A “Segen” is a prayer genre that combines words, gestures, and formulas to bring about a positive end such as divine grace, desired happiness, or protection from harm. Commonly translated as “blessing,” it is more than just cheery words or good wishes. It exists as a multi-dimensional “act” that can create good. Each element – words said, gesture properly performed, and multiple iterations – contributes to its successful deployment. A Segen is effficacious through utterance when properly performed. I always think of them as “an active saying”: something that calls on a human agent to take on its power. It is a speech act with material consequences.
PRAYER TYPE
A Segen differs from a Collect, which belongs to the formal liturgy, and from prayers of petition (Gebet, Bitte), which structure ordinary devotional speech. It can be recognized by its formal stability – since the wording matters, variation is limited. It’s also inherently performative speech. It does something when spoken: it protects, heals, averts danger, prepares for death. If you’re traveling? There’s a Segen for that. Childbirth? Likewise. Is it time for a transition, say, to get out of bed, or go to sleep? There is a Segen that will suit your purpose. Danger, uncertainty, the evils of pestilence? The warding function of the Segen makes it a deployable ritual technology for navigating risk, transition, and moments of vulnerability. They fit into the rhythms of the everyday.
Because
it is a prayer of “doing,” it is suitable for a variety of
contexts, be they lay, domestic, or paraliturgical. Segen often
occupy spaces later described as “folk,”
since apotropaic functions
and familiar protective formulas
are common. Warding off evil and thereby doing good in the world:
Segen were thought to do useful work. And, the prayer workers,
importantly, did not need to be clerical. Lay folk could use them,
and so could monastics. In memorial contexts, like the ones
I’m working on, a Segen can function as a spoken intervention on
behalf of souls, even when no mass is present.
One of
the reasons I’m drawn to Segen as a category is that they have a
devotional logic that prioritizes outcome over explanation. They show
a world in which prayer is not only expressive but operative.
In other words: a Segen is not just a blessing, but a technology
of care and control, especially potent in contexts of illness, death,
and remembrance.
THE SEGEN ITSELF
To take up a specific case, here is “A Protective Segen anchored in the Mass,” as its label tells us, this one a sixteenth century prayer from a Thalbach prayerbook, ÖNB Cod. 11750, fols. 20v-21r.
Line numbers are for ease of reference; bold is to highlight the formulaic elements of the prayer. This is the first half of a two-part prayer.
Ein schoner segenn bei der heilligen Mäß
HErr ich bevilch mich dir in alle die
heillige wortt die alle Priieſter ſprech
enn von dem da du in verwanndlet haſt vorrden
brott in fleiſch vnnd in blutt. Herr ich beuilch
mich heut vnd allweg in die heillige gottheitt
vnd in die heillige menſchhait vnnd in die heil
lige Drÿfalltigkeitt vnnd in dem heillige seel
deinem leib / Jn dein heillige gegenwertigkeit
in deinem heilligenn fronleichnam deinem
heilligen fleisch deinem heilligen blutt beuilch
ich mich mit flaiſch vnnd blut mit leib vnd ſeel
mit zeittlicher eher vnnd allen meinen gelider
in deinen heilligenn frid / dz du mich beſchur⸗
meſt vnd behuetest vor allem ybel vor waffen
vor gefenckhnüs vor gesigung [=Geißigung] vor werffenn
Schüessenn vor waſſer vor Zauberey ehren
abſchneidenn vor feur / vor allem dem dz du er⸗
inneſt in deiner weiſzheit dz mir ſchaden mag
an leibvnnd seel an allen zeittlichenn dingen
vnd ehren: Behuetest mich herr durch dein
grundlose barmhertzigkeit, durch dein manig
faltige erbernd Guettiger herr ich bürg mich
in die verborgne tugent, als sich die hoche gott,
heitt verbarg indte krancke menſchheut vnd
als du dich uerbirgeſt in des Pruësters hennd
indem ſchein des brotts warer gott vnnd mēſch
Herr ich bürg mich heüt vnnd Jmer in deine
heillige fünnff wunden / trennck mich mitt
deinem roſen farbenn blutt: dein heillige dri-
ualltigkeit ſei mir ein ſchüllt vnnd ſchürm,
vor allem meinenn feinden / deine heillige
hennd seÿenn heütt v̈ber mich/ deine heillige
füess seind heut vor mir dein heilliger mund
beſcharme mich heütt / fruſch vnnd geſünd
vnnd vor allem vnglückh. Amen.
