francis taught them to see the wolf like a person. I love this. You know, and, you know, these wolves that can kind of be appeased, this will go on to be a really. big monastic thing later with the Jesuits because St. Ignatius Loyola has a whole thing about feeding wolves and you're meant to kind of read into that obviously. But, you know, I didn't realize that the wolf had been buried in the church. I find it very moving. You know, I'm such a mark. I'm such a mark for St. Francis of his season. He saw me coming every time. It's just like I'm exactly

the person that this sort of thing works on, you know. So he's not inventing this, but just like to kind of do the backstory. There are no animals. mentioned in the actual gospel nativity story, other than the fact that the shepherds leave their sheep, but the sheep are not there at the manger in the story. They might be there. But we- Sionar suckers. You know, get lost. Yeah. There are no animals named. Even like this, you know, the way we see it with Mary riding on a donkey, with Joseph leading it, maybe that happened. It seems plausible enough. But there's no donkey mentioned in that part of the account.

And then obviously, the manger implies that this is a place, a space for animals. So it's, It's very kind of logical and not at all fanciful to assume that there are animals there, but they're not named. The church takes a text from the Old Testament, from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 1-3 says the ox knows his owner and the ass his master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. So that's a text from many centuries earlier that they're hearing prophetically. The master's crib is obviously the manger, the master's Jesus in the crib, in the manger.

and there's an ox and an ass in that text. And so that becomes a way of thinking about the nativity in this kind of allegorical reading of scripture that this text applies to the New Testament. And so you get iconography already in the 4th century with an ox and an ass in the picture. And so this story is building up to including animals. But Francis is going to focus on the animals in a new way for sure. Can we talk a little bit about the timing of all this? Because he's got this brave new idea. He's finding this way of bringing animals in, which, A, it's a crowd pleaser. B, it's really recognizable if you're a medieval person. You're really living cheek by jowl with animals and you work with them every day. You're completely dependent upon them. You understand yourself to be in community with them at the very, very least. But we also understand that at this point in time, as we've kind of, have already nodded to. Francis isn't particularly well. And there's also this thing going on where his followers are kind of fighting and creating varying factions. You know, we have some people who are

more for absolute poverty and some who are saying, I don't know, I think that we could all like have one house and then we can kind of crawl in there together. And there, there is this kind of going back. Do you think that creating the nativity, this is kind of like a let's all come together and do a new thing, we're going to get a project, or am I kind of wanting more out of this than is possible? That feels very psychologically true to me. There is a known phenomenon in local congregations where if you get a big building project going,

the congregation is at its happiest and most unified. People are convinced that they're needed, that they're a part of this thing altogether. It's a big lift and you matter. and then you build the building and then a few years later everybody's kind of bored and starts fighting with each other

and like you lost the focus. That's not a good enough reason to build a building in my view, but it does kind of show this psychology of like if you can give people a task and put them on it. And I think he is doing this. He's assigning them like, okay, we need a choir now.

We've never had a choir before for this event. It was going to be a choir. You guys go work on that. You know, like now we have a constructive task to do. He's telling people to go and get the different items that are needed for this scene. And I think that's an insightful way of looking at this event as well.

I think also, you know, one of the things that's going on, I mean, we keep, we keep making reference to the stigmata that Francis is going to receive. But he does it within the same year. You know, he creates the nativity and that's getting trotted out. And then it's September afterwards that he first receives the stigmata. And so this is interesting, right? Because what we have is all of the events of Jesus's life kind of playing out for St. Francis within a year. And like, homie's on the way out, right? Like, this is his last year. So it's interesting because I mean, like, look, he's a showman, but you can't exactly time it like this ordinarily, right? I think maybe he's on a personal quest of some kind. That's. notion that he does the nativity partly because I want to see it with my bodily eyes. He's trying to deepen his own understanding of the gospel as well. And then it's bookended. The two great doctrines of the gospel are the incarnation and the atonement. Christ's birth and then his death on the cross. And so the next one, that's the bookend. Now I've thought about his birth. Now I want to think about his death on the cross

and I want to experience it bodily. And the stigmata is about experiencing it bodily. I think he really is on this deepening personal quest to understand Christ's life, what the meaning of Christ's life, the meaning of the gospel story in a very literal, radical way. And it is theatrical for sure,

but some of that theatricality is just who he is as a person. So how the stigmata event starts is him going on a private retreat by himself taking with him a book of the Gospels and opening it at random to decide what his meditation will be on. And of course, that turns out to be the passion. He does it several times and each time it's the passion event. That, again, has great probability to it. The odds were ever in his favor because if you know the Gospels, they slow down dramatically at the passion story and tell it over many chapters.

