2 - Gestures

Summary

Jean-Claude Schmitt has written eloquently about the significance of gesture in medieval societies, citing Jacques Le Goff's characterisation of that period as ‘une civilisation du geste’. No doubt Le Goff had chiefly in mind those formal public gestures which most interest historians – physical actions which had legally binding consequences, in ceremonies of homage, oath-swearing, and the like. Beginning with these, the first section of the present chapter goes on to consider gestures of a generally less consequential kind, in particular bowing and kneeling as signs of submission, deference, or petition; and it concludes with the polite everyday rituals of greeting and farewell. The second section treats those gestures which more directly signify interpersonal feelings and attitudes such as grief, anger, and affection. It is here, somewhat uneasily, that kissing belongs. The third and last section concerns what many modern writers on NVC call ‘emblems’. These small behaviours are more language-like than other items in the gestural repertoire, for they have direct verbal equivalents. Here I discuss beckoning, pointing, headnodding, and headshaking.

Gestures played an essential part in the solemn ceremonies of homage and fealty, in which men bound themselves together as lord and vassal ‘by mouth and by hand’. To become another's man (homage), it was necessary, as well as declaring one's willingness in words, to place one's two hands joined between the hands of the lord, usually on bended knee.