Orante

ORANTE (Orant). - The early Christians adopted for prayer the same gestures used by the pagans (Cicero, Fam. 7, 5; Virgil, Aen., II, 687 ff.; Apuleius, De mundo, 33) and by the Jewish people (Ex. 17, 11; Lam. 3, 41).

The literary documentation is very rich: St. Paul (I Tim. 2, 8 ff.); St. Clement (I ad Corinthios, 29); St. Justin (Apol., 90); Minucius Felix (Octavius, 29); Tertullian (De oratione, 14, 17; De Baptismo, 20); Origen (De oratione, 31: PG, 11, 549) attest that Christians prayed with arms and hands raised on high, as priests still do today in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Representations in the attitude of the o. in the Old Testament are found in Noah (v.), Daniel (v.), the three youths (v.), Susanna (v.).

In many images of the o. the inscriptions accompanying them identify them as deceased in heavenly beatitude, such as "Grata," "Πηλιοβόρα," "Titus Eupor" (O. Marucchi, I monumenti del Museo Cristiano Lateranense, Milan 1910, pl. 28, no. 2), or in the fresco in Callistus: "Dyonisas in pace, Nemesi in pace, Procopi in pace, Heliodora in pace, Zoe in pace" (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 110 ff.); or in the cemetery "inter duas lauros" where two o., a man and a woman, stand in a flowering garden, Paradise (ibid., pls.

185, 2; 218, 2). On many ceilings of cemetery cubicula there appear deceased in the attitude of the o., not only female but also male, as also on the wall of the loculus with the image of the Madonna with the star in the cemetery of Priscilla (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 21 ff.). In other paintings the o. are beside or behind the sheep (id., ibid., pls. 102, 1; 190; 222, 3). The o. between two sheep, as in cubiculum A4 in Callistus

(G. Wilpert, Die Malereien der Sakramentskapell von S. Callisto, Freiburg i. Br., 1927, p. 36, fig. 14), is also found in several epigraphs, as in Callistus (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, II, Rome 1867, p. 324, pls. 49-50, no. 14) and also in Aquileia. A fine example of the o. is offered by the painting commissioned by a certain Gennaro on the tomb of his wife in Domitilla (id., ibid., pl. 116 ff.). The o. Bessula likewise stands among lighted candles (G. B. De Rossi, Bull. arch. crist., 4th series, 5 [1887], p. 24) or among columbines and candles (ibid., 2nd series, 2 [1877], p. 125). O. among the intercessory saints are frequent on the fronts of sarcophagi. For G. B. De Rossi, in earlier representations "the woman praying joined to the shepherd shows herself in conditions that require a more generic and ideal interpretation (than that of a specific person): the symbolic sense of that image is not substantially transformed, but rises to a higher meaning. For the Church personified in a woman, 'Ecclesia mater,' is not only the society of the faithful in the world, but also that of the saints in heaven" (G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, II, Rome 1867, p. 324). He documents this interpretation with the visions of Hermas, interwoven with allegorical images personifying especially the Church, and with the epitaph of Abercius, which personifies in a woman the faith that prepares for its friends the Eucharistic banquet designated by the fish; finally with the formula of an inscription now in the Lateran Museum in which is described the "mater Ecclesia" who joyfully receives "inter innocentes" the souls departed "de hoc mundo"; therefore he sees such a concept expressed in the woman praying before the tripod table with the bread and the fish in Callistus, and in the parallelism of the Good Shepherd with the o. in the same cemetery; as well as in the sarcophagus of the Via Salaria (id., Sarcofago sculto cristiano antichissimo testè collocato nel Museo del Laterano, in Bull. arch. crist., 5th series, 2 [1891], pp. 62-66 and pls. 2-3). The Madonna also appears as an o. in the well-known fresco of the Cimitero Maggiore and in some gilded glasses (R. Garrucci, Vetri, Rome 1874, pls. 9, 6 and 22, 2) and in a graffito from Gaul with the inscription "Maria Virgo minester de tempulo Gerosale" (E. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, II, Paris 1856-92, p. 542 A). Sometimes saints are also represented as o., such as St. Agnes on the gilded glasses, St. Januarius, St. Cecilia in the cemetery of Callistus, and Sts. Milix and Vincent in that of Pontian. - See pl. IX.

Enrico Josi