page_title: Veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church
section_title: Prayers
hierarchical_section_title: Veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church / Prayers
context_page_description: In the Catholic Church, the veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus, encompasses various Marian devotions which include prayer, pious acts, visual arts, poetry, and music devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Popes have encouraged it, while also taking steps to reform some manifestations of it. The Holy See has insisted on the importance of distinguishing "true from false devotion, and authentic doctrine from its deformations by excess or defect". There are significantly more titles, feasts, and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than in other Western Christian traditions. The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God.
  Belief in the incarnation of God the Son through Mary is the basis for calling her the Mother of God, which was declared a dogma at the Council of Ephesus in 431. At the Second Vatican Council and in Pope John Paul II's encyclical Redemptoris mater, she is spoken of also as Mother of the Church.
context_section_description: Author Emily Shapcote lists 150 Marian poems and hymns in her book Mary the Perfect Woman. Such prayers and poems go as far back as the 3rd century, but enjoyed a rapid growth during the 11th and 12th centuries. Some of the best poetry written in honor of the Blessed virgin comes from this period of the Middle Ages.
  "Because of Mary's singular cooperation with the action of the Holy Spirit, the Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary, to magnify with her the great things the Lord has done for her, and to entrust supplications and praises to her.
  The earliest known Marian prayer is the Sub tuum praesidium, or Beneath Thy Protection, a text for which was rediscovered in 1917 on a papyrus in Egypt dated to c. 250. The papyrus contains the prayer in Greek and is the earliest known reference to the title Theotokos (confirmed by the Council of Ephesus in 431):
  Beneath your compassion, We take refuge, O Mother of God: do not despise our petitions in time of trouble: but rescue us from dangers, only pure, only blessed one.
  The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary probably originated as a monastic devotion around the middle of the eighth century. It is a variation of the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Liturgy of the Hours (Divine Office). It may have originally been put together to be prayed in connection with the Votive Masses of Our Lady on Saturday, which were written by Alcuin, the liturgical master of Charlemagne’s court. The Little Office did not come into general use before the tenth century.
  During the 11th century, as the number of monasteries grew, so did Marian prayers. There is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050. All the evidence suggests that it took its rise 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 it is not clear 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. As regards the addition of the word "Jesus," it is commonly said that this was due to the initiative of Pope Urban IV (1261) although the evidence does not seem sufficiently clear to warrant positive statement on the point. This was the prayer as known to Thomas Aquinas when he gave a Lenten sermon on the "Salutation of the Blessed Virgin" in 1273. By the fourteenth century it was not uncommon to conclude with an appeal for sinners and especially for help at the hour of death. Official recognition of the Ave Maria in its complete form was finally given in the Roman Breviary of 1568.
  Three Hail Marys is a traditional Roman Catholic devotional practice of reciting three Hail Marys as a petition for purity and other virtues. The practice of saying three Hail Marys in the evening somewhere about sunset had become general throughout Europe in the first half of the fourteenth century and it was recommended by Pope John XXII in 1318. The practice was observed by Franciscans and eventually developed into the Angelus prayer.
  The Angelus is a prayer commemorating the Incarnation. It originated with the 11th-century monastic custom of reciting three Hail Marys during the evening, or Compline bell. It was traditionally recited in Roman Catholic churches, convents, and monasteries three times daily: 6:00 am, noon, and 6:00 pm and is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell, which is a call to prayer.
  In the 12th century Bernard of Clairvaux gave sermons (De duodecim stellis), from which an extract has been taken by the Roman Catholic Church and used in the Offices of the Compassion and of the Seven Dolours. Saint Bernard wrote: "Take away Mary, this star of the sea, the sea truly great 
caption: The Angelus, 1857-1859, Jean-François Millet
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