The rationale of gestures

in the West:
third to thirteenth centuries
JEAN-CLAUDE SCHMITT
The culture of the Middle Ages has sometimes been called a
'culture of gestures' or a 'gestural culture'. Such expressions have a
double meaning: first the movements and attitudes of the human
body played a crucial role in the social relationships of the past.
Second, medieval culture itself thought about its own gestures, and
indeed constructed a medieval theory of gestures.
According t o some historians, the weakness of literacy explains the
importance of gestures in the Middle Ages. Marc Bloch, for
example, pointed out the ritualization of feudal society, the
formalism that was expressed by gestures and words more than by
written records.' We would scarcely imagine today that a simple
gesture could possess legal power or could commit people more
efficiently than a written form drawn up by a notary and signed by
both parties. At least until the thirteenth century, however, when
cities and commercial activities began to develop rapidly and when
growing state bureaucracies helped t o spread literacy, gestures
were much more powcrful than such documents.
However, for t wo reasons I will not oppose 'gestural' culture
and 'literate culture' schematically. First, the Middle Ages always
knew both gestures and litcracy (as we do today), although the
balance between them changed from one century to the next and
from one social group t o the next. On the one hand, medieval
culture gave writing and reading an even greater emphasis since
they were rare and werc used to spread God' s Word, itself called
'Scripture'. For this reason literacy was for centuries monopolized
by the Church, by the clerics who werc accustomed t o write in
Latin. Second, nre should not forget that writing t oo was a kind of
gesture at a time whcn the only form of writing was writing by
hand."
Indeed, very few people could write and therefore commitment
had t o be made through ritual gestures, formal words, and
symbolic objects (a rcliquary, the host, a sword, etc.). Gestures
transmitted political and religious power; they made such trans-
mission public, known by all, and they gave legal actions a living
image, as for example when a lord received in his hand the homage
of his vassals or whcn n bishop laid his hand on the head of a newly
consecrated priest. Gestures bound together human wills and
human bodies.
In fact, the human body was of greatest importance in medieval
society and culture. The human being was thought of as double
consisting of a soul and a body, an invisible inside and a visible
outside linked by a dynamic relationship. Such a relationship was a
fundamental feature of all the medieval ideas about mankind,
space, social order, and cosmos. Gestures figured, or better,
embodied the dialectic between i n t ~ s and foris since they were
supposed t o express without the 'secret movements' of the soul
within.
However, the body was ambivalent. O n the one hand, it was
thought of as the 'prison of the soul', the servant of sin, an obstacle
on the way t o salvation. That negative judgement did not spare
gestures, especially when they seemed t o transgress the proper
limits imposed by ethics and social custom: those 'bad' gestures
were termed gesticulation^'.^
O n the other hand, salvation had t o be reached through the
The rationale of gestures in the West 61
body and especially by means of ritual gestures of charit
y
,
penance, and piety. For Christians (unlike dualist heretics), the
body was a sort of necessary evil that could be used positivel
y
. The
Bible, from Adam t o Christ, illustrated and taught all manner of
gestures - both sinful ones that bore the label of the Fall as well as
virtuous gestures that permitted the redemption of mankind.
Society itself was metaphorically thought of as a ' body' whose
'members' - the head, the arms, the sides, the belly, the legs, the
feet - represented the different social groups with their distinctive
functions and values, languages, signs, coats of arms, and also their
individual gestures. Lay people, monks and canons, knights and
merchants, scholars, made up different 'gestural communities'. In
such a society, there was little room for individuals: everyone
belonged t o an ordo, a word with a non-coincidental reference t o
thc ritual ordines of liturgy. Thus, society was strongly ritualized;
gestures permitted everyone t o confirm his belonging t o one
particular group. They also expressed hierarchies between the
social groups and, within each one, between different ranks and
dignities. Thus, all gestures had their importance: not just the most
solemn rituals (royal coronations, marriage, the mass), but all the
small gestures of ever
y
da
y
life such as making the sign of the cross
when entering a church, beginning t o eat, or facing danger.
