he word
“presepio” derives from
the latin “praesepe” which
means manger or crib and has it’s origin
in the gospel according to st. Luke
where it says that, Jesus being born, Mary “reclinavit eum in
praesepio”.The entire episode related by st.Luke is based on the
manger so it is advisable to read the following text
with particular attention : “factum
etc......
In this story we find precise quotes regarding the
manger, of the
Baby wrapped in swaddling-clothes between Mary and Joseph, of the
angels singing words of praise, of the angelo that announced the
great event to the
shepherds during the night, to the shepherds making their way to
Bethlehem. In this part of the gospel, written by st. Luke between 65
and 70, we do not find any mentioning of
the adoration by the three Wise men.
St.
Matthew though
spoke at great length about them in the original aramaic text
which was published between the
1940’s and 1950’s. Here is
st.matthew’s story: Cum ergo etc…
At this point we ask ourselves : why is it that when speaking of
the christmas crib nativity scene we find the grotto quoted more
often than the stable ? Why do we hear about the ox and the
donkey when they not mentioned at all in the gospels ? Where are the
names of Melchior, Belshazzar and Caspar
which do not appear in st. Matthew’s tale of the three wise
men’s trip? And why does the traditional christmas crib always
represent the wise men as wearing crowns? Lastly, why is Joseph depicted
as holding a flowering rod ? These questions are answered by the
apocryph gospels i.e. those
scriptures written in the
first centuries of the
cristian erawhich, even though giving details of the life and doctrine
of Christ, were not included by
the Church in the rules the books inspired because they were only
legends or deriving from sects. It
seems that the legendary gospels served no other
purpose than to
satisfy the pious curiosity of the first christians who desired to know
every little detail of the
lives of Jesus and the virgin Mary. They did not have bad intentions,
even quite encouraged on by
the words of st. John, the evangelist : <Jesus gave many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, but they have not been
written in this book>. Then also
: <There are
many more 
things Jesus did but if they were to be listed one by
one, i think the world would not be big enough to contain all the books
that would have to be written> ( John XX, 30, and XXI, 25).
Consequently , they felt they were almost authorized
by these statements to write
added details to the gospels.
The legendary gospels spoke mainly about the birth,
childhood and death
of Jesus. They are : the Gospel
according to St. James, or simply Book of James or Story of Mary’s
nativity; the Transitus
Mariae ( which tells of the death of the virgin Mary); the Story of
Joseph the carpenter, a text probably of the IV century written in coptic and in arabic, the original
version of which was perhaps greek.
Historians specialized
in western civilizations cannot avoid taking into consideration the
apocryph gospels, so Daniel-Rops writes : < they have , in fact, left
a deep impression in the costumes and
in the liturgy, in literature
and art>. A special attention must be paid to the study of crib
iconography because it contains important
data, in that
authentic elements of tradition could have been absorbed into
those texts. The Abbot Migne (1800-1875), the famous publisher of
“Patrologia”, wrote : <To ignore the Apocryph Gospels means to
renounce discovering the
origins of christian art>. They are the source from which, from the
extinction of paganism,
artists have been inspired by that large range of symbols
that the middle-ages then amplified. The
“Protovangelo” i.e. genesis 3. 14 , the Evangelo
of Nicodemo, the aurea Legend and the Speculum maius by Vincenzo
of Beauvais ( 
1264) ,the
philosopher –theologian and domenican priest,
in fact provided curious episodes of the life of the Virgin Mary
and the birth of and childhood of Jesus to artists and
men of faith of the past centuries.
In order to help the
reader understand the influence that
these texts had on antique christian art and in particular on the representation of the christmas crib, here
to follow are a few extractions from the texts of the Apocryph Gospels
(Massimo publishers, Milan 1979, third edition, texts chosen and
translated by F. Amiot).
