Hail Mary

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, 1433–1434

The Hail Mary or Ave Maria (from its first words in Latin), also called the Angelic Salutation, is a traditional Catholic prayer addressing Mary, the mother of Jesus. The prayer is based on two biblical passages featured in the Gospel of Luke: the Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary (the Annunciation) and Mary's subsequent visit to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. It is also called the Angelical Salutation due to the prayer's basis on Archangel Gabriel's words to Mary.

Hail Mary is a prayer of praise for and of petition to Mary, regarded as the Theotokos (Mother of God). Since the 16th century, the version of the prayer used in the Catholic Church closes with an appeal for her intercession. The prayer takes different forms in various traditions and has often been set to music.

In the Latin Church, the Hail Mary forms the basis of other prayers such as the Angelus and the Rosary. In some Oriental Orthodox traditions, theotokia in psalmody are devoted to praising the Mother of God. In addition, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have a common private prayer quite similar to the Hail Mary, though without the explicit request for intercession. The Eastern Catholic Churches follow their respective traditions or adopt the Latin Church version, which is also used by many other Western groups historically branching from the Catholic Church, such as Lutherans, Anglicans, Independent Catholics, and Old Catholics.

Text

The Latin version of the prayer is the most common in English-speaking and other Western countries.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Biblical source

The prayer incorporates two greetings to Mary recorded in the Gospel of Luke: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee", and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb". In mid-13th-century Western Europe, the prayer consisted only of these words with the single addition of the name "Mary" after the word "Hail", as is evident from Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the prayer.

The first is the angel's greeting at the Annunciation, the second from Elizabeth's greeting at the Visitation, and taken together, these two passages are the two times Mary is greeted in chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke.

Annunciation

The first of the two passages from the Gospel of Luke is the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, originally written in Koine Greek. The opening word of greeting, χαῖρε (chaíre), here translated "hail", literally has the meaning "rejoice" or "be glad". This was the normal greeting in the language in which the Gospel of Luke is written and continues to be used in the same sense in Modern Greek. Accordingly, both "hail" and "rejoice" are valid English translations of the word ("hail" reflecting the Latin translation, and "rejoice" reflecting the original Greek).

According to Pope Benedict XVI, "at first sight the term chaire "rejoice", seems an ordinary greeting, typical in the Greek world, but if this word is interpreted against the background of the biblical tradition it acquires a far deeper meaning. The same term occurs four times in the Greek version of the Old Testament and always as a proclamation of joy in the coming of the Messiah (cf. Zeph 3:14, Joel 2:21; Zech 9:9; Lam 4:21). The Angel’s greeting to Mary is therefore an invitation to joy, deep joy. It announces an end to the sadness that exists in the world because of life’s limitations, suffering, death, wickedness, in all that seems to block out the light of the divine goodness. It is a greeting that marks the beginning of the Gospel, the Good News."

The word κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitōménē), here translated as "graceful", admits of various translations. Grammatically, the word is the feminine perfect passive participle of the verb χαριτόω (charitóō), which means "to show, or bestow with, grace" and here, in the passive voice, "to have grace shown, or bestowed upon, one".

The text also appears in the account of the annunciation contained in chapter 9 of the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Matthew.

Visitation

The second part of the prayer is taken from Elizabeth's greeting to Mary as recorded in Luke 1:42: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."

In Western Latin tradition

After considering the use of similar words in Syriac, Greek and Latin in the 6th century, Herbert Thurston, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia concludes that "there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050" – though a later pious tale attributed to Ildephonsus of Toledo (fl. 7th century) the use of the first part, namely the angel's greeting to Mary, without that of Elizabeth, as a prayer. All the evidence suggests that it took its rise from certain versicles and responsories occurring in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which just at that time was coming into favour among the monastic orders.

Thomas Aquinas spoke of the name "Mary" as the only word added at his time to the Biblical text, to indicate the person who was "full of grace". But at about the same time the name "Jesus" was also added, to specify who was meant by the phrase "the fruit of thy womb".