A person was never alone while performing gestures. Even the
hermit in the desert (that is, the medieval forest) or the monk in his
cell acted at least under God' s omniscient 'eyes'. More commonly,
gestures were always performed towards sdmeone else - t o speak
or t o fight with, t o greet or t o challenge. Between individuals, and
between individuals and God, in order t o communicate or t o pray,
people continually made gestures that involved both their bodies
and their souls. They gave their gestures all the values of their faith
(in the double meaning of the medieval fides, secular homage and
religious belief ), all the symbolic values of their social rank, and all
the hopes of their life until and even after their death.
Therefore, we cannot doubt that the study of gestures, from the
most solemn t o the most ordinary and even unconscious, allows
the historian t o enter deeply into the functioning of medieval
society, its s
y
mbolic values, its ways of life, and its modes of
thought.
When historians today speak of medieval gestures, they cannot
62 Jcnn - Cl md e ScJmzitt
avoid coniparing them t o gestures of their own. Like ethnologists
working within other cultures, historians face societies different
from their own and realize that they have grown up and live in a
different 'gestural society'. Although we usually think that we are
using fewer o r more moderate gestures tlian our ancestors or our
neiglibours (the Italians as viewed by tlie French, the French by thc
Americans), in our own culture gestures fulfil crucial ideological
and practical functions. They serve obvious public and private
rituals and they are means of non-verbal conimunication. We make
more gestures tlian we realize.
However, gestures change from one place t o another and from
one time t o another. Some gestures may even disappear through
history and others may emerge. Some metapliorical expressions
such as ' to t hr ow down the gauntlet' or ' to take off one's hat'
remind us of past gestures that would no longer actually be
perforn~ed. For instance, we use the expression that the adniinis-
tration is ' making a gcsture' toward another country or toward
workers on strike, n~i t l i the hope that a limited concession may
have the same result as a more substantial (military or financial)
action. The expression is quite ambiguous. It shows that real
gestures no longer resolve social or diploniatic conflicts, but it also
indicates that we identify 'gesture' with almost nothing that is
material, just what me call a 'symbolic' act. Nevertheless, we notice
that such a symbolic act does produce something, that it has real
efficacy.
Thus, even nrlien there is no real gesture we remember and
underline t hc power of gestures, and not just tlie technical efficacy
of gestures of work o r ' body techniques' (the techniques du corps
studied by Marcel Mauss in his pioneering study)" but the
symbolic power of many gestures and rituals. And this is especially
true f or medieval culture.
Gestures, like words, belong t o an ephemeral world. Usually they
d o not leave any traces for historians. There are only a few
exceptions. For exaniple, by studying the shape or di4ctus of a
letter, paleographers can reconstruct the movement of tlie hand
T l ~ e rationale of gestures in the West 63
that drew it centuries earlier. Some sculptures or paintings also
disclose the technical gestures of the artists, the movements and
pressure of the hand. Bone deformations permit archaeologists t o
understand ancient modes of crouching. But usually historians do
not grasp anything but textual or iconographic representations of
gestures. These representations are of differing kinds.
Some texts simply mention isolated gestures but do not describe
them. We might know that King Art hur and his knights met t o eat,
but we do not know how they ate, how they held their knives or
moved their heads or their feet. Sometimes, we get better
descriptions. We know for instance how Charlemagne expressed
grief by pulling his heard and crying with an abundance of tears.'
Occasionally we even find a moral or aesthetic judgement or an
abstract thought about the meanings and social values of such
gestures.
However, unlike the anthropologist who can observe them
directly, in all such cases - from the merest mention t o the most
elaborate description - we can never reach the gestures themselves.
This means that we have t o take into account all of the biases, the
weight of vocabulary, and the ideologies that intrude between the
gestures, the texts, and ourselves.
This interference is equally present when we observe images.
