The prayer life of early Christians has received considerable attention in recent years. Books and even whole conferences have been devoted to the subject. Authors write on subjects as sharply focused as North African collects. ⁽¹⁾Christians may have been taught to pray explicitly: preceptis salutaribus moniti et divina institutione formati. They produced many commentaries on the Lord's Prayer; they sang and recited the psalms. We know the content of prayer, from the lofty: praise of the Creator, thanksgiving for salvation, to the more mundane: the status of departed relatives, the acquisition of riches, and the deaths of enemies. What we know less about is how early Christians prayed, i.e., the physical aspects of prayer. Part of the problem is methodological. Treatises on prayer in late antiquity focus more on the cognitive content of the prayers or the inner dispositions. Until the recent 'turn toward the body' in the late twentieth century, prayer was considered primarily as a mental activity. Consequently mundane items such as timing and posture were not considered crucial. Another aspect of the problem is the paucity of concentrated texts on postures of prayer. We have no surviving sacramentaries from North Africa with rubrics which would indicate the postures of clergy. In addition, until quite recently in the West, the postures of the congregations were not governed by liturgical texts. In the absence of particular controversies, little attention was paid even to the posture of modern congregations or those who engage in private prayer.

In this paper, I will gather together some of the evidence for how Christians of North Africa prayed. In charting the comments of Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine, one notices two changes. First, there is a movement from the oral to mental prayer. Second, if the content of prayer has been formed by Scripture, so too the physical attitude of prayer is likewise formed primarily though not exclusively by biblical texts. In unrolling the texts of these three authors, one sees a movement from the literal interpretation of texts about prayer to non-literal modes.
 

Where did North Africans pray? Obviously, they prayed in a variety of places, both privately and in the liturgical assembly. In the assembly there were places for clergy and laity to pray, clergy in the apse and laity outside the chancel screens, women on one side of the solea and men on the other. The screens were waist high and made of wood or stone. Their bases are still visible in many places. In most North African churches the altar was in the central aisle in front of the apse and a path from the apse to the altar was screened off.⁽²⁾

Besides churches and martyria, Christians prayed at privately erected roadside and other rural shrines. The devotions practiced there were popular and politicized. During the Donatist schism, Catholic conciliar legislation prohibited the erection and frequenting of shrines unless they were the sites of approved relics.⁽³⁾ Imperial legislation prohibited gatherings of Donatist and punished property owners who allowed them.⁽⁴⁾

People prayed at home too. According to Tertullian, upon entering and leaving home one offered greetings and prayers of peace, a custom which perdured among religious folk into modern times.⁽⁵⁾ He said that a Christian family was blessed with the ability to be open in prayer within the house where spouses could pray together and did not need to be secretive about ritual gestures.⁽⁶⁾

The overriding guidance for where to pray came from the Bible. The most popular text was Matthew 6.5-6 which cautions Christians not to pray publically like hypocrites but in their rooms. The earliest uses of this text are founded on a literal reading. Tertullian instructed Christians to pray in private but had make some exceptions in order to deal with the cases of the Apostles and Paul praying in public.⁽⁷⁾ Tertullian and Cyprian agreed that prayer could take place in the secret recesses of one's home because God who was everywhere could see what was happening anywhere.⁽⁸⁾ In addition, modesty of one's faith and the desire to avoid showy religious practices motivated one to pray inside one's own room.⁽⁹⁾

This desire to avoid showing off leads us to the other popular text, Luke 18.9-14. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax collector informed many concerns about the body in prayer. Augustine repeatedly used it but not literally. For him the issue was not being seen praying but praying to be seen. The admonition to go into one's room to pray was not to remove oneself physically, but mentally. He asks what are the inner rooms or bedchambers but the hearts of Christians. What is shut out is not the gaze of others but distractions.⁽¹⁰⁾

