800年前，1223年的聖誕節之夜，亞西西的方濟各在格雷喬小鎮的山中森林舉行了一場耶誕彌撒，這或許是第一次有人把耶穌的誕生再現出來。因此，方濟各被公認為是耶穌誕生場景（Nativity scene）的發明者。在其發明幾年後，耶穌誕生的場景不論是以神聖的表現方式，或是以立體雕像的呈現手法，皆於天主教的傳統裡扎根，使用各種大小的雕像代表道成肉身奧秘的主要角色。在亞西西安放聖人遺骸的教堂裡，有一個記錄他生平的典藏壁畫，其創新的風格更影響未來至少一個世紀的藝術史。喬托的藝術充滿強烈的情感色彩，成功地營造出立體空間的幻覺，讓觀賞者重溫當時於格雷喬小鎮所呈現的聖誕夜場景，並且從中再次感受這奧蹟所帶來的情感。但這座小鎮於洞穴呈現的馬槽場景和喬託的版本之間，有一個地點的改變，也就是馬槽從洞穴裡轉換到一座哥德式大教堂裡。這樣的轉變表明，耶穌誕生場景在發明後不久就進入了教堂，並且不再是方濟各傳記中只出現過一次的單一事件。透過對各種來源的分析，不論是從福音書到方濟各傳記的作者，或是中世紀歷史學家到藝術史，在這篇文章中，筆者試圖解釋耶穌誕生場景的起源、它的意義，以及方濟各傳記作者是如何描述的。首先是托馬索‧達塞拉諾（Tommaso da Celano）然後是聖博納文圖爾（san Bonaventura），最後是馬槽如何在巴迪（Bardi）祭壇畫中首次出現，最後出現在亞西西聖方濟各大教堂的喬托壁畫系列裡。因此，這將是一次多學科之旅，其目的是深入了解義大利的文化和傳統的面向。
800 years ago, on Christmas night in 1223 in Greccio, Francis of Assisi staged, perhaps for the first time, during a mass celebrated in a forest on a mountain, a sacred representation of the nativity of Jesus. For this reason, Francis is considered the inventor of the Nativity scene. A few years after its invention, the Nativity scene entered Christian tradition both in its form of sacred representation and in the plastic version, with statues of various sizes representing the protagonists of the Mystery of the Incarnation. In Assisi, in the church that houses the saint’s remains, there is a cycle dedicated to his life characterized by a stylistic innovation that would influence the history of art for at least a century to come. Giotto’s art, with its strong emotional charge, manages to give the illusion of three-dimensional space and to revive in the observer the emotions aroused by the Christmas night of Greccio. But between the cave of Greccio and Giotto’s version, there is a change of location for the setting of the famous episode. From a cave, it moves to a Gothic Basilica. This shift demonstrates how shortly after its invention, the Nativity scene entered the church and did not remain an isolated episode that occurred only once in Francis’s biography in a cave. Through the analysis of various sources, from the Gospels to the biographers of Francis, from medieval historians to the history of art, in this article I aim to explain the origin of the Nativity scene, its significance, how it was described by Francis’s biographers, first by Tommaso da Celano and then by St. Bonaventure, and finally how it is represented in the Bardi panel first and in the Giottesque cycle of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. It is therefore a multidisciplinary journey aimed at understanding this aspect of Italian culture and tradition in depth.