INCLINATION (Liturgy). - The natural gesture of respect expressed by bowing has been accepted by the Eastern and Western liturgies since the most remote antiquity as an expression of humility, veneration and adoration. Yet the use of the i. in the liturgical ceremonial is far more common in the East than in the West, where, beginning in the 10th-11th century, the use of genuflection, a rite originally of a penitential character, began to prevail for adoration. The i., as an act of adoration, especially at the moment of the elevation of the Host in the Mass, before disappearing from the Western ceremonial gave rise to heated polemics, such as the one that arose within the Chapter of Lyon in the last quarter of the 16th century.
In the pastoral sermons of St. Caesarius of Arles there is a whole series of references to the i. during prayer (cf.
Serm. 72, 76, 77, 152, ed. G. Morin, Opera Omnia a. Caesarii, I, Maredsous 1937, pp. 303, 305, 306, 589, 591). The Ordo Romanus I (ch. 88, ed. M. Andrieu, II, Louvain 1948, p. 96) and Amalarius of Metz (cf. Liber Officialis, III, 22-23; ed. J. M. Hanssens, Vatican City 1948, pp. 329-30) attest that in the 8th-9th century in Rome the clergy stood bowed for the entire duration of the Canon. At the beginning of the rite of the elevation of the Host, Honorius III speaks only of the i. even for the faithful (Potthast, 6163, letter of 19 Nov. 1219). The faithful were to bow particularly to receive the blessing, which is already evident from various passages of Book VIII of the Constitutiones Apostolorum (cf., for example, chs. 6, 37, 39 etc.; ed. F. X. Funk, Paderborn 1906, pp. 481, 542, 549). Of this use, which became common to all liturgies, a vestige has remained in the Roman one in the humilitate capita vestra Deo before the recitation of the oratio super populum on the ferias of Lent.
Two kinds of i. are distinguished: that of the head (the Eastern προσπάντα; the inclinato capite of the ancient Ordines) and that of the body (the Eastern μετὰναι μιναξ; the permanenti inclinati of the Ordines): in the Roman liturgy the former is subdivided into profound, medium and small, the latter into profound and medium according to the circumstances.
Bibliography4 works
A. Pietro Frutaz