Now that we know where North African Christians were to pray, the next question is when. Tertullian was the most explicit. Christians were to pray, if not always, enough times a day to approximate that. They were to pray at mealtimes and when rising and when going to bed.⁽¹¹⁾ Augustine kept the custom.⁽¹²⁾Cyprian rationalized morning and evening prayer with biblical warrants: one rises from bed and prays in the morning in imitation of the Resurrection of Christ. Evening prayer facing east reminds one that Christians await the return of Christ the true light of the world.⁽¹³⁾ According to Tertullian, Christians prayed at the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day. He inherited his times of prayer from practice of the Apostles who observed Jewish hours of prayer. He knew that there was no explicit biblical mandate for Christians to observe them but he acknowledged a long-standing custom by christianizing it. He explained the third, sixth and ninth hours of prayer as a triad of three hours each in honor of the Trinity.⁽¹⁴⁾ Cyprian followed that interpretation but added a biblical reinforcement: at the third hour the Holy Spirit descended; at the sixth hour Peter received his revelation when praying; and from the sixth to the ninth hours Jesus hung on the cross. Even with the change from Christianity to Islam in North Africa such times of prayer are still observed.

As for praying always, Tertullian also acknowledged that Christians rose at the middle of the night to pray when he mentioned that this was more difficult for someone who was married to an unbeliever.⁽¹⁵⁾ Again Cyprian provided a biblical model for the practice in the conduct of the prophetess Anna who prayed day and night in the Temple (Luke 2.37).⁽¹⁶⁾

After Tertullian, the idea of praying always took on new and less literal forms. Cyprian saw prayer not only as the vocalization of the believer, but as a two way conversation: "Be constant . . . in prayers as in reading; now speak with God, now let God speak with you . . . let him instruct you . . . let him direct you."⁽¹⁷⁾ Augustine continued this trend even in his justification of prayer at fixed hours. Christians kept this custom not for any inherent meaning in the hours themselves but "so that we may urge ourselves on and take note with ourselves how much progress we have made in this desire for faith, hope and charity and may rouse ourselves more earnestly to increase it."⁽¹⁸⁾

Augustine recognized that the biblical injunction to pray constantly could cause problems. The first was the decision to pray constantly itself. To one who was perhaps overly zealous in this regard, Augustine advised that "it is not reprehensible or useless to pray at length when one is free, that is, when the obligations of other good and necessary works do not prevent us." Second, Augustine recognized that one could easily become distracted in attempting to pray always, or at least during one's free time, and advised the Egyptian custom of short ejaculatory prayers. He recommended a movement from mental prayer to vocal prayer to snap to attention the minds of praying persons so that they would be prompted to remember what they were doing.⁽¹⁹⁾
 
 

Augustine's acknowledgment of the link between the mind and body of the person praying brings us to the heart of the paper, to positions of prayer.

A. The Whole Body

1. Standing facing East First, we need to look at the body as a whole, to the questions of standing, kneeling, and lying prostrate. The earliest witnesses attest that one prayed standing and, if possible, facing east. Here Tertullian attests what Christians outside of North Africa did.⁽²⁰⁾ The very term for prayer, stare ad orationem, was adopted from Mark 11.25 without question.⁽²¹⁾ Augustine advocated both standing and the orientation of the praying Christian in a way that both reinforces the mind-body connection and relativizes the particular stance:

[W]hen we stand at prayer, we turn to the east, whence the heaven rises, not as if God also were dwelling there in the sense that he who is everywhere present, had forsaken the other parts of the world; but in order that the mind may be admonished to turn to a more excellent nature, i.e., to God, when its own body, which is earthly, is turned to a more excellent body, i.e., to a heavenly one.⁽²²⁾
 

While the exact position may not have been required, he would not tamper with it and reinforced liturgical custom going back to Tertullian when he claimed that for the

period of fifty days we celebrate after the Lord's resurrection, as representing not toil, but rest and gladness. For this reason we do not fast in them; and in praying we stand upright, which is an emblem [signum] of resurrection . . . Whether the custom of standing at prayer on these days and on all the Lord's days is everywhere observed or not, I do not know, nevertheless, I have told you what guides the Church in this usage, and it is in my opinion sufficiently obvious.⁽²³⁾
 

