Paying homage to God
There’s a line in the film Braveheart that’s said when William Wallace (Mel Gibson) arrives at a battle, he goes out in front of the Scottish force and one of the Scottish lords pipes up with:
“This is our army, to join it you pay homage.”
Wallace returns that by saying: “I pay homage to Scotland.”
Ever since then I’d wondered what exactly homage was. I mean everyone knows it got something to do with one man bossing another around, with the inferior being ordered about by the superior. But what exactly was it?
I learned what it was over the last few months. I’m not going to go into great detail but I did want to talk about was how it relates to Christian prayer. You see, I also learned that the way Christians pray, on their knees with their hands folded, was a development of the homage (feudal) system.
In the feudal system as proof of their loyalty persons had to pay homage to a lord. They did this in a ceremony, often with words like “I promise to be your man”. Where this relates to religion is that the ceremony involved the subject to go down on his knees and fold his hands while he said it. The lord would then clasp his hands over his subject’s and give his own oath of protection. See the pictures below of entirely secular proceedings.
So Christians took this practice up as homage to God. And so today, the former ceremony of promise between two men has come to be interpreted as one person’s communion with God.
At least that’s one theory, I wasn’t there so I don’t know for sure.
December 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Are you saying that folding hands, sat on knees for prayer stems from the feudal system? It’s funny, but it could be true. I’m not an art historian (or even anything near it – I just learnt the term feudalism is a 17th century coinage!) but come to think of it: I can’t seem to recall any of those early Christian images showing anyone with their hands folded. These copts, or folks in the catacombs, or even the Irish monks, all have their hand turned outwards, palms up. And homage, Etymonline says, comes from homme, French for man. Definitely secular then. Thanks, what a fascinating post.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:52 am
Yeah that’s the clue here, if you examine older art work you won’t find any with persons on their knees with hands folded. And certainly there are no descriptions of it in any of the monastic writings.
I’m glad you enjoyed it as much as I did
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