The Cistercian Sign Language: A Study in Non-Verbal Communication (Cistercian Study Series, Number 11)

This is a record of the sign language which served to communicate necessary information without troubling the contemplative silence of the Cistercian order for nearly a millennium. Robert Barakat's training in Cultural Anthropology and his "interest in nonverbal communication, especially sign languages and folk gestures," moved him to spend time with the monks of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts documenting their use of sign. After introductory remarks about the history, nature, morphology and syntax of this sign language, he organizes his "dictionary" into four sections. The first is the signs on the official Cistercian list, the second descriptions of signs made by combining these authorized signs. The Order kept a short list of signs because they didn't want extensive communication, chatting as it were, even in sign. They didn't always succeed, of course. A friend who was a novice at Huntsville said that exchanging gossip was very difficult when it had to be done in sign. Talk was allowed in the abbot's presence or when the subject was to complex for sign, such as teaching a newcomer how to use a tractor. This made for a very clear contrast with the singing of the offices, the use of the voice and words to praise God. The third and fourth sections are additional signs authorized for that particular abbey and combinations thereof. The first and third lists are accompanied by small photos of a monk making the sign. There are some additional sections including the alphabet and numbers. Two difficulties keep this book from being truly "a dictionary of Cistercian sign language." There is no index or overall alphabetical list of the signs. If one wants to know how to say Sunday one has to look through 4 alphabetical lists before finding it. An overall index has recently been created and submitted to Cistercian Studies Quarterly for possible publication. The second difficulty is that this shows the differences between the various families of abbeys here is the US and perhaps beyond. The monks of Spencer and their foundations make the signs differently from the monks of Gethsemani and their foundations. I mentioned that I was intrigued that the sign for a tractor was a combination the signs for red and horse to a retired abbot of another house. He said that in the Gethsemani tradition tractor was a combination of one sign representing holding and moving a steering wheel plus the right hand held out trailing the body in a fixed position like the blade of a plow. An actual dictionary would need photos for some of these variations in an order with over a hundred houses. Time is running out for such a project since sign language has not been required for decades and its practitioners are dying out.