The Western version of the prayer is thus not derived from the Greek version: even the earliest Western forms have no trace of the Greek version's phrases: "Mother of God and Virgin" and "for thou hast given birth to the Saviour of our souls".

To the greeting and praise of Mary of which the prayer thus consisted, a petition "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death" was added later. The petition first appeared in print in 1495 in Girolamo Savonarola's Esposizione sopra l'Ave Maria. The "Hail Mary" prayer in Savonarola's exposition reads: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

The petition was commonly added around the time of the Council of Trent. The Dutch Jesuit Petrus Canisius is credited with adding in 1555 in his Catechism the sentence

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.

Eleven years later, the sentence was included in the Catechism of the Council of Trent of 1566. The catechism says that to the first part of the Hail Mary, by which "we render to God the highest praise and return Him most gracious thanks, because He has bestowed all His heavenly gifts on the most holy Virgin... the Church of God has wisely added prayers and an invocation addressed to the most holy Mother of God....We should earnestly implore her help and assistance; for that she possesses exalted merits with God, and that she is most desirous to assist us by her prayers, no one can doubt without impiety and wickedness." Soon after, in 1568 Pope Pius V included the full form as now known in his revision of the Roman Breviary.

The current Latin version is thus as follows, with accents added to indicate how the prayer is said in the current Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation:

Áve María, grátia pléna,
Dóminus técum.
Benedícta tu in muliéribus,
et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus.
Sáncta María, Máter Déi,
óra pro nóbis peccatóribus,
nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Because recitation of the Angelus, a prayer within which the Hail Mary is recited three times, is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell, words from the Ave Maria were often inscribed on bells.

Indulgence

The Enchiridion Indulgentiarum (Indulgences Handbook) grants the partial indulgence for this prayer.

Byzantine Christian use

The Hail Mary prayer of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches is similar to the first part of the Latin Church form, with the addition of a very brief opening phrase and a short concluding phrase. It is well known and often used, though not quite as frequently as in the Western Church. It appears in several canons of prayer. It is typically sung thrice at the end of Vespers during an All-Night Vigil, and occurs many times in the course of daily prayer.

The Greek text, of which those in other languages are translations, is:

Θεοτόκε Παρθένε, χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη Μαρία, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξί, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου, ὅτι Σωτῆρα ἔτεκες τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

God-bearing Virgin, rejoice, grace-filled Mary, the Lord with thee. Praised thou among women, and praised the fruit of thy womb, because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest.

To the Biblical texts this adds the opening invocation "Theotokos Virgin", the name "Mary", and the concluding phrase "because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest".

Another English rendering of the same text reads:

Mother of God and Virgin, rejoice, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast given birth to the Saviour of our souls.

or:

God-bearing (or: Theotokos) Virgin, rejoice, O Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast brought forth the Savior of our souls.

Aramaic version

The Aramaic version has been reconstructed (probably from Arabic) by Afram Barsoum in the following way:

Aramaic

Text	Transliteration
ܫܠܳܡ ܠܶܟ̣ܝ̱ ܒܬ̣ܽܘܠܬܳܐ ܡܰܪܝܰܡ ܡܰܠܝܰܬ̣ ܛܰܝܒܽܘܬ̣ܳܐ.	Shlom lekh 'bthulto Maryam 'malyath taybutho,
ܡܳܪܰܢ ܥܰܡܶܟ̣ܝ̱.	moran 'amekh.
ܡܒܰܪܰܟ̣ܬܳܐ ܐܰܢ̱ܬܝ̱ ܒܢܶܫ̈ܶܐ.	Mbarakhto at bneshe.
ܘܰܡܒܰܪܰܟ ܗ̱ܽܘ ܦܺܐܪܳܐ ܕܰܒܟܰܪܣܶܟ̣ܝ̱. ܡܳܪܰܢ ܝܶܫܽܘܥ.	Wambarakhu firo dabkarsekh moran Yeshu.
ܐܳܘ ܩܰܕܺܝܫܬܳܐ ܡܰܪܝܰܡ ܝܳܠܕܰܬ̣ ܐܰܠܗܳܐ.	O qadishto Maryam yoldath Aloho.
ܨܰܠܳܝ ܚܠܳܦܰܝܢ ܚܰܛܳܝ̈ܶܐ.	Saloy hlofayn hatoye,
ܗܳܫܳܐ ܘܰܒܫܳܥܰܬ ܘܡܰܘܬܰܢ	hosho wabsho'at u mawtan.
ܐܰܡܺܝܢ܀	Amin.

