Genuflection

The early Christians used five different postures in their worship. They stood upright, or with the head and back bent forward, they knelt on both knees, and they prostrated themselves at length (prostrato omni corpore in terra; said of penitents at their reconciliation, Sacram. Gelas. lib. i. nn. xvi. xxxviii. in Liturg. Pom. Vet. Murat. torn. i. coll. 504, 550).

Standing had been the more common posture in prayer among the Jews (Neh. ix. 2-4; St. Matt.vi. 5; St. Luke xviii. 11, 13); but they knelt (2 Chron.vi. 13; Dan. vi. 10; Ezra ii. 5) and prostrated themselves also (Num. xiv. 5; Josh. v. 14 ; 1 Kings xviii. 39, &c.); and the first converts to the gospel imported their former customs into the church. Thus Stephen knelt in his last prayer (Acts vii. 60); St. Peter knelt when he besought God for the life of Dorcas (ix. 40); St. Paul, when at Ephesus he prayed for the elders(xx. 36); the brethren at Tyre and their wives and children knelt with him on the shore, when he left them to go to Jerusalem (xxi. 5). In the language of the same apostle, “bowing the knee” to God is synonymous with “praying” to him (Eph. iii. 14). The Christian knelt in prayer more than the unconverted Jew; and this was natural, for the greater knowledge of God produced a stronger sense of unworthiness, and thus led to more marked and frequent expressions of humility in drawing nigh to him. “The bending of the knees is as a token of penitence and sorrow” (Cassian. Coll. xxi. c.xx. p. 795).This was the recognized principle, and it ruled the occasions on which the posture was employed. “The knee,” says St. Ambrose, “is made flexible, by which, beyond other members, the offence of the Lord is mitigated, wrath appeased, grace called forth” (Hexaemeron, lib.vi. c. ix. n. 74).

Before we proceed it should be explained that the early church made no distinction in language between “kneeling” and “prostration.” It is evident that men did not kneel upright, but threw themselves more or less forward, so that the posture might have either name. Sometimes indeed they so supported themselves by putting their hands or arms on the ground, that “kneeling” was a position of rest compared with standing. Thus Cassian complains that some western monks, when prostrate on the ground, “often wished that same bowing of the limbs (which he expressly calls genu flectere) to be prolonged, not so much for the sake of prayer as of refreshment” (Instil, lib. ii. c. 7). The same inference may be drawn from the fact that the third class of public penitents were indifferently called kneelers or prostrators, were said either genu flectere, or se substernere. Thus in a canon made at Neocaesarea in Pontus about A.D. 314, we read, can. v., “Let a catechumen.... who has fallen into sin, if he be a kneeler, become a hearer.” Similarly the eighty-second canon of the so-called fourth council of Carthage held in 398: “Let penitents (the prostrators were especially so called) kneel even on days of relaxation.” But the same class were far more frequently described as prostrators. For example, in the eleventh canon of Nicaea, a.d. 325, it is decreed that certain offenders “shall be prostrators for seven years.” (Comparecan. xii. ; Cone. Anyr.cann. iv. v. &c.; Greg. Thaum. viii. ix.; Basil, ad Amphiloch.lvi. lvii. &c. ; and many others.) A more direct piece of evidence comes from the 7th century. Pseudo-Dionysius (De Eccles. Hierarch. c. v. sed. iii. § 2, torn. i. p. 364) says that “the approach to the Divine altar and the prostration (of candidates for holy orders) intimates to all who are admitted to priestly functions that they must entirely submit their personal life to God, from whom their consecration comes,” &c.; whereupon his scholiast Maximus, A.D. 645, explains “prostration” to mean “kneeling” (p. 375). So in the West, as late as the 9th century, in the same canon,” fixis in terrnm genibus” and “humiliter in terram prosterni”(Cone. Turon. A.D. 813, can. 37) are employed to describe the same posture. Other indications of similar usage will be observed in some passages below.

