Les gestes liturgiques des fidèles orthodoxes en période de pandémie, entre le discours prescriptif des autorités sanitaires, la foi et la piété

Abstract

The present article proposes an analysis of the influence of the prescriptive discourse of the health authorities concerning the rules to be respected during the conduct of religious services, during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as an analysis on the gestural practice of the Romanian Orthodox faithful highly experienced in the manifestation of their faith and piety. We will refer to the gestures performed by this category of liturgical actors during their participation in the Eucharistic Liturgy, on the basis of a corpus of anthropological observations recorded according to the method of participant observation (Maisonneuve 1988) in some Moldavian parishes, cathedrals and monasteries, around the city of Iasi. The discursive, semiotic and anthropological analysis will be underpinned by a theological reflection of a liturgical nature, which we will borrow from a few patristic authors and the greatest contemporary Orthodox theologians, French and Romanian.

Keywords

• orthodoxy
• prescriptive discourse
• eucharistic liturgy
• liturgical gesture
• pandemic