2. Kneeling. But North Africans, Augustine included, did kneel when praying. Augustine wrote of a man who entered the church, made the sign of the Cross and then knelt in prayer.⁽²⁴⁾ He also described people who come into the church kneel and touch their foreheads to the ground.⁽²⁵⁾ While he did not condemn the custom, he did note that the people who performed the gesture were usually making impertinent requests of God, such as the death of an enemy.⁽²⁶⁾ So the gesture seemed exaggerated and associated with a lack of true piety.

Standing was the normal posture of prayer for Tertullian, but obviously some people were advocating kneeling during the Eucharist. He had forbidden kneeling on the same days as we saw in Augustine. He associated kneeling with worry and the ordinary business of the day, inappropriate when the whole Church was celebrating the Resurrection with joy. However, he did advocate kneeling "when we enter on the daylight and on solemn fasts as a gesture of humility."⁽²⁷⁾ Cyprian justified some kneeling with an appeal to the example of Peter kneeling in prayer when Tabitha died (Acts 9.40). This was in the context of an exhortation to do penance for daily sins.⁽²⁸⁾ Augustine, too, mentions kneeling for prayer. When he had a toothache and asked people to pray for him, they immediately knelt and prayed.⁽²⁹⁾

Augustine provided some rationale for praying standing or kneeling when he explained the bodily posture of Stephen (Acts 7.59-60):

First, blessed Stephen stood and prayed for himself. He said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." After he had said that, he knelt down and while he was kneeling said, "Lord, do not hold this crime against them." Once he had said that he fell asleep. . . . Now I ask you, Saint Stephen . . . why did you pray for yourself standing, and then kneel to pray for your enemies? He will answer, " I prayed for myself standing because I was praying for myself, a person who had served God rightly. I did not exert myself in praying and begging. I did not exert myself on my own behalf." A person does not exert themselves on behalf of someone who is just. That happens when one prays for Jews for the killers of Christ, for the killers of the saints. Then one kneels.⁽³⁰⁾
 

So it seems that it is appropriate to pray petitionary prayers ,especially for sinners, kneeling, but not prayers of adoration and thanksgiving such as the Eucharist.

3. Prostration Let's take the investigation one step further and examine prayers offered while not simply kneeling, but prostrate. Tertullian mentioned petitionary prayer uttered prostrate in the case of a repentant adulterer in sackcloth and ashes.⁽³¹⁾ Could it be that like Stephen moving from high to low from prayers for a just man to that of sinners, the worse sinner you are the lower you go? It may be a nice theory but other examples do not bear it out. When Augustine's friends prayed for relief for his toothache, they didn't seem to kneel because he was a sinner. Nor did Augustine impute guilt to his friend Ponticianus who prayed prostrate in the church daily. He called him a faithful servant of God.⁽³²⁾

Perhaps a different incident might shed more light. In the City of God Augustine recalled the case of Innocentius, a North African Christian and government official, afflicted with anal fistuli. The man had endured at least one surgery which did not alleviate his pain but only intensified it. His own physician counseled a second surgery, but Innocentius dismissed him. When a revered Alexandrian specialist came and pronounced the word that another surgery would indeed be necessary, Innocentius was so terribly frightened that he declared to members of the clergy and other friends attending him that he thought he would die during the operation. Augustine described the scene:

[We] tried to reassure him, and urged him to trust in God, and to submit himself to God's will like a man, They we betook ourselves to prayers, and when we knelt down, in the usual, and bent towards the ground, Innocentius hurled himself forward, as if someone had pushed him flat on his face; and he began to pray.⁽³³⁾
 

