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 ROSARY

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ROSARY

something in the nature of prayer-counters or rosary- beads. Even in ancient Nineveh a sculpture has been found thus described by Layard in liis "Alon- uments" (I, plate 7): "Two winged females sttmding before the sacred tree in the attitude of prayer; they lift the extended right hand and hold in the left a garland or rosary." However this may be, it is certain that among the Mohammedans the Tasbih or bead-string, consisting of 33, 66, or 99 beads, and used for counting devotionally the names of Allah, has been in use for many centuries. Marco Polo, visiting the King of Malabar in the thirteenth cen- tury, found to his surprise that that monarch employed a rosary of 104 (? 108) precious stones to count his prayers. St. Francis Xavier and his companions were equally astonished to see that rosaries were universally familiar to the Buddhists of Japan. Among the monks of the Greek Church we hear of the kombologion, or komboschoinion, a cord with a hundred knots used to count genuflexions and signs of the cross. Similarly, beside the mummy of a Christian ascetic, Thaias, of the fourth century, recently dis- interred at Antinoe in Egypt, was found a sort of cribbage-board with holes, which has generally been thought to be an apparatus for counting prayers. Still more primitive is the device of which Palladius and other ancient authorities have left us an account. A certain Paul the Hermit, in the fourth century, had imposed upon himself the task of repeating three hundred prayers, according to a set form, every day. To do this, he gathered up three hundred pebbles and threw one away as each prayer was finished (Palla- dius, "Hist. Laus.", xx; Butler, II, 63). It is probable that other ascetics who also numbered their prayers by hundreds adopted some similar expedient. (Cf. "Vita S. Godrici", cviii.) Indeed when we find a papal privilege addressed to the monks of St. Apolli- naris in Classe requiring them, in gratitude for the pope's benefactions, tosayKyrie eleison three hundred times twice a day (sec tlic i)rivil('gc of Hadrian I, A. D. 782, in Jaffi'-Lowcnfeld, n. 2437), one would infer that some counting apparatus must almost necessarily have been used for the purpose.

But there were other prayers to be counted more nearly connected with the Rosary than Kyrie elei- sons. At an early date among the monastic orders the practice had established itself not only of offering Masses, but of saying vocal prayers as a suffrage for their deceased brethren. For this purpo.sc the private recitation of the 150 psalms, or of 5 psalms, the third part, was constantly enjoined. Already in A. D. 800 we learn from the compact between St. Gall and Reichenau ("Mon. Germ. Hist.: Ccmfrat.", Piper, 140) that for each decea.sed brother all the priests should say one Mass and also fifty psalms. A charter in Kemble (Cod. Dipl., I, 290) prescribes that each monk is to sing two fifties (hni JiJ'li(j} for the souls of certain benefactors, while each priest is to sing two Masses and each deacon to read two Passions. But as time went on, and the convcrsi, or lay brothers, most of them quite illiterate, became distinct from the choir monks, it was felt that th(>y also should be required to substitute some simple form of prayer in place of the psalms to which their more educated brethren were bound by rule. Thus we read in the "Ancient Customs of Cluny", col- lected by Udalrio in 1096, that when the death of any brother at a distance was announced, every priest was to offer Mass, and every non-priest was either to say fifty psalms or to repeat fifty times the Pater- noster ("quicunque sacerdos est cantet missam pro eo, et qui non est sacerdos quinquaginta psalmos aut toties orationem dominicam". P. L., CXLIX, 776). Similarly among the Knights Templars, whose rule dates from about 1128, the knights who could not attend choir were required to say the Lord's Prayer 57 times in all and on the death of any of the brethren

they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

To count these accurately there is every reason to beUeve that already in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a practice had come in of using pebbles, berries, or discs of bone threaded on a string. It is in any case certain that the Countess Godiva of Coventry (c. 1075) left by will to the statue of Our Lady in a certain monastery "the circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly" (Malmesbury, "Gesta Pont.", Rolls Series 311). Another example seems to occur in the case of St. Rosalia (a. d. 1160), in whose tomb similar strings of beads were discovered. Even more important is the fact that such strings of beads were known throughout the Middle Ages — and in some Continental tongues are known to this day — as "Paternosters". The evidence for this is over- whelming and comes from every part of Europe. Already in the thirteenth century the manufacturers of these articles, who were know as "paternosterers", almost e\-erywhere formed a recognized craft guilil of considerable importance. The " Livre des metiers" of Stephen Boyleau, for example, supphes full infor- mation regarding the four guilds of patenotriers in Paris in the year 1268, while Paternoster Row in London still preserves the memory of the street in which their English craft-fellows congregatetl. Now the obvious inference is that an appliance which was persistently called a "paternoster", or in Latin fila de paternoster, numeralia de paternoster, and so on, had, at least originally, been designed for counting Our Fathers. This inference, drawn out and illus- trated with much learning by Father T. Esser, O.P., in 1897, becomes a practical certainty when we re- member that it was only in the middle of the twelfth century that the Hail Mary came at all generally into use as a formula of devotion. It is morally impossible that Lady Godiva's circlet of jewels could have been intended to count Ave Marias. Hencx; there can be no doubt that the strings of prayer- beads were called "paternosters" because for a long time they were principally employed to number repetitions of the Lord's Prayer.

When, however, the Hail Mary came into use, it appears that from the first the consciousness that it was in its own nature a salutation rather than a prayer induced a fashion of repeating it many times in suc- cession, accompanied by genuflexions or some other external act of reverence. Just as happens nowadays in the firing of salutes, or in the applause given to a public performer, or in the rounds of cheers evoked among school-boys by an arrival or departur(>, so also then the honour paid by such salutations was measured by numbers and coiitiTUKuice. Further, since the recitation of tlie Psalms divided into fifties was, as innumerable documents attest, the favourite form of devotion for religious and learned persons, so those who were simple or much occupied loved, by the repetition of fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty salutations of Our Lady, to feel that they were imitating the practice of God's more exalted servants. In any case it is certain that in the course of the twelfth century and before the birth of St. Dominic, the practice of reciting 50 or 150 Ave Marias had become generally familiar. The most conclusive evidence of this is furnished by the "Mary-legends", or stories of Our Lady, which obtained wide circula- tion at this epoch. The story of Eulalia, in parti- cular, according to which a client of the Blessed Vir- gin who had been wont to say a hundred and fifty Aves was bidden by her to say only fifty, but more slowly, has been shown by Mussafia (Marien-legen- den, Pts I, II) to be unquestionably of early (late. Not less conclusive is the account given of St. Albert (d. 1140) by his contemporary biographer, who tells