prostration
A footfall is a special historical form of the knee-fall : You did a footfall when you had a special concern for a high-ranking personality, for example a monarch, by stepping in his way and falling on your knees at her feet.
According to etiquette, this form of self- humiliation did not make it easy for the person addressed to bypass the supplicant, especially if he was able to do so . The addressee had to listen to the matter and then humbly.
Historical examples
The kneeling of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa in Chiavenna in 1176 before his cousin, Heinrich the Lion, acquired a historical dimension : The imperial army in northern Italy urgently needed reinforcements, which is why Barbarossa called on Heinrich, the most powerful prince and duke of Bavaria and Saxony, to succeed and to meet on Lake Como asked. If excuses could have been found for refusing to help with arms, a refusal to accept the personal invitation of the emperor would have been understood as an open declaration of war. Heinrich therefore made his way to Chiavenna, where Barbarossa reminded him not only of whom he owed a considerable part of his power and who had repeatedly protected him against the complaints of the princes, but ultimately as a man of great gestures before his Vassals and cousins fell on their knees to induce him to military success. Legends underline the dramatic scene: the crown is said to have fallen off the emperor's head and the empress is said to have allowed herself to be carried away with sharp words. Most likely the emperor did not even wear the crown on this occasion, and Empress Beatrix is unlikely to have interfered in such highly political discussions. Heinrich perhaps saw himself cornered by Friedrich or probably saw a favorable opportunity; in any case, he made his military aid dependent on the condition that the emperor let him have the imperial palace and imperial city of Goslar with its rich silver mines . With that the Duke of Guelph had overstepped the curve, and the emperor left the room without a word, indignant at the audacity. The Staufer-Welf relationship thus experienced a new rift, which ended for the time being with the renewed entry of the Welf fiefdom of the duchies of Saxony and Bavaria and the exile of Heinrich.
A key scene in Theodor Fontane's novel Schach von Wuthenow depicts such a fall before the Prussian king.
Seven footfalls
A walk to the "Seven Footfalls" as a petition - often dedicated to the deceased - is one of the oldest forms of the Way of the Cross and z. B. in the Rhineland as a death custom still known today. In some places wayside shrines with motifs from the Way of the Cross have been preserved, depicting the stations of the procession and before which people kneeled. These wayside shrines are also popularly called "footfalls".
See also
Web links
- Thomas Staubli : Proskynesis. In: www.bibelwissenschaft.de.
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedemann needy : The Staufer. A lexicon. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-89678-288-6 , p. 37 f.