It seems from this incident that the more distressed one is, the lower one goes. Augustine reinforced this explicitly when he said that one prays prostrate when in extreme danger and dire straights and this can happen in private or in public.⁽³⁴⁾ The biblical warrant here is the many times the Psalms speak of prostrate prayer in dire straights.⁽³⁵⁾

The difference between standing, kneeling or prostrate postures seems to be this: standing was the ordinary posture for prayer generally and was de rigueur the posture for prayers of praise and thanksgiving, hence the prejudice for standing at the Eucharist and Eastertide. In these prayers the Christian approached God from the favored status as redeemed children of God. Kneeling and prostration were poses of contrition and distressed petition. They also approximated the positions of petitioners before judges and figures of repentance in Scripture.

4. Sitting But what about sitting? What do the fathers have to say about that posture? First Tertullian discommends it as a pose disrespectful to God.⁽³⁶⁾ But he also mentions the custom of sitting down as soon as one has finished praying. He can give no reason why people do this except that it is done. It seems to have come from reports of holy persons such as Hermas and later the monk Arsenius who sat after intense prayer.⁽³⁷⁾ Tertullian makes as much sense of the custom as we would of the practice of men's pants pressed with a crease down the front. Someone important once did it and the practice caught on. In the Egyptian monks and portions of the West influences by their traditions, sitting was not considered disrespectful so we may have a peculiarly North African attitude here.⁽³⁸⁾

5. Clothing North African writers do seem concerned about the clothing of the praying body. If prayer were done always and everywhere and God saw people even when they were not dressed, clothing theoretically should have been of no concern. But no, just as in Greco-Roman religious life and in the present, churches are the locales for 'Sunday best' and the 'Easter Parade', and dress was a concern in antiquity. These concerns were related first to the general tenor of order in the praying assembly as we find in Paul's letter to Corinth. When it came to men's bodies, Tertullian knew of Christians who took off their cloaks to pray. Why? Well, because that's what people did in North Africa when they prayed. Tertullian said, in effect, "That's what those people do," that is, idol worshipers, but that's not what Christians should do.⁽³⁹⁾ He gives no reason, but the lack of removing cloaks would form a way in which Christian bodies at prayer would be differentiated from others.

All of our authors have more to say about women. Like Paul Tertullian was concerned that women be veiled when praying. Apparently women of his time like those of my childhood pushed the envelope on this one. How small could a chapel veil be or a handkerchief which substituted for a veil forgotten at home? Tertullian, like some priests of my youth, would have passed women by at the communion rail if the cloth were too small. Tertullian cautioned them that a fringe or a tuft would not do, only a real veil.⁽⁴⁰⁾

Considerations of clothing might touch on the question of sackcloth and ashes, but there is nothing distinctive here other than the curious custom for competentes to tread on a garment called a cilicium as part of the final stages of the catechumenate. William Harmless treats this custom with all of the relevant literature in his book on the catechumenate.⁽⁴¹⁾ I leave aside the question of tattoos for North African Christians as that has been treated by Bill Tabbernee elsewhere.

B. Parts of the Body

Now that we know what the body as a whole is doing we can look at other details.

1. Hands The first of these is the hands. Tertullian mentioned the custom of washing the hands before prayer but thought it unnecessary.⁽⁴²⁾ He did not argue the point or cite biblical texts which might have belittled it. Once washed, the hands were raised.⁽⁴³⁾ There was biblical and customary warrant.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Hands were to be raised up, but not too much lest a person mimic the Pharisee of Luke 18.9-14, a potent counter- example in all North African authors of those not to imitate in prayer, whether it was hands gesturing too broadly or eyes raised shamelessly.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Augustine pointed out that when the persons arms were raised correctly, the person then conformed to the sign of the Cross.⁽⁴⁶⁾

From early iconography outside North Africa, we know that early Christians prayed in the position we come to know as orans, standing erect with hands extended. Contrary to Italian iconography which shows the palms upright, North African images (and some from Spain) show the hands with palms toward the viewer. Whether this is because the posture actually differed or whether we have encountered an artistic convention, I do not know.