Medieval art was essentially anthropomorphic. The human figure
was depicted everywhere, and invisible beings (God, the devil, the
angels) were likewise given a human figure. So there are countless
images of gestures. But such representations of gestures depend at
least as much on the s
p
ecific rules of figuration in medieval art as
on direct observation of gestures by the artists. To begin with, the
fixity of medieval images creates a huge problem. All the gestures
that were mere movement (for example blessing while making the
sign of the cross) had t o be frozen by the artist. But at what point?
The artist could choose t o emphasize the hand held up rather than
down, but he could not suggest the movement itself, its direction,
or its speed."
Dealing with literary or legal texts and with images, some
historians have attempted t o build up typologies of medieval
gestures according t o the parts of the body with which they were
concerned (gestures of the head, of the arms, of the hands, etc.) or
according t o the ~os s i bl e meanings of gestures (gestures of grief or
joy, of greeting, meeting, or leaving; gestures of respect, prayer,
homage, blessing, e t ~ . ) . ~ Many studies are more limited, referring
t o a single illuminated manuscript (for example, Eike von
Repgow's Sacl~senspiegel),%ne kind of gesture (gestures of prayer,
gestures of despair), or t o the work of one single artist (Giotto).'
My own purpose is neither to trace the history of one particular
gesture nor t o limit myself t o one particular piece of literary or
iconographic evidence, nor even to construct a typology or
dictionary of medieval gestures. I ask a more general question:
what actually constituted 'making a gesture' in the Middle Ages?
Ho w and by whom were gestures not only performed but also
thought about, classified, and figured? What cultural patterns,
what attitudes towards persons and the body, what social
relationships were expressed in all of these judgements? Was there
a medieval theory of gestures?
A large and diverse body of evidence including theological, legal,
literary, pedagogical, and medical texts; monastic rules and
customaries; liturgical ordines, vision narratives, treatises on
prayer and preaching, liturgical dramas; and mirrors of princes,
among others, may help answer such broad questions. As for
images, particularly helpful are series of pictures showing different
aspects of the same gesture which attempt t o suggest movement,
and, more generally speaking, express an attempt t o think of
gestures figuratively.
Altogether, it seems t o me that medieval ideas about gestures,
their functions, and their values may be summarized according to
three notions. First, the notion of exprrssivitj~. Gestures were
considered expressions of the inner movements of the soul, of
feelings, of the moral values of individuals. In the West this notion
belonged t o a very old tradition. From one age t o another it
acquired different connotations: ethical ones in antiquity or in the
Christian tradition, more psychological ones today when we
enquire into the physical expression of feelings. In the Middle
Ages, gestures seemed t o be the outer expression of the 'movements
The rationale of gestures in the West
65
of the soul', whereas the 'discipline' of gestures (drawn for instance
from a monastic rule) was supposed t o improve the soul.
A second axis consisted of what today we call non-verbal
communication. It has slowly emerged from the old tradition of
rhetoric inherited from pagan wisdom. But within Christianit
y
,
the symbolic values of the Word changed the balance between
speech and gestures, whereas the social conditions of public
communication were changing as well. Space and time shifted from
the agora and the ancient theatre t o the medieval pulpit. Also the
principal actors gesturing on the social stage evolved from the
rhetorician t o the priest, the teacher, or even jugglers.
The third axis was concerned with efftcacy, with its double
meaning: the practical efficacy of technical gestures (sawing,
moving, writing, etc.) and the symbolic efficacy of political or
sacramental rituals.
Expression, communication, efficacy: such issues did not remain
unchanged throughout the long Middle Ages. From late antiquity
until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gestures and their
medieval interpretations had a complex history. This history was
hardly linear, but showed successive attempts t o give gestures new
interpretations, new kinds of figurations, as well as t o impose on
them a tighter control. Such attempts were part of the elaboration
of new ideas about the body, the individual, the interactions
between social actors, and attitudes toward nature and the
supernatural. In short, since gestures involved both the individual
and society, the soul and the body, the human and the divine, the
observation of gestures became a laboratory for the new forms of
rationality that developed during the Middle Ages. This was
especially true at three different periods: late antiquity, the
'Carolingian Renaissance', and above all during the revival of an
urban civilization in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.