Slavonic versions

There exist two variant versions in Church Slavonic:

Cyrillic	Romanization	English Translation
Богородице дѣво радѹйсѧ ѡбрадованнаѧ Марїе Господь съ тобою благословена ты въ женахъ, и благословенъ плодъ чрева твоегѡ, Якѡ родила еси Христа Спаса, Избавителѧ дѹшамъ нашимъ.	Bogorodice děvo, radujsę, obradovannaę Marie, Gospodǐ sǔ toboju. blagoslovena ty vǔ ženaxǔ, i blagoslovenǔ plodǔ čreva tvoego, Jako rodila esi Xrista Spasa, Izbavitelę dušamǔ našimǔ.	Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, (or: Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos) Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne Christ the Saviour, the Deliverer of our souls.
Богородице дѣво, радѹйсѧ, Благодатнаѧ Марїе, Господь съ тобою: благословена Ты въ женахъ, и благословенъ плодъ чрева Твоегѡ; якѡ Спаса родила еси дѹшъ нашихъ.	Bogorodice děvo, radujsę, Blagodatnaę Marie, Gospodǐ sǔ toboju: Blagoslovena ty vǔ ženaxǔ, I blagoslovenǔ plodǔ čreva tvoego, jako Spasa rodila esi dušǔ našixǔ.	Theotokos Virgin, rejoice, (or: Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos) Mary full of grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne the Saviour of our souls.

The first is the older, and remains in use by the Old Believers as well as those who follow the Ruthenian recension (among them the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the Ruthenian Catholic Church). The second, corresponding more closely to the Greek, appeared in 1656 under the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, and is in use by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Romanian version

„Născătoare de Dumnezeu, Fecioară, bucură-te! Ceea ce ești plină de har, Marie, Domnul este cu tine. Binecuvântată ești tu între femei și binecuvântat este rodul pântecelui tău, că ai născut pe Mântuitorul sufletelor noastre. Preasfântă Marie, Maica lui Dumnezeu, roagă-te pentru noi, păcătoșii, acum și-n ceasul morții noastre”.

Latin Church Catholic use

The Hail Mary is the last prayer in Appendix V of the present Roman Missal, the last of seven prayers under the heading "Thanksgiving After Mass". There it appears with "with you" instead of the traditional "with thee", "are you among" instead of the traditional "art thou amongst" and "your womb" in place of the traditional "thy womb":

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you;
blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

The Hail Mary is the central part of the Angelus, a devotion generally recited thrice daily by many Catholics, as well as high church Anglicans, and Lutherans who usually omit the second half.

The Hail Mary is an essential element of the Rosary, a prayer method in use especially among Roman Rite (Western) Catholics. The Eastern Catholic Churches say a similar version.

The Rosary consists traditionally of three sets of five Mysteries, each Mystery being meditated on while reciting a decade (a set of ten) of Ave Maria. The 150 Ave Maria of the Rosary thus echo the 150 psalms. These Mysteries concern events of Jesus' life during his childhood (Joyful Mysteries), Passion (Sorrowful Mysteries), and from his Resurrection onwards (Glorious Mysteries). Another set, the Luminous Mysteries, is of comparatively recent origin, having been proposed by Pope John Paul II in 2002. Each decade of Ave Maria is preceded by the Our Father (Pater Noster or The Lord's Prayer) and followed by the Glory Be (Gloria Patri or Doxology). The repetition of these fixed-language prayers assists recitation from the heart rather than the head. Pope Paul V said that "the Rosary is a treasure of graces... even for those souls who pray without meditating, the simple act of taking the beads in hand to pray is already a remembrance of God – of the supernatural".