Two additional gestures associated with that of the hands are the sign of the Cross and the striking of the breast. Tertullian attests to the ubiquity of the first gesture: dressing, bathing, lighting lamps, "in all the ordinary actions of daily life," Christians make the sign of the Cross on their foreheads.⁽⁴⁷⁾. Cyprian specifically says that it is made on the forehead.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Augustine mentions the sign of the Cross at the beginning of prayer in the ritual which made him a catechumen.⁽⁴⁹⁾ In all cases, it appears to be limited to the forehead and not a gesture involving the trunk of the body as is found elsewhere in the fifth century.⁽⁵⁰⁾ It was a powerful gesture as Augustine would have known from the Vita Antonii. It served as an indication not only of power over demons but also over disease. One of the miracles Augustine recorded was that of a woman whose breast cancer was cured by a neophyte making the sign of the Cross on the breast.⁽⁵¹⁾

Striking the breast was a sign of repentance for sin. It was also a gesture which developed over the course of time within North African Christianity. Tertullian and Cyprian hardly discuss it, Cyprian only in quoting the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. However, by Augustine's time the gesture is very well known. It was associated with forgiveness of sin and was performed in the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the clause Dimitte nos debita nostra and with the prayer Deus/Dominus, propitius esto mihi peccatori.⁽⁵²⁾ So common was the gesture that when people heard the words Confitemini domino, in praise of the Lord, they automatically struck their breasts, confusing it with the prayer confessing one's sins.⁽⁵³⁾

In the interests of time, I refrain from discussing the imposition of hands in their various forms. This is often treated in terms of ordination and the reconciliation of sinners.⁽⁵⁴⁾

2. Mouths. Similarly to reading silently, the idea of praying silently seemed alien to early North African Christianity. Tertullian counseled order, dignity and a subdued voice, scoffing at those who prayed too loudly. Did they think God couldn't hear softer voices? Anyway, it was not the voice that counted but the heart. He asked "What superior advantage will they who pray too loudly gain, except that they annoy their neighbors."⁽⁵⁵⁾ Cyprian too was concerned for order in the church, for modesty and discipline. He did not want shameless people yelling out their prayers as if they were out on the street. He repeated Tertullian's differentiation of prayers of the lips and heart and he went on to buttress his counsels with biblical models such as Hannah (1 Sam. 1.12) who prayed with her mouth but soundlessly and the counter example of the Pharisee of Luke 18.9-14.⁽⁵⁶⁾

And what sounds came from the lips of African. Besides words there was music, groans and sighs-all with biblical warrant.⁽⁵⁷⁾ The Alleluias rang out in the Pascal season.⁽⁵⁸⁾

Also associated with the mouth is the kiss of peace. This biblical gesture was the source of controversy in Tertullian's time. The kiss was called the seal of prayer. It was not given while fasting.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Tertullian did not explain why but perhaps because fasting was penitential in character and the kiss was joyful, there was some symbolic conflict. Yet Tertullian considered refusing the kiss a gesture at the Eucharist too divisive in the assembly and encouraged those fasting longer than communion time to forgo their penitential prudery. According to Augustine, the kiss was a sort of magnum sacramentum; it effected the unity of which it was a sign. He treated it as a preparation for Communion in which people were to recall the counter-example in Judas and to avoid having anything against anyone at that moment.⁽⁶⁰⁾

Beyond the motions and the attire of the body, one might also consider physical objects touched to or affixed to the body. I would only mention two, relics and oil. Much to the consternation of Optatus of Milevis, Lucilla of Carthage habitually kissed a relic before receiving the Eucharist. It is not clear that the custom of kissing a relic was such a problem as the fact that the relic was not one of an approved martyr.⁽⁶¹⁾ Generally though bodily contact with relics was approved as a powerful means of healing. Witness the numerous examples of healing by contact with the relics of Protasius and Gervasius and Stephen and even by flowers touched to his grave recorded by Augustine. He also recorded the case of a women who had been possessed praying while anointing herself with oil mixed with the tears of a presbyter who had prayed for her.⁽⁶²⁾ In this case there was no advocacy of the practice, merely a report.