Late antiquity was a period of reception and transformation of
pagan representations of gestures and a time of important
innovations. From antiquity,'' the Middle Ages inherited many
gestures (for instance rhetorical gestures of declamatio, legal
gestures of dextrarum iunctio, the orans gesture of prayer) as well
as intellectual tools with which t o think and speak about gestures.
The words and notions of gestus, gesticulatio, motus, came from
antiquity along with their intellectual, moral, or scientific context:
the ethics of social behaviour; the art of rhetoric (whose fifth and
last part dealt with actio orpronuntiatio, the physical performance);
the medical enquiry about the body and its movements; and the
musical and n~athematical notions of harmony that ought t o rule
all movements of the body as well as the entire universe.
Christianity took up all of these notions, combining them with
other patterns inherited from the Bible. Thus gestures had t o fit
new social and religious models. The orator was no longer a r l ~et or
but a praying member of the faithful or a priest. After the Church
was born, clerics sought t o distinguish themselves from thc laity.
They wanted t o benefit from gestures of allegiance partly
borrowed from imperial ceremonial and they assunied that their
new dignity reflected these marks of respect from their own
persons ont o God. Augustinc played a key role for Christian
understanding of gestures, while defining them as conventional
signs malting communication possible between all beings, hunian
and supernatural, between man and God, the angels or the devil
(tracing here a distinction between 'superstitious' gestures and
legitimate gestures of prayer or sacramental gestures).
Typical of the Christian ethics of that time was the interiorization
of the notions of sin and shame that led to a greater distrust of the
body and, along with it, of gestures. Gestures were easily judged as
expressions of the vices of pride (superbia) and lust ( l u. ~ur ~a) that
had t o be contained and Finally, monasticism developed
as a conipletely new gestural institution with a large range of
ascetic and penitential gestures and with new forms of collective
prayer and liturgy.
The 'Carolingian Renaissance' partly revived these traditions
from late antiquity. Within the framework of the liberal arts
(rhetoric and music) Remigius of Auxerre was the first author t o
give gestures a definition. He opposed the gesture (gestus) of a
single limb t o the movement (motus) of the whole body.
Simultaneously, liturgical gestures were codified in ordines and
explained systematically by Amalarius of Metz. Iconography (such
as that of the UtreclJt Psalter or the Stuttgart Psalter) emphasized
the central role of the hand of God as a pattern for human gestures
and the main tool for ruling man and transforming the world.
Thus, in addition t o the old pattern of a moderate gestus, as
Tl?e rutionnle of gestures in the \Vest 67
opposed t o the denionic gesticulatio of those who were possessed
by the devil, there was another kind of 'holy gesticulation' inspired
by God. It was illustrated in the Bible by the sacred dance of
David, jumping naked before the ark, and it was carried out by
lituroical procession, collective psalmody of monks, or even
?
dancing in churches. I would call such behaviour gesta or 'la geste'
(as in 'la chanson de gestes') rather than gestus, 'le geste', a word
tliat became much rarer during the same period. Actually, the idea
prevailed tliat men could not control all of their gestures, that
supernatural powers ruled their bodies and movements (as we can
see in many images of tlie Psalmist or of the Evangelists). These
powers were ruling their fate on earth as well: history t oo was
termed yestn.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries brought radical changes.
First, we can see in the texts of this period how the question of
gestures was reformulated while at tlie same time the word gestcrs
once more became common. One of the main reasons for this
revival was the diversification of society and the resulting necessity
for everyone and for each group to distinguish theniselves from the
others by showing, among all kinds of signs, different gestures and
attitudes (laity v. clerics, knights v. peasants, Cluniacs v. Cistercians,
etc.).
