Definition
To kiss the book is the act of placing one's lips to a copy of the Bible — or, in English practice, specifically the New Testament — immediately after taking a sworn oath, as a physical expression of the oath's binding force. The gesture serves as the solemn concluding act of the oath ceremony: the swearer affirms the obligation not only by spoken words but by this outward, tangible act of reverence toward the sacred text.
The practice is rooted in the Christian tradition that swearing by the Gospels — and touching or kissing them — invoked divine witness and made the oath spiritually enforceable, beyond any merely legal sanction. In English courts, kissing the book was long the standard method of taking an oath for witnesses, jurors, and others required to swear before giving testimony or performing an official act.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To kiss a copy of the New Testament, in England, after taking a legal oath.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry recorded.
The common and legal meanings are here essentially identical — the phrase has no significant life outside the oath-taking context. Its interest for researchers is procedural and historical rather than semantic.
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Common Confusion
"Kissing the book" should not be confused with simply taking an oath. The kiss is the concluding physical act that completed a particular form of sworn oath; it was not itself the oath. Separately, the practice differs from affirmation, which developed precisely because Quakers and others with religious or conscientious objections refused to swear on the Gospels at all. A witness who affirmed never kissed the book. Researchers encountering historical records should note whether a deponent "kissed the book," "was sworn," or "affirmed," as these distinctions could affect the legal weight attributed to the testimony in period sources and commentary.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical legal sources — English common law records, early American court practice, and treatises on evidence and procedure predating the mid-twentieth century. Researchers working with pre-1900 trial transcripts, deposition records, or procedural manuals will encounter the phrase as a standard notation confirming that a witness was properly sworn.
Several traps exist in historical sources. First, the phrase is often abbreviated in court records simply as "sworn" or "duly sworn," so absence of the explicit phrase does not mean the ceremony was different. Second, early American jurisdictions imported the practice from English common law but varied in how strictly the physical act was required; some American courts accepted touching the book without kissing it, or later dispensed with contact entirely. Third, the practice intersects directly with the law of oaths and affirmations: statutes abolishing religious tests for witnesses, beginning in the nineteenth century in both England and the United States, progressively made the physical ceremony optional or obsolete. By the twentieth century, most common-law jurisdictions had moved to a raised-hand oath or simple affirmation, rendering "kissing the book" an archaism.
Researchers tracing the evolution of oath-taking requirements — particularly in evidence law or in the context of perjury prosecutions, where the validity of the underlying oath matters — should track the legislative and judicial history of oath statutes in the relevant jurisdiction. The shift away from this ceremony is part of a broader secularization of testimonial procedure.
Anderson's cross-reference to OATH is the correct follow-on; the full doctrine lives there.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law defines the term concisely and accurately: "Placing the Bible to the lips in attestation of the obligation of an oath just administered." Anderson correctly frames it as a physical act of attestation rather than the oath itself, and appropriately redirects to the substantive entry on OATH for the fuller legal treatment.
Historical dictionaries are largely silent on this term beyond bare description. What they do not capture is the contested status of the practice in dissenting religious communities (Quakers, Mennonites, and others) whose refusal to kiss the book or swear at all generated significant litigation and ultimately drove statutory reform. The historical dictionaries also do not address the parallel development in Scotland and civil-law jurisdictions, where oath ceremonies took different forms and the physical act of kissing the Gospels was not universal.
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Jurisdictional Note
The practice was standard in English common-law courts and carried into early American colonial and federal practice. It was progressively displaced by statutory oath reforms throughout the nineteenth century in both England and the United States. Modern English practice under the Oaths Act 1978 retains the option of swearing on a holy book but does not require the kiss. American federal and state courts no longer require or typically use the gesture.
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