Kneeling or prostration was probably the general posture of the early Christians in prayer not regulated by public authority. Thus Clemens Romanus, in a general exhortation, “Let us fall down before the Lord, and beseech Him with tears,” &c. (Epist. i. ad Cor. c. 48). When St. Ignatius prayed for the churches before his martyrdom, it was “cum genuflexione omnium fratrum”. Hermes represents himself, before his first vision, “kneeling down and beginning to pray to God and confess his sins” (lib. i. vis. i. § 1). Hegesippus, A.D. 170, relates that St. James the Just “used to enter the temple alone, and to be found lying on his knees” (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. lib. ii. c. xxiii.). He adds that his knees from continual kneeling became callous like those of a camel. When Eusebius relates the story of the Melitine legion in the Marcomannic war, about 174, he says of the Christian soldiers, “They put their knees on the ground, as our custom is in prayer” (Ibid. lib. v. c v.).Tertullian, having referred to the same event some sixteen years after its occurrence, asks, “When have not even droughts been driven away by our kneeling and fastings?” (Ad Scapulam, c. iv.).We read in the Life of St. Cyprian, by Pontiush is deacon, that on his way to death he “knelt on the earth, and prostrated himself in prayer to God” (Vita Opp. praetixa). Eusebius tells us that Constantine the Great used “at stated times every day, shutting himself up in secret closets of his palace, there to converse alone with God, and falling on his knees to ask importunately for the things whereof he had need (Vita Constant, lib. iv. c xxii.). In his last illness, “kneeling on the ground, he was a suppliant to God,” &c. (Ibid. c. lxi.). Gregory Nazianzen, speaking of his sister’s habits of devotion, mentions “the bowing of her knees become callous, and as it were grown to the ground” (Orat. viii. § 13. Compare St. Jerome in Epist. ad Marcellam de Asella). Augustine, relating a miraculous answer to prayer in the healing of a sick person, says, “While we were fixing our knees and laying ourselves on the ground (terrae incumbentibus) in the usual manner, he flung himself forward, as if thrown heavily down by someone pushing him, and began to pray,”&c.(De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. c. viii. § 2). Elsewhere the same father, speaking of private prayer, says, “They who pray do with the members of their body that which befits suppliants, when they fix their knees, stretch forth their bands, or even prostrate themselves on the ground” (De Cura pro Mortuis, c. v.). Only in this last passage, it will be observed, are kneeling and prostration distinguished from each other.

But the early Christians knelt or prostrated themselves as each chose, in the stated common worship of the church also. Thus Arnobius:— “To Him (i.e., Christ) we all by custom prostrate ourselves: Him with united (collatis) prayers we adore” (Adv. Gent. lib. i. c. 27). Epiphanius: “The church commands us to send up prayers to God without ceasing, with all frequency, and earnest supplications, and kneeling on the appointed days, by night and in the day, and in some places they celebrate synaxes even on the sabbath,” &c. (De Fide, § 24). St. Jerome says that it is according to “ecclesiastical custom to bend the knee to Christ” (Comm. in Isai. c. xlv.v. 23). St. Chrysostom (Horn, xviii. in 2 Cor. viii. 24), of the celebration of the Holy Communion :— “Again, after we have shut out from the sacred precincts those who cannot partake of the Holy Table, there must be another kind of prayer, and we all in like manner lie on the floor, and all in like manner rise up.” We understand this better on a reference to the liturgy in the so-called Apostolical Constitutions. There we find (lib. viii. c ix. Coteler. tom. i. p. 396) that the “first prayer of the faithful” was said by all kneeling, the deacon crying out, “Let us, the faithful, all kneel.” During the rest of the liturgy all stood.

At other times of service the rule was for all to kneel in prayer, except on Sundays and between Easter and Whitsuntide. Few customs are more frequently mentioned by early writers, and none perhaps more frequently said to be derived from the age of the apostles. The earliest witness is Irenaeus, in a fragment of his work on Easter preserved in the “Questions and Answers to the Orthodox,” Quant.115, ascribed to Justin Martyr. Irenaeus traced it to the apostles. In answer to a question respecting the reason and origin of the custom, the latter writer says,” Since it behoved us always to remember both our own fall into sins and the grace of our Christ through which we have arisen from the fall, therefore our kneeling on the six days is a sign of our fall into sins, but our not kneeling on the Lord’s day is a sign of the rising again, through which, by the grace of Christ, we have been delivered from our sins and from death, their due, now itself put to death.”Ibid. Other witnesses are Tertullian, speaking both of Sunday and the paschal season (De Cor. Mil. c. iii. ; similarly, De Orat. c. xxiii.); Peter of Alexandria, a.d. 301, can. xv. of Sunday only. The council of Nicaea, 325, both of Sunday and the days of Pentecost, can. xx. ; St. Hilary, also of the “Week of Weeks” and the Lord’s day both (Prolog, in Psalm.§ 12), who refers it to the apostles. His expression is, “No one worships with his body prostrated on the ground.” Epiphanius, also of both (De Fide, § 22). St. Basil, of both, as an apostolical tradition (De Spiritu Sancto, c. lxvi., al. xxvii.).St. Jerome, likewise of both (Dull, contr. Luciferianos, c. iv.); and again, of the fifty days, in Prooem. m Ep. Ad Eph., “ We neither bend the knee nor bow ourselves to the ground.”St. Augustine, after giving the Scriptural reason, says, “On this account both are fasts relaxed [during the paschal quin quagesima] and we pray standing, which is a sign of the resurrection, whence also the same is observed at the altar on all Lord’s days.” (Ep. lv. ad Januar.c. xv. n. 28. Comparec xvu. n. 32.) From St. Maximus of Turin, a.d. 422, we learn the same facts and the reason (Horn.iii. De Pentec). Cassian, a.d. 424, mentions the restriction on kneeling at those times (fnstit.lib. ii. c. xviii.; Colkit.xxi. c. xx.). In the collection of canons put forth by Martin, a Pannonian by birth, but bishop of Bracarain Spain, a.d. 560, the same prohibition occurs, borrowed from a Greek or oriental source (can.Ivii.). His words are, “non prostrati, nec humiliati.” The 90th canon of the Trullan council, held at Constantinople in 691, forbids kneeling” from the evening entrance of the priests to the altar on Saturday until the next evening on the Lord’s day.”The council does not mention the longer period, and its object seems to have been merely to settle the hours at which the observance should begin and end.

