CONGRESS CANCELED Bending the Knee: Proskynesis, Genuflection, and Bowing Rituals in the Medieval World II
Description
Various pre-modern cultural traditions managed interactions between members of different social strata by prescribing performative displays of supplication and humility. Perceptible and formalized movements of the body, often performed publicly in courtly and religious settings, provided a symbolic visual vocabulary for interaction. They consisted of different extensions and contractions of joints and muscles, and often took the form of proskynesis, kowtow, genuflection, and bowing, as well as other gestures. These widely persistent social rituals represented the nature of the polarized relationship between master and slave, ruler and ruled, or superior and inferior in medieval cultures. They also served as forms of social currency; those acknowledging their superior’s authority and power were rewarded with social recognition. Paradoxically, bowing rituals could also result in one’s own exaltation through an elevation to a higher societal or spiritual ranking. Depictions and acts of genuflection or proskynesis were not limited to imperial contexts. Lowering the body as a means of elevating the soul was fundamental to monastic practice in Christian, Islamic, and many other cultures.
Ali Asgar Alibhai and Erika Loic
CONGRESS CANCELED Bending the Knee: Proskynesis, Genuflection, and Bowing Rituals in the Medieval World II
Schneider 1275
Various pre-modern cultural traditions managed interactions between members of different social strata by prescribing performative displays of supplication and humility. Perceptible and formalized movements of the body, often performed publicly in courtly and religious settings, provided a symbolic visual vocabulary for interaction. They consisted of different extensions and contractions of joints and muscles, and often took the form of proskynesis, kowtow, genuflection, and bowing, as well as other gestures. These widely persistent social rituals represented the nature of the polarized relationship between master and slave, ruler and ruled, or superior and inferior in medieval cultures. They also served as forms of social currency; those acknowledging their superior’s authority and power were rewarded with social recognition. Paradoxically, bowing rituals could also result in one’s own exaltation through an elevation to a higher societal or spiritual ranking. Depictions and acts of genuflection or proskynesis were not limited to imperial contexts. Lowering the body as a means of elevating the soul was fundamental to monastic practice in Christian, Islamic, and many other cultures.
Ali Asgar Alibhai and Erika Loic