And so the odds are pretty high. if you just have a book that all it has is the four Gospels and you open it a few times, you're probably going to hit the passion play. So that story, I believe completely. But it's also, like I'm saying, he's just doing it for himself. It's like, nobody else is there. He's on a private retreat, but it is kind of theatrical. Like, I'm going to open this book at random and it's going to guide me for my meditation.

So threads are kind of interweaving here. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, I think it is interesting, though, because for him, the stigmata does, come, but also he does pretty soon after that. It's not something that one can survive, even when one is receiving it as a gift. Yeah, the stigmata is debilitating.

He can't walk anymore hardly. He has to be carried around. I did not grow up Catholic, and I'm not Catholic. And I was not, in my own spiritual formation, given much of an upside to pain. Pain was something bad that we wanted to get rid of. we were definitely kind of give me some morphine kind of Christians. Many such faces.

And so for years, I didn't understand this stigma. I thought it was just a visual aid. And I didn't realize that part of the point was the pain. And he is suffering. And it is debilitating. And for Francis, that's part of what makes it a blessing. That I actually know what Christ experienced. He suffered and I'm suffering.

I'm filling up in my flesh, his suffering, as the Apostle Paul says in one passage quite mysteriously. And so, yeah, this is the endgame, and he is already in poor health, and this greatly limits his ability to function bodily. And he is on the final chapter. I think it's just a really moving story because it shows his devotion, I suppose, to the true understanding of the theoretical sacrifice of the Christ, you know. And, you know, from experiencing it all, as he say, you know, he wants to know what it's like to hang out in a bar and, with the animals as well as, you know, the less pleasant aspect. So, you know, no wonder the guy gets sane it.

He's a real, gee. What can I say, you know? He is unique. There's a story very early in his life. So if we go back to the other side of the story, where he has a vision where he's called by God to become a knight. And he goes off in this little local war, gets captured. It all goes badly wrong. And God appears to him again in a dream.

And it says, it would behoove you to find another meaning in your earlier your dream. So even God was like, I didn't meet it literally. You're supposed to become a knight in a metaphorical sense. So the fact that Francis just wants to anchor it so literal. Like if I'm going to be a knight for Christ, I'm going to understand that by putting on armor and going into war, you're like, no one a knight is. You know, that's how his mind works.

So let's kind of talk about the present day because Lord knows that nativity scenes are about to happen all over the world. but they still can be quite political, right? Like, especially if you do things like point out that the reason why, you know, where we have all this movement is that, you know, pretty soon you're going back for a census, but pretty soon the Holy Family are going to be refugees. And, you know, if you bring up social inequality, if you bring up the fact that, you know, sleeping in a bar is something that happens here,

that can be taken. as being uncomfortable at the very least or subversive, certainly. Like, how do you feel about that and the possibility of the politics within the nativity? Yeah, the nativity story in the Gospels has really dark elements to it. And I think that's the kind of the contrast to, you know, the kind of journey from what the Gospels actually tell us and putting the Snoopy characters in inflatable dolls in the front of your house as a nativity scene is a very long journey. And so you have kind of like extracted the part that you want. So the babies are slaughtered in Bethlehem in the story.

And it quotes the prophet saying, these mothers wailed and refused to be comforted. Like, what is that doing in my happy little Christmas story? Mothers who are grieving and you try to say, can you kind of like tote it down now? We're trying to have a festival here. And they're like, no, we are absolutely not going to make. any allowance for how you feel because we're just going to grieve. Like you're saying, they're straight off into Egypt, even like getting to Bethlehem. You're in a Roman empire that is oppressive, that has conquered you, that is basically one big

extortion racket for taxes. You're getting registered in Bethlehem because they're going to extract every bit of money they came out of you. you're not finding an end there when you get to Bethlehem and then you're going to be in exile right away. So yeah, I think the Nativity story ought to make us think about real issues in our times that are about injustice and pain and lack and cruelty and rulers who are not doing what's best for the people that they're ruling

or the people that are in their territory. All of that is in play in the story. Yeah, I would argue that that's what St. Francis wants us to get from this. I think that, you know, Francis, his whole deal is trying to highlight the poverty of Christ, the varying social inequalities that we continue to face and what in theory Christians are meant to be doing. Do you think that people are actually aware of that anymore, or has the nativity become unmired from the message? I think the sources of renewal are always there. And so it can always break through in different times and different places.

And forever becomes a story that can surprise us. Just like St. Francis, you know, like we were all surprised by the live of the city scene, even though it was kind of a story we knew. We'd seen it in pictures. And yet it broke through again. And I think it can happen like that at any time and at any place. And he is inspiring us to do that. and to have a different story.