In this context, the pedagogy of gestures became a necessity -
above all in monastcries that became reluctant to accept children as
oblates and t ook older novices instead." The later they entered,
the more secular gestures novices had t o forget before they could
become monks. Teaching novices the right behaviour gave birth to
numerous prescriptions in the customaries and specific treatises of
pedagogy. The best example was Hugh of Saint-Victor's Institcrtio
novitiorum, which provided the most elaborate theory of gestures
of tlie entire Middle Ages. Gestures (gestus) were defined as a
movement (motus) of the whole body and a figuratio." The
external expression of the movements of the soul had to make up a
'figure', a symbolic image of tlie body in the eyes of God and man.
Hugh also underlined tlie different modes (nzodi) or modalities of
gestures and classified them in order t o show how virtuous
gestures held the middle ground between opposing bad gestures
which neutralized each other. Finally, following the famous
metaphor developed at the same time by John of Salisbury, Hugh
Jean-Claude Schmitt
compared the discipline of gestures t o the governnient of the
kingdom and the human body t o the body politic. In fact, Hugh' s
theory of gestures was part of tlie broader etliical, political and
aesthetic ideology that emerged in the Parisian scliools of the
twelfth century.
From that time on, the pressure of lay society made itself
increasingly felt.' ) O n tlie one hand, chivalric romances, books of
manieres and contenances de table were developing similar notions
of moderate gestures, but with some other ideological goals: at
stake were the self-identification of aristocracy and the definition
of s
p
ecific rules for young knights, for women (as for example in
the Roman de la rose), for their children, and for the king (in the
mirror of the prince).
Gestures of ordinary people also merited greater attention.
Typical for then1 were gestures of work that were now described
and depicted in a less synibolic manner. Manuscript miniatures
pointed out the effective combination of physical energy, technical
use of tools, and professional skills.
Ot her questions were now raised about the 'language of
gestures', especially tlie ability of gestures t o replace or match
speech. The oldest lists of monastic sign language, the development
of liturgical dramas, the rise of preaching, and finally the birth of
an urban secular rhetoric aided such questioning.
Religious life, which was undergoing profound changes during
this period, was one of the fields for these experiments. Kneeling
and holding both hands together became the most typical gesture
of Christian prayer. There was also a growing interest in
distinguishing all the possible modes of prayer and their attitudes
and gestures in terms of different occasions and intentions. The
Parisian theologian Peter tlie Chanter first provided such a list of
gestures at the end of the twelfth century. It consisted of seven
modes of prayer, each of them de
p
icted in a single miniature. Some
years later the Ni ne modes of prayer of Saint Dominic consisted of
a remarkable series of textual descriptions and images, teaching
people how t o behave and how t o move while praying, from the
most common mode of prayer t o the most extraordinary mystical
ecstasies. l 4
Eventually, the great question of symbolic efficacy also arose.
Some gestures seemed able t o transform living beings or material
The rcrtionale of gesrures in rhe West 69
things. For example, making the sign of the cross was supposed t o
repel t he devil or death. Gestures used f or ecclesiastical sacraments
(baptism, eucharist, and marriage) were especially discussed. Some
theologians wondered whether sacramental words alone played a
role in transubstantiation, although some precise gestures (crossing
the host and elevating it) also had t o be performed by the priest in
order t o complete the ritual.
As we have seen all t oo briefly, there was no linear evolution
reducing the role of gestures, submitting them t o explicit rules and
t o t he constraints of rationality. O n the one side, the enforcement
of ethics, the development of literacy, and the growing complexity
of social encounters limited the scope of gestures in the context of
ot her modes of communication and submitted them t o more
stringent control. O n the other side, the development of figurative
arts, the diversification of rituals, the forms of public speech, the
scholastic explanations of religious gestures, and the new patterns
of behaviour inspired by late medieval mysticism drew the
question of gestures to the very centre of ideological debate.
Gestures and the human body have a long history. In suggesting
its complexity and pointing out some of its main turning-points in
the course of a thousand years, I have simply tried t o unveil some
of the historical problems with which we are still deeply
concerned.