This is a protective, performative Segen that anchors itself in the Mass in order to borrow its power. The Mass is the source of authority, but the Segen is the mechanism by which the devout sister will deploy it. Flesh, blood, body; body, blood, flesh: this is God made man to act as armor. He can protect her without being consumed.
A TRANSLATION
1 Lord I commend myself to you in all the |
HOW THE SEGEN WORKS
The Thalbach speaker who reads this prayer starts here with an act of self-enclosure (ll. 1-13): as devotee, she uses the repeated formula “ich bevilch mich” (I commend myself) to place herself inside sacred realities. The words of consecration, the reality of Christ’s body and blood, the Trinity, the holy peace: these are the space of devout devotion that she is actively choosing to inhabit. Moreover, she treats the Eucharistic presence as protective substance, not through communion and consumption, but through observation and modeling. His embodiment (ll. 8-10) is a model for hers (ll. 11-13).
The Segen here has a broad apotropaic scope, from the abstract to the concrete (ll. 13-20). She is to be protected from evil, dishonor and defeat, and more tangibly from weapons, imprisonment, shooting. Water and fire, sorcery, and “everything that you know in your wisdom may harm me”: God’s protective shield is all-encompassing life protection: bodily, social, legal, and moral. A prayer that names Zauberey, magic, is almost never a neutral “Gebet”; it is operating in a world where spoken formulas are understood to counter spoken threats.
The Segen shifts from protection to hiddenness: the hidden virtue (die verborgne tugent), the hiddenness of Christ’s nature as frail human, and the hiding of the eucharistic wonder in the Priest’s hand. She entrusts herself to what is hidden; faith does not need to see to be lived. This is a sacramental theory of invisibility, and to my eye touches on what Maaike de Haardt terms the quotidian aspect of faith:
They [daily behaviors and spatial practices, aka the quotidian] reveal the how of belief, much more than the what of belief, the subject of the ministers of belief. Besides the ethical and political choice implicated in this approach, there is yet another important dimension, which I have called a sense of presence, or aesthetic presence, sacramental presence, or incarnational presence.
De Haardt describes the way in which sensorial abundance -- sensual knowledge of touching, tasting, smelling – become a way of being -- of inhabiting the everyday sacred. For the Thalbach sister, her presence in church, with incense and candles and ritual action observed intently, but not intimately, is sufficient to call to mind the divine.
The Segen ends by mapping Christ’s body to the speaker’s body. Hands above, feet before, mouth protecting, wounds enclosing. We have here somatic ritual geometry. The body is reoriented inside of Christ’s body, not so much improved as guarded. Through the Segen, she achieves safety.
SEGEN AS RITUAL OF PROTECTION
In articulating the segments of the prayer, the devotee generates her own ritual of protection from all ills, based on and parallel to that of the formal Mass on which it depends. By invoking the correct wording, by using the Segen in the correct ritual space (at Mass, in the presence of the host), and by invoking the correct theological anchors, she creates a sort of spiritual insurance policy that will protect her, body and soul. This shows that a Segen is not marginal or “folk-like” in opposition to theology. Rather, it is orthodox theology operationalized for protection and survival.
The first half of the Segen, then, carries the devotee on a multi-staged spiritual journey, where her act of commending herself results through transformation to her being mapped to Christ’s body, secure in the warded protection of Christ’s love:
Commend self >> Eucharist >> Protection >> Hiddenness >> Mapped to Christ’s body
As we will see in a future post, part 2 of this Segen provides a layered ritual deployment of these same themes -- protection, enclosure, and authorization remain central, but in part 2, the physicality of the prayer is reinforced through keyed moments of signing the cross.
WORK CITED:
Maaike de Haardt, “Incarnational presence: Sacramentality of everyday life and the body or: unsystematic skeptical musings on the use of a central metaphor,” in Envisioning the Cosmic Body of Christ, edited by Aurica Jax and Saskia Wendel (Routledge, 2019): 114-125.
Note: This post presents a working transcription, translation, and preliminary analysis in advance of a planned journal article.
