| Il Presepe: The Tradition of Crèches |
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Part 1: Multinational Linguistic Roots
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"I met the creator of the crèche, Luigi Signore, "maestro presepaio di Napoli"; He has been setting up this nativity for almost two decades."
XAYMARA1
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Christmas in Italy has many traditions, one of them being the crèche. Though now primarily used to denote the Nativity scene, "crèche" originally had the same limited meaning as "manger." Manger in strict usage—though today also used for the Nativity scene—actually refers to the trough or open box used for livestock feed in which the Infant Jesus rests.
Both crèche and manger entered English from the French, but beyond that, their ancestries differ, reflecting something of the history of the French language as a whole. French, a Roman–derived language, is descended from the popular Latin of ancient Roman soldiers and settlers who dominated the area now known as France. Mandeoire—the present form of the French word for manger—derives from the Latin verb, mandere, to chew.
In contrast the word crèche springs from a German cousin. In the vocabularies of some Romance languages, there are a number of words of Germanic origin. These words, many having to do with agriculture, descended from the languages of the Germanic tribes who conquered much of the Roman territory, including France. Crèche is one such word. Were its first letter not "c" but "k," its German forebears would be more evident.
During the Middle Ages, the words crèche and manger spread from France to England. In its turn, English, a language of AngloSaxon or Germanic tribes, contributed its own relative, crib, to the terms, crèche and manger. As expected, all three words have come to describe the Nativity scene.
Interestingly, although Italian, another Romance language, includes the words, mangiatoia and greppia—relatives of manger and crèche/crib respectively, Italians use neither word to denote the Nativity model. They use instead "il presepe", a descendent of the Latin praesaepe (the form "il presepio" also exists; in both cases the plural is "i presepi"). Despite the seemingly different word, presepio has some equivalence with the others. In the ancient word, a combination of prae, "in front," and saepire, "to enclose," meant, among other things, a manger or stall.
Next page > History and Tradition in Italy > Page 1, 2, 3
