Star of Bethlehem

Baroque Woodcarvings - Neapolitan Crib Figures

Although the Church in the eighteenth century was losing its hold over the minds of scientists and philosophers, it was able to keep a grip on the imagination of simpler people by telling them the stories of their faith in a way which was easy for them to understand. The most important story, of course, was that of the birth of Christ; but to the peasants of southern Italy who knew nowhere but their own villages, it was useless to talk of inns in Bethlehem or the Roman governor of Judea. The Church therefore had local woodcarvers make figures, none more than a handspan high, of the Holy Family, dressed in the familiar clothes of the peasants' own time and place. The three shepherds who come to worship the newborn baby are obviously based on three local shepherds; the innkeeper who has no room is a grasping Neapolitan; and Herod and his soldiers massacring the innocents are dressed as Turks, the cruellest enemy of whom the peasants would have heard, or as Moslems, the arch-enemies of Christianity. There is no narration.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.