So another one with what you were talking about with politics is, you know, Francis's response to the Crusades was like, instead of fighting Muslims, have you tried talking with them? Imagine. What about that? Yeah, exactly. And so he comes out to the Middle East and he does that. He crosses over the kind of, you know, demilitarized zone, as it were. They think he's going to just get captured and held as a hostage and for ransom or killed. But he meets with a Sultan and they have this. kind of hospitality kind of kick in where they have a banquet and talk about their ideas.

And he's, again, that's theatrical. I'm going to cross the DMZ. But it's also him saying, what are you doing here? Is this the way politics should work? Is this the way relationships between different people groups and countries should work? Can't you imagine something different? Can't you envision something different? And he's still telling us that today.

Tim, what an absolute pleasure to chat with you about one of my favorite people. This has just been excellent. You know, I'm telling you, St. Francis, a real guy, someone that I genuinely, you know, he's my personal Roman Empire. I'm always just staring out the window thinking about St. Francis. What can I say? If I stare out the window, I see the statue of St. Francis in my neighbor's yard. And so it's easy to do that. So I keep thinking about him. I mentioned at the beginning the obligatory nursery school production of the Nativity, which I think most of us will have been a part of at some point in our infancy. So just as a little added Yuletide treat, I've been asking some of our team here at Gaul Medieval for their memories of the time they first trod the boards in a nativity play and the impact it had on their lives. This is Anne-Marie. I'm the senior producer on Gone Medieval.

And when I was in primary school, I was very small and I played an angel in the nativity play. I had a wire coat hanger wrapped around my head, which was wrapped itself with itchy, itchy tinsle to make a halo. And I think I must have been really, really tiny because I was put in a big white pillowcase with a cold cut in the top of my head and in the sides of my arms. And I was sat on the cold hall floor and given a triangle to hit with abandon. And I think I did. Merry Christmas. This is Rob. I'm a producer here on Gone Medieval. I will never forget my first stage appearance in a nativity play. It was probably my first stage appearance ever. I was Joseph. And at one point, I had to walk across the stage with Mary to get to the stable. What I didn't know is that one of the little angels was sitting behind the curtain with her legs out in front of her. So as I promenaded with Mary across the stage, thinking only, of my lines that I was about to recite, I tripped over the legs of the angel and fell flat on my face

in front of a packed village hall full of mums and dads. This was also my first lovy tantrum. I ripped the towel from off my head and threw it onto the ground and refused to continue. My mum had to come up on stage and persuade me to carry on the performance. I still have a photograph of that nativity scene with me, teary-eyed, no headdress, ruined the day I ever agree to be Joseph. Hi, I'm Joseph. I'm one of the assistant producers on Gone Medieval. And my stand-out childhood memory of a nativity was that I so longed to be cast as my namesake, Joseph, in the year three nativity at my school.

And I burst into tears when I found out that that was not the case, because I had been cast, in fact, as elf number four, definitely factually accurate, to hold a door open for the main cast. I have to say my main character energy was sincerely let down, and I haven't quite recovered. Hi there, my name is Amy and I Eric God Medieval. I remember my finest nativity moment, if you can go like that, was when we did an X-Factor version of the nativity. I'm not quite sure what St Francis would have thought of this,

But following a coin flip, I had lost out on the coveted role of Simon Cowell and instead was cast as Joseph. I had a real chip on my shoulder about this. In my role of Joseph, I had to get on stage and sing away in a manger as my X-factor talent. This was not dramatic enough for me, so I decided to sing it in the most operatic way possible. I have left out a key detail here, which is that I am absolutely terrible at singing. Really, really quite bad. And I can only imagine for all the unassuming parents, grannies and grandparents, sitting there. It was two minutes of auditory torment for anyone in attendance, and I'm sorry

for anyone that had to hear it. Hello, this is Matt Lewis. I remember my first nativity at school. I was definitely a shepherd because I have memories of a tea towel being belted onto my head so that it wouldn't slip off. And I seem to remember wearing a sheet around my waist and quite possibly being Topless. I'm not sure what was going on. There was also some recorder playing. It was back in the day when everybody at junior school played a recorder. So the nativity was accompanied by the piercing shrill of 20 really badly played recorders. So there you go. I was a shepherd. Thank you so much to our team for sharing. I myself was a shepherd in my nativity play. I can still actually remember the line. Check it out. Let us go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.

Obviously, this had great lasting and knock-on impacts for becoming a medieval historian later. I suppose I have had to spend a lot of time working with the Bible? I don't know, make of it what you will. Thanks once again to Professor Tim Larson. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentary including my recent film Joan of Arc by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval.

Until next time.