Tradition attributes to Saint Francis the merit of introducing the Presepio to the vast cycle of Christmas customs, when, at Christmas 1223 in the village of Greccio near Assisi, as we are told by St Bonaventure, he took a manger and filled it with hay, tied an ass and an ox near it and with a crowd of people from all over the neighbouring countryside attended the celebration of Mass in front of the crib.
However, in Greccio there were none of the figures of the Nativity in Bethlehem, none of the characters, Mary, Joseph, the Child, so that rather than a Presepio, the crib built at Greccio can be seen as a development of Christmas liturgical ceremonies, which reconnect with the mysteries, sacred dramas in the vulgate having as their subject episodes of the Old and New Testaments, and dialogued and dramatised lauds, expressions of lay religiosity of the Confraternities, diffused at that time especially in Umbria and Tuscany. From the 14th century onwards these religious representations became ever more lavish, with the addition of mobile puppets, that some consider the forefathers of our present day crib-figures.
The progressive degeneration of liturgical drama, ever more heathen if not evil, led the Church to prohibit them at the Council of Trier (Germany) and to encourage in their place a static re-figuration of the Nativity, and therefore the Presepio, contributing to its ulterior diffusion.