Lutheran use

Martin Luther believed that Mary should be held in highest reverence, advocating the use of the original Hail Mary (that is, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.") as a sign of reverence for and devotion to the Virgin. The 1522 Betbüchlein (Prayer Book) retained the Hail Mary. The last part of the prayer used in Catholicism today ("Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death") was not in use in Germany at the time.

Anglican use

Some Anglicans also employ the Hail Mary in devotional practice. Anglo-Catholic Anglicans use the prayer in much the same way as Roman Catholics, including use of the Rosary and the recitation of the Angelus. Many Anglican churches contain artistic depictions of the Virgin Mary, but only a minority use Marian devotional prayers such as the Hail Mary. That manifestation of veneration of Mary, decried by some Protestants as Mariolatry, was largely removed from Anglican churches during the English Reformation but was reintroduced to some extent during the Oxford Movement of the mid-1800s.

Musical settings

The Hail Mary (Ave Maria in Latin) has been set to music numerous times. The title "Ave Maria" has been given also to musical compositions that are not settings of the prayer.

One of the most famous is the version by Franz Schubert (1825), composed as Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen's Third Song), D839, part 6 of his Opus 52, a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's popular epic poem "The Lady of the Lake", translated into German by Adam Storck. Although it opens with the greeting "Ave Maria" ("Hail Mary"), the text was not that of the traditional prayer, but nowadays it is commonly sung with words of the prayer. Its music was used in the final segment of Disney's Fantasia.

In Gounod's version, he superimposed melody and the words to the first prelude from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, omitting only the words "Mater Dei" (Mother of God).

Anton Bruckner wrote three different settings, the best known being a motet for seven voices. Antonín Dvořák's version was composed in 1877. Another setting of Ave Maria was written by Giuseppe Verdi as part for his 1887 opera Otello. Russian composer César Cui, who was raised Roman Catholic, set the text at least three times: as the "Ave Maria", op. 34, for one or two women's voices with piano or harmonium (1886), and as part of two of his operas: Le flibustier (premiered 1894) and Mateo Falcone (1907).

Settings also exist by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Liszt, William Byrd, Edward Elgar, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jacques Offenbach, Gioachino Rossini, Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, Pietro Mascagni, Morten Lauridsen, David Conte and Lorenzo Perosi as well as numerous versions by less well-known composers, such as J. B. Tresch, Margit Sztaray, Mme. Tarbé des Sablons, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Ninel Samokhvalova.

In the Renaissance, this text was also set by numerous composers, including Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lasso, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Before the Council of Trent there were actually different versions of the text, so the earlier composers in the period sometimes set versions of the text different from the ones shown above. Josquin des Prez, for example, himself set more than one version of the Ave Maria. Here is the text of his motet "Ave Maria... Virgo serena", which begins with the first six words above and continues with a poem in rhymed couplets.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum, Virgo serena.
Ave cuius conceptio,
solemni plena gaudio,
celestia, terrestria,
nova replet letitia.
Ave cuius nativitas,
nostra fuit solemnitas,
ut lucifer lux oriens
verum solem preveniens.
Ave pia humilitas,
sine viro fecunditas,
cuius annunciatio
nostra fuit salvatio.
Ave vera virginitas,
immaculata castitas,
cuius purificatio
nostra fuit purgatio.
Ave preclara omnibus
angelicis virtutibus,
cuius fuit assumptio
nostra glorificatio.
O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.

The much-anthologized "Ave Maria" by Jacques Arcadelt is actually a 19th-century arrangement by Pierre-Louis Dietsch, loosely based on Arcadelt's three part madrigal "Nous voyons que les hommes".

In the 20th century, Franz Biebl composed Ave Maria (Angelus Domini), actually a setting of the Angelus prayer, in which the Ave Maria is repeated three times, but its second part only once as the climax.

In Slavonic, the text was also a popular subject for setting to music by Eastern European composers. These include Sergei Rachmaninov, Igor Stravinsky, Bortniansky, Vladimir Vavilov (his version often misattributed to Giulio Caccini), Mikhail Shukh, Lyudmyla Hodzyumakha and others.

