Use of Beads at Prayers
Beads variously strung together, according to the kind,
order, and number of prayers in certain forms of
devotion, are in common use among Catholics as an
expedient to ensure a right count of the parts
occurring in more or less frequent repetition. Made of
materials ranging from common wood or natural berries
to costly metals a precious stones, they may be
blessed, as they are in most cases, with prayer and
holy water, thereby becoming sacramentals. In this
character they are prescribed by the rules of most
religious orders, both of men and women, to be kept for
personal use or to be worn as part of the religious
garb. They are now mostly found in the form of the
Dominican Rosary, or Marian Psalter (see ROSARY); but
Catholics are also familiar with the Brigittine beads,
the Dolour beads, the Immaculate Conception beads, the
Crown of Our Saviour, the Chaplet of the Five Wounds,
the Crosier beads, and others. In all these devotions,
due to individual zeal or fostered by particular
religious bodies, the beads serve one and the same
purpose of distinguishing and numbering the constituent
prayers.
Rationalistic criticism generally ascribes an Oriental
origin to prayer beads; but man's natural tendency to
iteration, especially of prayers, and the spirit and
training of the early Christians may still safely be
assumed to have spontaneously suggested fingers,
pebbles, knotted cords, and strings of beads or berries
as a means of counting, when it was desired to say a
specific number of prayers. The earliest historical
indications of the use of beads at prayer by Christians
show, in this as in other things, a natural growth and
development. Beads strung together or ranged on chains
are an obvious improvement over the well-known
primitive method instanced, for example, in the life of
the Egyptian Abbot Paul (d. A. D. 341), who used to
take three hundred pebbles into his lap as counters and
to drop one as he finished each of the corresponding
number of prayers it was his wont to say daily. In the
eighth century the penitentials, or rule books
pertaining to penitents, prescribed various penances of
twenty, fifty, or more, paters. The strings of beads,
with the aid of which such penances were accurately
said, gradually came to be known as paternosters.
Archaeological records mention fragments of prayer
beads found in the tomb of the holy abbess Gertrude of
Nivelles (d. 659); also similar devices discovered in
the tombs of St. Norbert and of St. Rosalia, both of
the twelfth century. The Bollandists quote William of
Malmesbury (De Gest. Pont. Angl., IV, 4) as stating
that the Countess Godiva, who founded a religious house
at Coventry in 1040, donated, when she was about to
die, a circlet or string of costly precious stones on
which she used to say her prayers, to be placed on a
statue of the Blessed Virgin. In the course of the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, such
paternosters came into extensive use especially in the
religious orders. At certain times corresponding to the
canonical hours, lay brothers and lay sisters were
obliged to say a certain number of Our Fathers as an
equivalent of the clerical obligation of the Divine
Office. The military orders, likewise, notably the
Knights of St. John, adopted the paternoster beads as a
part of the equipment of lay members. In the fifteenth
century, wearing the beads at one's girdle was a
distinctive sign of membership in a religious
confraternity or third order. If a certain worldliness
in the use of beads as ornaments in those days had to
be checked, as it was by various capitulary ordinances
prohibiting monks and friars, for instance, from having
beads of coral, crystal, amber, etc., and nuns from
wearing beads around the neck, evidence is not wanting
that paternosters were also openly carried as a sign of
penance, especially by bands of pilgrims processionally
visiting the shrines, churches, and other holy places
at Rome. From their purpose, too, it is natural that
prayer beads were prized as gifts of friendship. They
were especially valued if they had been worn by a
person of known sanctity or if they had touched the
relics of any saint, in which cases they were often
piously believed to be the instruments of miraculous
power and healing virtue.
Beads were generally strung either on a straight
thread, or cord, or so as to form a circlet, or loop.
