Christopher Howse

Away from the manger: the holy relics of Bethlehem

‘No crib for a bed,’ says ‘Away in a Manger’ rather puzzlingly, since a crib is a manger. ‘No one paid me much attention, lying on the hard stones, a young child in a crib,’ says God made Man in the Old English poem ‘Christ’. At the beginning of his prophecy, Isaiah declares: ‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.’

The crib as a manger lent its name to the whole Christmas caboodle of stable, ox, ass, Mary, Joseph and all the trimmings of magi and shepherds. Francis of Assisi was keen on building cribs that put the Christ Child in his surroundings, and the idea caught on.

But the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet was probably right about the Christ Child feeling hard stone, since the manger for feeding animals was no doubt in some limestone cave at Bethlehem. In the century after the life of Jesus, Justin Martyr made the first surviving reference to a cave. Not that the Jews of the time were troglodytes, but natural caves came in handy.

So if the fittings of the Bethlehem cave were stone, what did the Pope send to Bethlehem recently as a holy relic of the manger? I thought when I heard the news that it was the whole woodwork structure in which Jesus was reputed to have lain, perhaps a latticed receptacle to fit within a stone trough.

It turns out that the papal gift was no more than a thumb-sized bit of wood, mounted in a silver reliquary. It will be revered in the church of St Catherine, built against the ancient Church of the Nativity.

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