A famous setting for the Orthodox version of the prayer in Church Slavonic (Bogoroditsye Djevo) was composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in his All-Night Vigil.

Since Protestant Christianity generally avoids any special veneration of Mary, musical settings of the prayer are sometimes sung to other texts that preserve the word boundaries and syllable stresses.

See also

• Devotion of the Three Hail Marys
• Hail Mary pass
• Marian devotions

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

The Hail Mary (sometimes called the "Angelical salutation", sometimes, from the first words in its Latin form, the "Ave Maria") is the most familiar of all the prayers used by the Universal Church in honour of our Blessed Lady.

It is commonly described as consisting of three parts. The first, "Hail (Mary) full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women", embodies the words used by the Angel Gabriel in saluting the Blessed Virgin (Luke, I, 28). The second, "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb (Jesus)", is borrowed from the Divinely inspired greeting of St. Elizabeth (Luke, i, 42), which attaches itself the more naturally to the first part, because the words "benedicta tu in mulieribus" (I, 28) or "inter mulieres" (I, 42) are common to both salutations. Finally, the petition "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." is stated by the official "Catechism of the Council of Trent" to have been framed by the Church itself. "Most rightly", says the Catechism, "has the Holy Church of God added to this thanksgiving, petition also and the invocation of the most holy Mother of God, thereby implying that we should piously and suppliantly have recourse to her in order that by her intercession she may reconcile God with us sinners and obtainfor us the blessing we need both for this present life and for the life which has no end."

Origin

It was antecedently probable that the striking words of the Angel's salutation would be adopted by the faithful as soon as personal devotion to the Mother of God manifested itself in the Church. The Vulgate rendering, Ave gratia plena, "Hail full of grace", has often been criticized as too explicit a translation of the Greek chaire kecharitomene, but the words arein any case most striking, and the Anglican words are in any case most striking, and the Anglican Revised Version now supplements the "Hail, thouthat art highly favoured" of the original Authorized Version by the marginal alternative, "Hail thou, endued with grace". We are not surprised, then, to find these or analogous words employed in a Syriac ritual attributed to Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (c. 513), or by Andrew of Crete and St. John Damascene, or again the "Liber Antiphonarious" of St. Gregory the Great as the offertory of the Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent. But such examples hardly warrant the conclusion that the Hail Mary was at that early period used in the Church as a separate formula of Catholic devotion. Similarly a story attributing the introduction of the Hail Mary to St. Ildephonsus of Toledo must probably be regarded as apocryphal. The legend narrates how St. Ildephonsus going to the church by night found our Blessed Lady seated in the apse in his own episcopal hair with a choir of virgins around her who were singing her praises. Then St. Ildephonsus approached "making a series of genuflections and repeating at each of them those words of the angel's greeting: `Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb'". Our Lady then showed her pleasure at this homage and rewarded the saint with the gift of a beautiful chasuble (Mabillon, Acta SS. O.S.B., saec V, pref., no. 119). The story, however, in this explicit form cannot be traced further back than Hermann of Laon at the beginning of the twelfth century.

In point of fact there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about from certain versicles and responsories occurring in the Little Office or Cursus of the Blessed Virgin which just at that time was coming into favour among the monastic orders. Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts at the British Museum, one of which may be as old as the year 1030, show that the words "Ave Maria" etc. and "benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui" occurred in almost every part of the Cursus, and though we cannot be sure that these clauses were at first joined together so as to make one prayer, there is conclusive evidence that this had come to pass only a very little later. (See "The Month", Nov., 1901, pp. 486-8.) The great collections of Mary-legends which began to be formed in the early years of the twelfth century (see Mussafia, "Marien-legenden") show us that this salutation of our Lady was fast becoming widely prevalent as a form of private devotion, though it is not quite certain how far it was customary to include the clause "and blessedis the fruit of thy womb". But Abbot Baldwin, a Cistercian who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1184, wrote before this date a sort of paraphrase of the Ave Maria in which he says:

To this salutation of the Angel, by which we daily greet the most Blessed Virgin, with such devotion as we may, we are accustomed to add the words, "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb," by which clause Elizabeth at a later time, on hearing the Virgin's salutation to her, caught up and completed, as it were, the Angel's words, saying: "Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."