At the present time chained beads have almost entirely
taken the place of the corded ones. To facilitate the
counting or to mark off certain divisions of a
devotion, sets of beads, usually decades, are separated
from each other by a larger bead or sometimes by a
medal or metal cross. The number of beads on a chaplet,
or Rosary, depends on the number of prayers making up
each particular form of devotion. A full Rosary
consists of one hundred and fifty Hail Marys, fifteen
Our Fathers, and three or four beads corresponding to
introductory versicles and the "Glory be to the
Father", etc. Such a "pair of beads" is generally worn
by religious. Lay people commonly have beads
representing a third part of the Rosary. The Brigittine
beads number seven paters in honour of the sorrows and
joys of the Blessed Virgin, and sixty-three aves to
commemorate the years of her life. Another Crown of Our
Lady, in use among the Franciscans, has seventy-two
aves, based on another tradition of the Blessed
Virgin's age. The devotion of the Crown of Our Lord
consists of thirty-three paters in honour of the years
of Our Lord on earth and five aves in honour of His
sacred wounds. In the church Latin of the Middle Ages,
many names were applied to prayer beads as: devotiones,
signacula, oracula, precaria, patriloquium, serta,
preculae, numeralia, computum, calculi, and others. An
Old English form, bedes, or bedys, meant primarily
prayers. From the end of the fifteenth century and in
the beginning of the sixteenth, the name paternoster
beads fell into disuse and was replaced by the name ave
beads and Rosary, chaplet, or crown.
The use of beads among pagans is undoubtedly of greater
antiquity than their Christian use; but there is no
evidence to show that the latter is derived from the
former, any more than there is to establish a relation
between Christian devotions and pagan forms of prayer.
One sect in India used a chaplet consisting generally
of one hundred and eight beads made of the wood of the
sacred Tulsi shrub, to tell the names of Vishnu; and
another accomplished its invocations of Siva by means
of a string of thirty-two or sixty-four berries of the
Rudr=E2ksha tree. These or other species of seeds or
berries were chosen as the material for these chaplets
on account of some traditional association with the
deities, as recorded in sacred legends. Some of the
ascetics had their beads made of the teeth of dead
bodies. Among some sects, especially the votaries of
Vishnu, a string of beads is placed on the neck of
children when, at the age of six or seven, they are
about to be initiated and to be instructed in the use
of the sacred formularies. Most Hindus continue to wear
the beads both for ornament and for use at prayers.
Among the Buddhists, whose religion is of Brahminic
origin, various prayer-formulas are said or repeated
with the aid of beads made of wood, berries, coral,
amber, or precious metals and stones. A string of beads
cut from the bones of some holy lama is especially
valued. The number of beads is usually one hundred and
eight; but strings of thirty or forty are in use among
the poorer classes. Buddhism in Burma, Tibet, China,
and Japan alike employs a number of more or less
complicated forms of devotion, but the frequently
recurring conclusion, a form of salutation, is mostly
the same, and contains the mystic word OM, supposed to
have reference to the Buddhistic trinity. It is not
uncommon to find keys and trinkets attached to a
Buddhist's prayer beads, and generally each string is
provided with two little cords of special counters, ten
in number, in the form of beads or metal disks. At the
end of one of these cords is found a miniature
thunderbolt; the other terminates in a tiny bell. With
the aid of this device the devotee can count a hundred
repetitions of his beads or 108x10x10 formulas in all.
Among the Japanese, especially elaborate systems of
counting exist. One apparatus is described as capable
of registering 36,736 prayers or repetitions.
The Moslems use a string of ninety-nine (or one
hundred) beads called the subha or tasbih, on which
they recite the "beautiful" names or attributes of
Allah. It is divided into three equal parts either by a
bead or special shape or size, or by a tassel of gold
or silk thread. The use of these Islamic beads appears
to have been established as early as the ninth century
independently of Buddhistic influences. Some critics
have thought the Mohammedan chaplet is kindred to a
Jewish form of one hundred blessings. The beads in
general use are said to be often made of the sacred
clay of Mecca or Medina. Among travellers; records of
prayer beads is the famous instance, by Marco Polo, of
the King of Malabar, who wore a fine silk thread strung
with one hundred and four large pearls and rubies, on
which he was wont to pray to his idols. Alexander Von
Humboldt is also quoted as finding prayer beads, called
Quipos, among the native Peruvians.
JOHN R. VOLE Transcribed by Janet Grayson
[New Advent Catholic Website]
http://www.knight.org/advent
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright �
1996 by New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver,
Colorado, USA, 80228. (
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