So what can we learn from this survey. First, the two dominant sources for the use of bodily rituals are custom and Scripture. A fair investigation of custom would require that we trace each of the practices for their Punic/Libyan/Berber or Greco-Roman roots and/or Christian roots. Perhaps we would have to entertain the customs of Milan brought to Africa by Augustine or those of Egypt which became popular farther west. This would easily take up many NAPS time slots. The other source is Scripture. The prime texts are the admonitions on prayer of the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. These are interpreted progressively less and less literally.

Second, Christians are aware of the connection between mind and body and use their bodily prayer customs to support the mental activities associated with prayer. I will end with a quotation from Augustine. He was confused by the 'chicken or the egg' conundrum of the movement of the heart and body, but nevertheless, he attested to the effectiveness of gestures:

When they pray, people do with their bodies what suppliants are supposed to do when they kneel, when they extend their hands, even when they prostrate themselves on the floor and do whatever else they do visibly. They do this even though the invisible will and the intention of the heart are known to God and God needs none of these gestures, so that the human soul may be exposed. However, because of these actions people incite themselves to pray groaning more humbly and fervently. I don't know how it happens since these movements of the body cannot come to be except by a prior motion of the soul, yet again when these things are done on the outside, whatever moves them invisibly and on the inside increases and what comes first through the motion of the heart grows because these things were done.⁽⁶³⁾

1. Thomas A. Ferguson, Visita Nos: Reception, Rhetoric, and Prayer in a North African Monastery (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).

2. See Noël Duval, "Church Buildings" in Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. by Angelo DiBerardino, translated by Adrian Walford with an Introduction by W. H. C. Frend, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University, 1992), 1.171 and 172; and P.-A. Février, "Africa: IV. Archeology," 1.15.

3. Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta in Concilia Africae, ed. Ch. Munier, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 149, p. 204; Concilium Carthaginensis a. 525, p.266; Concila Africae sec. coll. Hispanae, p. 359.

4. Cod. Theod. 16.5.39 and 16.5.54.6.

5. Tertullian. De orat. 26.

6. Tertullian, Ad ux. 2.8

7. Tertullian, De orat. 24.

8. Tertullian, De orat., 1 and Cyprian,  De dom. orat. 4.

9. Tertullian, De orat. 1.

10. Augustine, Serm. in monte 2.3.10-11.

11. Tertullian, Apologia 39 and De orat. 25

12. Augustine, Ep. 3.4.

13. Cyprian, De dom. orat. 35.

14. Tertullian, De orat. 25, and Ieiun 10.

15. Tertullian, Ad ux. 2.5.

16. Cyprian, De dom. orat. 35.

17. Cyprian, Ad Don. 15.

18. Augustine, Ep. 130 in St. Augustine: Letters, ed. by Wilfrid Parsons, Fathers of the Church 12, 18, 20, 30, 32 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1964-89), 18.390.