Not long after this (c. 1196) we meet a synodal decree of Eudes de Sully, Bishop of Paris, enjoining upon the clergy the see that the "Salutation of the Blessed Virgin" was familiarly known to their flocks as well as the Creed and the Lord's Prayer; and after this date similar enactments become frequent in every part of the world, beginning in England with the Synod of Durham in 1217.

The Hail Mary a Salutation

To understand the early developments of this devotion it is important to grasp the fact that those who first used this formula fully recognized that the Ave Maria was merely a form of greeting. It was therefore long customary to accompany the words with some external gesture of homage, a genuflection, or least an inclination of the head. Of St. Aybert, in the twelfth century, it is recorded that he recited 150 Hail Marys daily, 100 with genfluctions and 50 with prostrations. So Thierry tells us of St. Louis of France that "without counting his other prayers the holy King knelt down every evening fifty times and each time he stood upright then knelt again and repeated slowly an Ave Maria." Kneeling at the Ave Maria was enjoined in several of the religious orders. So in the Ancren Riwle (q.v.), a treatise which an examination of the Corpus Christi manuscript 402 shows to be of older date than the year 1200, the sisters are instructed that, at the recitation both of the Gloria Patri and the Ave Maria in the Office, they are either to genuflect or to incline profoundly according to the ecclesiastical season. In this way, owing to the fatigue of these repeated prostrations and genufletions, the recitation of a number of Hail Marys wasoften regarded as a penitential exercise, and it is recorded of certain canonized saints, e.g. the Dominican nun St. Margaret (d. 1292), daughterof the King of Hungary, that on certain days she recited the Ave a thousand times with a thousand prostrations. This concept of the Hail Mary as a form of salutation explains in some measure the practice, which is certainly older than the epoch of St. Dominic, of repeating the greeting as many as 150 times in succession. The idea is akin to that of the "Holy, Holy, Holy", which we are taught to think goes up continually before the throne of the Most High.

Development of the Hail Mary

In the time of St. Louis the Ave Maria ended with the words of St. Elizabeth: "benedictus fructus ventris tui"; it has since been extended by the introduction both of the Holy Name and of a clause of petition. As regards the addition of the word "Jesus," or, as it usually ran in the fifteenth century, "Jesus Chrustus, Amen", it is commonly said that this was due to the initiative of Pope Urban IV (1261) and to the confirmation and indulgence of John XXII. The evidence does not seem sufficiently clear to warrant positive statement on the point. Still, there, can be no doubt that this was the widespread belief of the later Middle Ages. A popular German religious manual of the fifteenth century ("Der Selen Troïst", 1474) even divides the Hail Mary into four portions, and declares that the first part was composed by the Angel Gabriel, the second by St. Elizabeth, the third, consisting only of the Sacred Name. Jesus Christus, by the popes, and the last, i.e. the word Amen, by the Church.

The Hail Mary as a Prayer

It was often made a subject of reproach against the Catholics by the Reformers that the Hail Mary which they so constantly repeated was not properly a prayer. It was a greeting which contained no petition (see. e.g. Latimer, Works, II, 229-230). This objection would seem to have long been felt, and as a consequence it was uncommon during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for those who recited their Aves privately to add some clause at the end, after the words "ventris tui Jesus". Traces of this practice meet us particularly in the verse paraphrases of the Ave which date from this period. The most famous of these is that attributed, though incorrectly, to Dante, and belonging in any case to the first half of the fourteenth century. In this paraphrase the Hail Mary ends with the following words:

O Vergin benedetta, sempre tu

Ora per noi a Dio, che ci perdoni,

E diaci grazia a viver si quaggiu

Che'l paradiso al nostro fin ci doni; (Oh blessed Virgin, pray to God for us always, that He may pardon us and give us grace, so to live here below that He may reward us with paradise at our death.)

