Medieval prayer was not just a matter of words – it was a full-bodied practice, shaped by movement, posture, and gesture. As Jean-Claude Schmitt observes, such “[g]estures do not derive their meaning from their form but from their social use, from the context in which they were carried out” (p. 133). That is, we understand the significance of certain ways of holding the body and arms from the space in which they occur, the person or persons carrying them out, and the framing activities in which they are embedded.
This post briefly explores three twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources that illuminate the role of gesture in Dominican prayer: Peter the Chanter’s reflections on movement in devotion, Humbert of Romans’ structured taxonomy of bows and prostrations, and the treatises on Saint Dominic’s own prayer postures.
Together, these perspectives reveal how physical expression was not only an outward sign of inner devotion but also a communicative act, shaping and reinforcing the experience of prayer for both the individual and the community.
Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) tells us that prayer is a continuous movement. Take, for instance, his praise of the French at the moment of transubstantiation in the mass:
these god-fearing men, I say, not only bend their head and kidneys but also remove all their hoods and caps from their heads, [and] prostrate themselves and fall on their face during the making and taking of the flesh and blood of Christ.
Four verbs in one short description: prayer for Peter is both active and sequential. Because of this, he considers gesture to be foundational for the act of praying. The positionality of the body matters in appropriately signaling the state of mind and spirit with which the petitioner approaches prayer. Here, Richard Trexler reminds us, we have submission postures. But to gesture, Peter reminds us, is an action, not an attitude. From a modern perspective, it’s a revelation of energy expended as well as engagement with the moment. Even when held in stasis – as with extended kneeling – the petitioner is putting physical energy into the act of prayer to supplement the verbal energy of the spoken prayer itself. Movement matters.
Trexler rightly points to the inconsistencies among the depictions as well as inconsistencies in Peter’s construction of the biblical authenticity for the seven gestures he articulates. Nevertheless, these “devote postures” are crafted to provide models of action in prayer. As Trexler summarizes,
Peter the Chanter knew that the most sophisticated reader would learn body motions more quickly through pictures, and he wanted clerks to then act out his seven modes of prayer in a fashion which would edify spectators. Depersonalized figures would teach clerks, whose ritual life would then be the "book of the simple" (Trexler, p. 110).
Humbert of Romans (1200-1277) agrees with Peter the Chanter, at least in part: gesture matters, and it is imitable. Humbert, however, is less taken with ideas of movement and more with its visual endpoints. He offers a gestural grammar that explore the patterns of bending bodies in the context of the liturgy. Humbert provides a six-fold matrix of bows (inclinationes), genuflections (genuflexiones), and prostrations (prostrationes):
In his assessment of Humbert’s discussion, scholar Dmitri Zakharine points out that prostrations were an extended form of genuflection – “an amplification of the genuflection in liturgical ceremony.” (Zakharine, p. 349). He notes, however, that all these gestures had communicative power: they meant something to the petitioner, and, equally, they meant something to those who viewed these gestures.
It’s not unlike the teenager, arms akimbo. There is an authority of attitude inherent in these gestures if we see them in their proper context. For that teen with attitude, we’re mere steps away from the eye roll and the snarky comment. For the prayer-giver, we are in an opposite space, one in which the attitude reinforces a petitioning stance in the adoratio of the liturgy.
And Saint Dominic (1170-1221) himself explored a variety of stances in his prayer, at least as recorded in the multiple copies of The Nine [Alt: Fourteen] Ways of Praying of St Dominic. As Schmitt explores in detail, the illustrations to the Dominican treatise give us a wide range of gestures that Dominic was thought to have modeled.
That passive voice is doing some important work, because while the treatises agree in their hagiographical intent, they disagree, at least in part, about which prayer gestures were important enough to include. As Schmitt puts it, “the saint’s gestures quickly escaped pre-established codification of the inclinations” (Schmitt, p. 133).
The discussions of Dominic’s prayer in the treatise make clear that the captured gestures illustrated in the treatise iconography are part of a broader gestural complex. Take Dominic’s act of reading “some book opened before him.” Schmitt quotes the treatise: “He venerated his book, inclined himself toward it, kissed it with love.” In other words, the saint responded emotively and acted out his impulses in a set of actions – kissing the book, but also covering his head with his hood, or turning away from the book as if overwhelmed by its content. (Schmitt, p. 133)
This is important, because, pace Schmitt, the images and texts “offered a type of practical manual, a guide where the images presented more accurately the description of the gestures and moreover, the movement to imitate” (Schmitt, p. 140). In other words, the wise viewer might use the image as a model, for there is an “imitability” between friar and saint, reinforced by the choice of the vernacular.
CONCLUSION
Given the differences in what they have to say, Peter, Humbert, and Dominic give us a rich view of medieval prayer gesture. For Peter the Chanter, the action is at the center of the gesture. These gestures reinforce the embodied nature of the petitioner, the life behind the words on the page or spoken into the air. For Humbert, the grammar of gesture is a central concern. He’s trying to think through the categories of meaningful acts, to give us the geometry of suitable self-abnegation, as the petitioner humbles him or herself before god. For Dominic, gesture is part of an almost theatrical construct, a staging in which bodily responses reinforce and make manifest the affective power of prayer.
Much like the implicit codes of modern body language, medieval prayer gestures carried with it meaningful information, shaping and being shaped by those who performed and witnessed them. Schmitt makes the point that prayer gestures were open to scrutiny by all – that one could see the forms of the prayer even if the words were only sub-vocal. Even in silence, the body spoke, making devotion visible to all who had eyes to see.
RESOURCES
Humbert of Romans. “Expositio super constitutiones fratrum praedicatorum.” In Opera Omnia, edited by Joachim Joseph Berthier, vol. 2: 160-167. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1888-1889.
Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “Between Text and Image: the Prayer Gestures of Saint Dominic.” History and Anthropology 1 (1984): 127-162.
Trexler, Richard C. “Legitimating Prayer Gestures in the Twelfth Century. The De Penitentia of Peter the Chanter.” History and Anthropology, 1 (1984): 97-126.
Zakharine, Dmitri. “Medieval Perspectives in Europe: Oral Culture and Bodily Practices.” In Body - Language - Communication, Volume 1, edited by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, Sedinha Tessendorf, pp. 343-364. Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 38,1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013.