From the fact that the 20th canon of Nicaea is not found in the abridgement of canons by Rurfinus (Hist. Ecct. lib. x. c. v.), nor in an ancient codex supposed to be the authorized collection of the church of Rome, Quesnel (Diss.xii., at the end of St. Leo’s Works, c. v.) supposed that the custom of not kneeling on Sunday, &c. was never received at Rome. See Routh, Opuscula, tom. ii. p. 444, or Reliquiae Sacrae, torn. iv.p. 75, ed. 2. We find, however, that the prohibition was enforced in the dominions of the Frankish princes after they had imposed the Roman office on their subjects. Those times were excepted from the general order for kneeling at prayer made by the third council of Tours, a.d. 813, can. 37. It was forbidden by a capitulary of Louis the Godly, A.D. 817 (Capit. Keg. Franc, torn. ii. col. 586, cap. Ii.) during “the Pentecost week.” Rabanus Maurus, also, at Mentz, a.d. 847, says, as if vouching for a present fact, “On those days the knees are not bent in prayer.” “On the Lord’s day we pray standing” (De fnstit. Cler. lib. ii. cc. 41-2). It is very improbable, therefore, that the custom was not known and observed at Rome.

In all the ancient liturgies except the Roman, if, indeed, that be an exception (see Scudamore’s Notitia Eucharistica, p. 579), the bishop gave a blessing before the communion. In all but the Clementine this was preceded by a monition from the deacon: e.g., in St. James and St. Basil, “Let us bow down our heads unto the Lord;” in St. Chrysostom, “Bow down your heads unto the Lord” (Liturg. PP., pp. 32, 66, 102); in St. Mark, “Bow your heads to Jesus Christ” (Renaud. tom. i. p. 160); in the Mozarabic, “Humiliate vos benedictioni” (itissale, Leslie, pp. 6, 246); in a Roman Ordo, earl) , but of uncertain date, “Humiliate vos ad benedictionem” (Ord. vi. S 11, Mus. Hal. torn. ii. p. 75). Several liturgies had a benediction after the communion also, for which the people bowed themselves. In some, indeed, the deacon here repeated his direction. See St. James (Lit. PP. p. 39); the Greek Alexandrine of St. Basil and of St. Cyril (Renaud. torn. i. pp. 85, 125). In Egypt, for this reason, benedictions were usually called “Prayers of Inclination,” or “Of Bowing the Head” (Renaud. u. s. pp. 35, 36, 50, 77, &c).The same gesture, similarly bidden by the deacon, was employed in other parts of the service. See St. James, u. s. p. 9, and Renaud. u. s. pp. 77, 79,105, &c. In particular, the catechumens bowed while the prayer proper to them was said before their dismissal. Thus the deacon, in St. Basil and in St. Chrysostom: “Ye catechumens, bow down your heads unto the Lord” (Lit. PP., pp.48, 87). The Malabar: “Incline your heads for the laying on of hands, and receive the blessing” (Hist. Eccl. Malab. Raulin,p. 304).

Two sermons of Caesarius, bishop of Aries, A.D. 602, illustrate our subject, as regards the habits of the people, in a graphic manner:— “I entreat and admonish you, dearest brethren, that I as often as prayer is said by the clergy at the altar, or prayer is bidden by the deacon, ye faithfully bow, not your hearts only, but your bodies also; for when I often, as I ought, and heedfully take notice, as the deacon cries, ‘Let us bend our knees,’ I see the greater part standing like up-right columns.” “Let it not be grievous to him, who from some weakness cannot bend his knees, either to bow his back or incline his head.” Again: “In like manner I admonish you of this, dearest brethren, that as often as the deacon shall proclaim that ye ought to bow yourselves for the benediction, ye faithfully incline both bodies and heads; because the benediction, though given to you through man, is yet not given from man.” (Serm. Caez. Ixxxv.§§1,5; Sim. lxxxiv.§§ 1, 2.).

The priest himself often inclined his head during the prayers. (See St. James, u. s. pp. 7,13, 17, &c, and St. Mark, u. s. pp. 150, 153.) Many observances of this kind are lost to us from the want of rubrics in the ancient liturgies, or from their incompleteness. This is especially the case with those of the West; but there is one Ordo of the age of Charlemagne in which the priest is directed to say the prayer in spiritu humilitatis “bowed before the altar.” (Martene, Ik Ant. Eccl. Kit. lib. i. c iv. art. xii. ord. v.).We might here also cite the Mozarabic and Milanese missals, if the antiquity of their rubrics were not generally uncertain.

From pseudo-Dionysius we learn that while bishops and priests at their ordination knelt on both knees, deacons knelt on one only (De Eccl. Hier. c t. § H. torn. i. p. 364).

William Smith & Samuel Cheetham, “A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,” Volume I (London: John Murray, 1875), 723-726.