19. Augustine, Ep. 130 (Parsons 2.391).

20. Tertullian, Apol. 16 and 39 and Ad nat. 13; cf. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7.7.

21. Inter alia, Cyprian, De unit. 13

22. Augustine, Serm. in Monte 2.5.18.

23. Augustine, Ep. 55.15.32; cf. Tertullian, De orat. 23 and De cor. 3.

24. Augustine, Serm. 17

25. Augustine, Serm. 211.

26. Augustine, Serm. 90 and 211. Neither Tertullian nor Cyprian report the gesture.

27. Tertullian, De orat. 23 (ANF 3.689).

28. Cyprian, De op. et elem. 6.

29. Augustine, De civ. dei 9.4.12.

30. Augustine, Serm. 49: primo beatus stephanus stans oravit pro se, et ait: domine iesu, accipe spiritum meum. hoc dicto genu flexit, at genufecto ait: domine, ne sttuas illis hoc delictum. hoc dicto obdormuit . . . sed quaeso, te, sanctus stephane . . . quare pro te stano orasti, et pro inimicos genu flexisti. respondebit . . . 'prome stans oravi quia pro me qui recte deo servivi,orando et impetrando non laboravi. pro me non laboravi.' Qui pro iusto non laboravit ideo stans pre se oravit. ventum est ut oraret pro iudeis, pro interfectoribus christi, pro interfectoribus sanctorum . . . genu flexit [tranlation mine].

31. Tertullian, De pudic. 13.

32. Augustine, Conf. 8.6.14.

33. Augustine, De civ. dei. 22.8 translated by William Bettenson in St Augustine: Concerning the City of God against the Pagans (London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 1036-37.

34. Augustine, Ep. 262.10 and Enn. in Ps. 43.24; for repeated incidents in public, see Conf. 8.6.14.

35. Explicit citation in Augustine, De trin. 12.1.

36. Tertullian, De orat. 16.

37. For Arsenius, see Arsenius, Logion 30, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. by Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1975), p. 14; cf the comments of S. Thewall on Hermas on De orat. 16 in ANF 3.68.

38. See John Cassian, Institutes 2.5.11. I am grateful to William Harmless for this reference.

39. Tertullian, De orat. 15.

40. Tertullian, De orat. 20 and Virg. veland. 17

41. William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1995), especially, pp. 262-63.

42. Tertullian, De orat. 11.

43. Tertullian, De orat. 12.

44. See Wunibald Roetzer, Des heligen Augustinus Schriften als liturgie-geschichtliche Quelle (Munich: Max Hueber, 1930), p. 243, on Ps. 62.5.

45. Tertullian, De orat. 17; Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 31.2.11.

46. Augustine, Serm. 342.

47. Tertullian, De cor. 3 (ANF 3.94-95).

48. Cyprian, Ad Quir. 2.22.

49. Inter alia, Augustine, Serm. 17, 32, 301A and 342, and Conf. 1.1; In Ioh Ev. Tr. 11.4 and 55.1; Enn in Ps. 32.2.2.13, 48.2.2, 59.9.

50. See Thomas Halton, "Sign of the Cross" in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, edited by Everett Ferguson (New York and London: Garland 1990).

51. Augustine, De civ. dei. 22.8.

52. Inter alia, Augustine, Enn. in ps. 31.2.11, 38.14.4, 38.14.7, and 58.1.7.

53. Augustine, Serm. 29, 67 and 68. See the discussion of the custom in Fernand Cabrol, La livre de la prière antique, 2^nd ed. (Paris: Alfred Mama et fils, 1929), pp. 128-29.

54. See, e.g., J. Vermeylen, "Le cheminement de la pénitence selon saint Augustin" in Collectanaea mechlinensia 51 (1966): 514-546, at p. 533, with references to appropriate texts and Maureen A. Tilley, "Theologies of Penance during the Donatist Controversy," Studia Patristica 35 (2001): 330-337.

55. Tertullian, De orat.17 (ANF 3.686).

56. Cyprian, De dom. orat. 4.

57. Inter alia, Augustine, Conf. 3.10, 5.8.15, 6.1.1, 6.3.3., 8.12.28; Serm. 342

58. Augustine, Ep. 55.17.32.

59. Tertullian, De orat.18,

60. Augustine, Serm. 229M.

61. Optati Milevitani Libri VII 1.6.

62. Augustine, De civ. dei 22.8.

63. Augustine, De cura ger. mort. 5.7; cf. the protracted discussion of this selection in the context of Augustinian anthropology in Gareth B. Matthews, "Bodily Motions and Religious Feelings," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1/1 (Sept. 1971): 74-86.