The ancient western rites such as the Sarum Rite in England, the Mozarabic in Spain and the Lyonnais in France do not contain genuflection in their rubric. Of course, the Tridentine rubric made it universal.  Which of the pre-Tridentine rites was the first to incorporate the genuflection? Was it in Rome itself?

What occasioned this transition from bowing to genuflection?

Thank you, 

Neil Downes

Golly!  I'm going to have to explain your question before I can answer it! It is a heck of a question.

First of all what is a Rite? It is a prescribed form for performing a religious ceremony. The word in Latin is “ritus” from an old Indo European/Sanskrit word “rtam” meaning sacred usage. In its origin, it has nothing to do with, for example, the “rights of the common man,” or “right and wrong,” though it does tell us the right way to say Mass (perhaps a divine pun for these desperate times.)

There are 23 different rites in the Catholic Church of which the Roman Rite is the most common.

However, there are 22 other “styles” of saying Mass (which is a loose way of defining the word “rite”) that reflect the ancient practices of Antioch in Syria, Alexandria in Egypt, as well as the practices of Constantinople and Armenia. We have a long and truly universal history. 

What is less well known and (apparently you're not getting out enough on a Friday night as you are one of the few people who know this) there about five western rites that reflect the way mass was said in ancient Rome, but vary the mass a bit.  These are:

• the Roman Rite, practiced in Skokie and many other places,
• the Ambrosian Rite, named for St. Ambrose and practiced in Milan,
• the Mozarabic Rite, still practiced in a couple of places in Spain and Portugal.
• the Gallican or Lyonnaise Rite, in southern France, and 
• the Celtic or Sarum Rite in England.

These last two are now extinct.  And, the word Mozarabic means “among the Arabs.” It continued in the Muslim occupied territories of Spain from the earliest days until the final liberation from 800 years of Muslim occupation in Spain in 1492.

Gee Whiz!  That's a lot of obscure information.  Wait, I’m not done yet!

You mention rubrics. Rubric is a Latin word that means “written in red.” If you read a Missal, the big Mass book that a priest uses, there are words written in black that the priest says. There are also words written in red that tell a priest what to do and how to do it and even how to say the words written in black. It’s all spelled out quite clearly. 

Talking about this saddens me as I think that a terrible epidemic of color blindness has so many clergymen. They seem unable to see the red words in the missal and are forced to make the Mass up as they go along. I am sure this affliction must make their lives very difficult.

So, your question for those who are out dancing the samba on Friday night and haven’t the time to do as much reading as you do, is simply this, “How come we genuflect (get down on one knee) at our Mass, when most other styles of Mass just bow?”

After a couple of pages of introduction, I will now try to answer the question: No one really knows.

This will not stop me from making something up. 

Kneeling has always been a practice in prayer especially in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It represents a humbling, a vulnerability. One used to kneel before kings as a sign of submission and inferiority. It was practiced in private prayer for the same reasons, especially prayers of penance and petition.

Kneeling in public, liturgical prayer such as Mass was generally discouraged.

The 1st Council of Nicaea (c. 325 AD) says clearly that all should pray standing. Kneeling was forbidden on Sundays and only allowed, though not demanded, during the days of the week. The 1st canon of the Mass talks about those standing here. 

However, the 4th Council of Carthage (419 AD) and St. Benedict, the great founder of western monasticism, seem to be the initiators of the change. The Council of Carthage demanded that penitents kneel during public prayer even on Sunday and in the Easter season as a form of public penance.

Youch! Those ancient services were long and the floors were hard. 

St. Benedict (c.480-527 AD) insisted that his monks kneel when they say the breviary privately (the breviary, also called the Divine Office or the prayer of Christians, is the collection of scheduled psalms, prayers and readings that a priest, monk, nun or deacon is required to say everyday.)

I suppose that he thought of this as a penance for having missed the common recitation of the breviary.

Anyway, I suspect that the monastic and penitential custom of kneeling became increasingly customary in medieval Europe. In the West we borrowed a lot of things from the monks (like celibacy and kneeling for two examples) because the monasteries were the guardians of western Christianity in a way that was not true until later in the East. 

We Roman Rite Catholics are the only kneelers, as you point out, and when we are all praying together we still stand as the Council of Nicaea commanded. When we are “at ease,” and only the priest is doing the praying, we kneel or sit, that moment being a little more private.

 “Well, Reverend Know-it-all, you have not answered the question. The question was about genuflection, the odd custom of bending one knee.”

Au contraire!  Isn't genuflection just kneeling with one knee?

I suspect that it was a substituted for kneeling or even complete prostration at very sacred points such as the consecration or the mention of the incarnation in the Creed, or the entrance into the divine presence at the beginning of Mass. It is mentioned in the rubrics, or red ink, as required only toward the middle 1400's but I suspect that it was done in monasteries, then parish churches and then became custom and was finally enshrined in the rubrics.

This brings up a number of interesting issues.

If standing at Mass was the practice of the early church, shouldn't we return to it? This is what Pope Pius the XII called a false and sentimental antiquarianism (at least I think Pius said that. If he didn't he should have.) The attitude “because it's old, it's good” certainly doesn't apply to arthritic knees, does it?

I hope we have learned a few things in twenty centuries. It was all the rage when I was a lad and liturgical renewal was a white heat frenzy of moving around altar furniture, to try to go back to the early church. I have already told you that I am an old pentecostal.  I really believe that the Pentecostal movement had authentic elements of the early Church, because we got into a lot of the same screwy situations that existed in the early Church.

We should keep the old, not because it is old, but because it is a gift from the Lord. 

We also adopt the new that He gives, still cherishing sacred things even if they are medieval because they draw us to the Him. 

Genuflection before the sacred is a beautiful custom and I think that those who oppose it do so out of a sort of American exceptionalism. In America, the first of the revolutionary republics, we threw out kings and lords. We kneel to no one. In a way we make the absurd statement, “Who died and made Jesus king?” 

Read St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, the second chapter ― “He humbled himself and became obedient unto death.... so that at the name of Jesus name every knee should bend… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Rev. Know-It-All