Comparing the versions of the Ave existing in various languages, e.g. Italian, Spanish, German, Provençal, we find that there is a general tendency to conclude with an appeal for sinners and especially for help at the hour of death. Still a good deal of variety prevailed in these forms of petition. At the close of the fifteenth century there was not any officially approved conclusion, though a form closely resembling our present one was sometimes designated as "the prayer of Pope Alexander VI" (see "Der Katholik", April, 1903, p. 334), and was engraved separately on bells (Beisesel, "Verehrung Maria", p. 460). But for liturgical purposes the Ave down to the year 1568 ended with "Jesus, Amen", and an observation in the "Myroure of our Ldy" written for the Bridgettine nuns of Syon, clearly indicates the generally feeling. "Some saye at the begynnyng of this salutacyon Ave benigne Jesu and some saye after `Maria mater Dei', with other addycyons at the ende also. And such thinges may be saide when folke saye their Aves of theyr own devocyon. But in the servyce of the chyrche, I trowe it to be moste sewer and moste medeful (i.e. meritorious) to obey the comon use of saying, as the chyrche hath set, without all such addicions." We meet the Ave as we know it now, printed in the breviary of the Camaldolese monks, and in that of the Order de Mercede c. 1514. Probably this, the current form of Ave, came from Italy, and Esser asserts that it is to be found written exactly as we say it now in the handwriting of St. Antoninus of Florence who died in 1459. This, however, is doubtful. What is certain is that an Ave Maria identical with our own, except for the omission of the single word nostrae, stands printed at the head of the little work of Savonarola's issued in 1495, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. Even earlier than this, in a French edition of the "Calendar of Shepherds" which appeared in is repeated in Pynson's English translation a few years later in the form: "Holy Mary moder of God praye for us synners. Amen.". In an illustration which appears in the same book, the pope and the whole Church are depicted kneeling before our Lady and greeting her with this third part of the Ave. The official recognition of the Ave Maria in its complete form, though foreshadowed in the words of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as quoted at the beginning of this article, was finally given in the Roman Breviary of 1568.

One or two other points connected with the Hail Mary can only be briefly touched upon. It would seem that in the Middle Ages the Ave often become so closely connected with the Pater noster, that it was treated as a sort of farsura, or insertion, before the words et ne nos inducas in tentationem when the Pater noster was said secreto (see several examples quoted in "The Month", Nov., 1901, p. 490). The practice of preachers interrupting their sermons near the beginning to say the Ave Maria seems to have been introduced in the Middle Ages and to be of Franciscan origin (Beissel, p. 254). A curious illustration of its retention among English Catholics in the reign of James II may be found in the "Diary" of Mr. John Thoresby (I, 182). It may also be noticed that although modern Catholic usage is agreed in favouring the form "the Lord is with thee", this is a comparatively recent development. The more general custom a century ago was to say "our Lord is with thee", and Cardinal Wiseman in one of his essays strongly reprobates change (Essays on Various Subjects, I, 76), characterizing it as "stiff, cantish and destructive of the unction which the prayer breathes". Finally it may be noticed that in some places, and notably in Ireland, the feeling still survives that the Hail Mary is complete with the word Jesus. Indeed the writer is informed that within living memory it was not uncommon for Irish peasant, when bidden to say Hail Marys for a penance, to ask whether they were required to say the Holy Marys too. Upon the Ave Maria in the sense of Angelus, see ANGELUS. On account of its connection with the Angelus, the Ave Maria was often inscribed on bells. One such bell at Eskild in Denmark, dating from about the year 1200, bears the Ave Maria engraved upon it in runic characters. (See Uldall, "Danmarks Middelalderlige Kirkeklokker", Copenhagen, 1906, p. 22.)

External links

• University of Dayton Hail Mary in various languages
• Audio recordings and texts of the Hail Mary and other prayers in various languages
• Article 2, "THE WAY OF PRAYER", 2676–2677, on the Hail Mary—Catechism of the Catholic Church
• "The Village of St. Bernadette" on YouTube, video of Andy Williams' performance of a song using "Ave Maria" as its refrain.