Petition and Repetition: on the Semiotic Philosophy of Prayer

The article is divided into two interconnected sections. The first seeks to characterize the semiotics of prayer and its relevance for a general semiotic anthropology of meaning. Through in–depth analyses of insights from central modern and contemporary philosophers (William James, Søren Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant, T.R. Miles) as well as from major Christian thinkers (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin), three essential elements of the semiotic philosophy of prayer are discussed: “the inevitability of prayer”, “the distribution of agency”, and “the embodiment of language”. A tendency is detected within the history of Christianity, moving toward an increasing intellectualization of prayer that results in affirming its inevitability also beyond religion, in emphasing the reflexive self–empowerment of its agency, and in advocating the semiotic disembodiment of its language. The second section of the article exemplifies this tendency through a case–study: an inquiry, from the points of view of both cultural history and cultural semiotics, upon the rosary or other similar “praying devices”. Focusing on the history and semiotic role of the rosary in Christianity, the article describes its evolution as stemming from a tension between the principles mentioned above and some opposite trends, leading toward the confessional entrenchment of prayer, the attribution of its agency to the divine addressee, and the adoption of a formulaic language based on repetition. In conclusion, the purpose of a cultural semiotics of prayer is determined in the need to understand the fine mechanisms of this dialectics and its impact on the signification patterns of religions.