ORANT. — Early Christians adopted the same gestures for prayer as were used by pagans (Cicero, *Fam.* 7, 5; Virgil, *Aen.* II, 687 sq.; Apuleius, *De mundo* 33) and by the Jewish people (Ex. 17:11; *Lam.* 3:41).
There is a rich literary documentation: St. Paul (*2 Tim.* 2:8 sq.); St. Clement (*1 Corinthians* 20); St. Justin (*Apol.* 90); Minucius Felix (*Octavius* 29); Tertullian (*De oratione* 14, 17; *De Baptismo* 20); Origen (*De oratione* 31: PG, II, 549) attest that Christians prayed with arms and hands raised aloft, as priests still do today in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Representations of the orant posture in the Old Testament include Noah (v.), Daniel (v.), the Three Youths (v.), Susanna (v.).
In many images of the orant, the accompanying inscriptions identify them as deceased in heavenly beatitude, such as “Grata,” “Πρωθόδρα,” “Titus Eupor” (O. Marucchi, *I monumenti del Museo Cristiano Lateranense*, Milan 1910, pl. 28, no. 2), or in the frescoes of the Catacomb of Callisto: “Dyonisas in pace, Nemesi in pace, Procopi in pace, Heliodora in pace, Zoe in pace” (Wilpert, *Pitture*, pls. 110 sq.); or in the cemetery “inter duas lauros,” where two orants, a man and a woman, stand in a flower-filled garden, the Paradise (*ibid.*, pls. 185, 2; 218, 2). In many ceilings of funerary cubicles, deceased persons appear in the orant posture, not only women but also men, as on the wall of a loculus with the image of the Madonna with the star in the Cemetery of Priscilla (Wilpert, *Pitture*, pl. 21 sq.). In other paintings, the orants are beside or behind sheep (*ibid.*, pls. 102, 1; 190; 222, 3). The orant between two sheep, as in Cubicle A 4 in the Catacomb of Callisto (G. Wilpert, *Die Malereien der Sakramentskapelle von S. Callisto*, Freiburg i. Br. 1927, p. 36, fig. 14), is also found in several inscriptions, such as in Callisto (G. B. De Rossi, *Roma sotterranea*, II, Rome 1867, p. 324, pls. 49–50, no. 14) and also in Aquileia. A fine example of an orant is provided by the painting commissioned by a certain Gennaro on the tomb of his wife in the Catacomb of Domitilla (*ibid.*, pl. 116 sq.). The orant Bessula is also depicted between lit candles (G. B. De Rossi, *Bull. arch. crist.*, 4th ser., 5 [1887], p. 24) or between doves and candles (*ibid.*, 2nd ser., 2 [1877], p. 125). Orants among saintly intercessors are frequent on the fronts of sarcophagi.
According to G. B. De Rossi, in earlier representations “the woman in the orant posture joined to the shepherd is shown in conditions that call for a more general and ideal interpretation (than that of a specific person): the symbolic meaning of that image does not essentially change, but rises to a higher plane. For the Church personified as a woman, ‘Ecclesia mater,’ is not only the society of the faithful on earth, 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, woven with allegorical and personifying images especially of the Church, and with the epitaph of Abercius, who personifies Faith as a woman preparing a Eucharistic banquet for her friends, symbolized by the fish; finally with the wording of an inscription now in the Lateran Museum, which describes the ‘mater Ecclesia’ joyfully welcoming ‘inter innocentes’ the souls departed ‘de hoc mundo.’ Hence he sees such a concept expressed in the woman in the orant posture before the tripod table with bread and fish in the Catacomb of Callisto, and in the parallelism of the Good Shepherd with the orant in the same cemetery, as well as in the sarcophagus on the Via Salaria (G. B. De Rossi, *Sarcofago sculto cristiano antichissimo testè collocato nel Museo del Laterano*, in *Bull. arch. crist.*, 5th ser., 2 [1891], pp. 62–66 and pls. 2–3).
The Virgin Mary also appears as an orant in the well-known fresco of the Major Cemetery and in some gold-glass vessels (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 orants, such as St. Agnes on gold-glass vessels, St. Januarius, St. Cecilia in the Catacomb of Callisto, and the saints Milix and Vincent in that of Ponziano. — See pl. IX.