NOTES
This article is a brief summary of my book, Ln raison des gestes dans
/'Occident medieval (Paris, 1990).
1 M. Bloch, Ln socikte fkodafe (Paris, 1939).
2 R. Marichal, 'L'Pcriture latine et la civilisation occidentale du Ier au
XVIP sikclc', in L'Ecriture et In psjlc17010gie dcs pe~pl es (Paris, 1963),
pp. 199-247.
70 Jca n - Cl a 14 dc Scl? m itt
3 J.-C. Schmitt, 'Gestr4.clGcsticubtio. Contribution i I'ktude du vocabu-
laire latin tnedieval des gestes', in La lcsicogmphie dl4 Il~tin mCdic;vtll et
scs rtlpports narc lcs rccl~crc11c.s actrrcllcs S M ~ 1'7 ci'~)ilisrltio)7 d~ A.loyen
Age (Paris, 1981), pp. 377-90.
4 M. Mauss, Sociologic ct Anthropologie (Paris, 1950), pp. 363-86.
5 G. J. Braitlt, T / J ~ Song of Roland. An Annlytical Edition (2 vols,
University-Park and London, 1978).
6 F. Garnier, Lc lrlngnge dc ['imngc arc A4oyen Age. Sign$cation ct
Symboliqrrc (2 vols, Paris, 1952-9).
7 E. Lonimatzsch, Sj!stem cicr Gcbci'rden, d ~ ~ r ~ e s t e / / t ~ ~ t c f Grro7~I der
mittclLzltcrlicl~en Litmtrt, . Frankreicbs (Diss. Bcrlin, 19 10); W.
Habi cht , Die Gcbi rdc in eng/iscbc~r D i c l ~ t ~ n ~ c n des h l i t t ~ l ~ ~ l t e r . ~
(Munich, 1959): D. Peil, Die Gcbri'rlIc bei Cbrc;tien, Hclrtmn?rw r./nd
Wolfran7: Erec - Iwein - l ' r 7~~i ~' r ~I (Munich, 1975); R. G. Bcnson,
A/ledieval Bod!! Lr771g14agc. /1 Strtdjt of t he Use of Gestrtrc in Cl~arrcer's
Poet?r (Copenhagen, 1980).
S K. von Amira, Die Hanclgebirdcn in do1 Bilderhandscl7ri/tcn des
Sacl7scnspicgels (Munich, 1905), pp. 16 1-263; R. Schmidt-Wicgand,
' Gebardensprachc im mittelaltcrliclien Rccht' , Friihmittelalterlicl~c
Strrdien, 16 (19S2), pp. 363-79.
9 M. Barasch, GCS ~MYCS of Despair in Aledievnl and Earl)! Renaissance
Art (Ncw York, 1976) and Giotto m7d the Lang~age of Gest14res
(Cambridgc, Mass., 1987).
10 K. Sittl, Die Gebri' dcn dcr Griec17en rrnd Romel- (Leipzig, 1890); R.
Brilliant, Gestr4re and Rnnk in Roman Art: T l ~ e Use of Ges t ~r es to
Denote Status in Roman S c ~ l p t ~ r e and Coinage, ( New Haven, 1963).
11 M. de Jong, In Sam~cl ' s In7agc: Cl ~i l d OGlation in the Early A4iddle
Ages (Leiden, 1991).
12 J.-C. Schmitt, ' Le geste, la cathkdrale et Ic roi', L'Arc, 72 (197S), pp.
9-12.
13 J. Bumke, HijFsche Kr,/ltrt?- (2 vols, Munich, 1986).
14 J.-C. Schmitt, 'Between t est and image: the prayer gestures of Saint
Dominic' , Histo?! and Anthropology, 1 (1984), pp. 127-62, repr. in
R. C. Tresl er (ed.), Persons in Grortps (Binghamton, 1985), pp. 195-
220 (in French).