![Fra Angelico 069](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Fra_Angelico_069.jpg)
The Hail Mary ( la, Ave Maria) is a traditional Christian prayer addressing
Mary, the mother of Jesus
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...
. The prayer is based on two biblical passages featured in the
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of Luke), or simply Luke (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volu ...
: the
Angel Gabriel's visit to Mary (the
Annunciation
The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...
) and Mary's subsequent visit to
Elisabeth
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to:
People
* Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name)
* Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist
Ships
* HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships
* ''Elisabeth'' (sc ...
, the mother of
John the Baptist
John the Baptist or , , or , ;Wetterau, Bruce. ''World history''. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1994. syc, ܝܘܿܚܲܢܵܢ ܡܲܥܡܕ݂ܵܢܵܐ, Yoḥanān Maʿmḏānā; he, יוחנן המטביל, Yohanān HaMatbil; la, Ioannes Bapti ...
(the
Visitation
Visitation may refer to:
Law
* Visitation (law) or contact, the right of a non-custodial parent to visit with their children
* Prison visitation rights, the rules and conditions under which prisoners may have visitors
Music
* ''Visitation'' (D ...
). The Hail Mary is a prayer of praise for and of petition to Mary, regarded as the
Theotokos
''Theotokos'' (Greek: ) is a title of Mary, mother of Jesus, used especially in Eastern Christianity. The usual Latin translations are ''Dei Genitrix'' or ''Deipara'' (approximately "parent (fem.) of God"). Familiar English translations are " ...
(Mother of God). Since the 16th century, the version of the prayer used in the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
closes with an appeal for her
intercession
Intercession or intercessory prayer is the act of praying to a deity on behalf of others, or Intercession of saints, asking a saint in heaven to pray on behalf of oneself or for others.
The Apostle Paul's exhortation to Saint Timothy, Timothy sp ...
. The prayer takes different forms in various traditions and has often been set to music.
In the
Latin Church
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, alt = Façade of the Archbasilica of St. John in Lateran
, caption = Archbasilica of Saint Joh ...
, the Hail Mary forms the basis of other prayers such as the
Angelus
The Angelus (; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation of Christ. As with many Catholic prayers, the name ''Angelus'' is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: ("The Angel of the Lord ...
and the
Rosary
The Rosary (; la, , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), also known as the Dominican Rosary, or simply the Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or b ...
. In the psalmody of the
Oriental Orthodox Churches
The Oriental Orthodox Churches are Eastern Christian churches adhering to Miaphysite Christology, with approximately 60 million members worldwide. The Oriental Orthodox Churches are part of the Nicene Christian tradition, and represent ...
a daily
Theotokion is devoted to ascribing praise to the Mother of God. The
Eastern Orthodox Churches
The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via ...
have apart from the ''Theotokion'' a quite similar prayer to the Hail Mary (without explicit request for the intercession of Mary), both in Greek and in translations, for frequent private prayer. The
Eastern Catholic Churches
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (''sui iuris'') particular churches of th ...
follow their respective traditions or adopt the Latin Church version, which is also used by many other Western groups historically associated with the Catholic Church, such as
Lutherans,
Anglicans,
Independent Catholics, and
Old Catholics.
Biblical source
The prayer incorporates two greetings to Mary recorded in the
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of Luke), or simply Luke (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volu ...
: "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
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
's commentary on the prayer.
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
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
. The opening word of greeting, (), 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
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
. Accordingly, both "hail" and "rejoice" are valid English translations of the word ("hail" reflecting the Latin translation, and "rejoice" reflecting the original Greek).
The word (), here translated as "full of grace", admits of various translations. Grammatically, the word is the feminine
perfect passive participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
of the verb (), 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.
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."
Taken together, these two passages are the two times Mary is greeted in
chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke.
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
The ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'' (also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedia'') i ...
'' 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
Ildefonsus or Ildephonsus (rarely ''Ildephoses'' or ''Ildefonse''; Spanish: San Ildefonso; c. 8 December 607 – 23 January 667) was a scholar and theologian who served as the metropolitan Bishop of Toledo for the last decade of his life. His ...
of
Toledo
Toledo most commonly refers to:
* Toledo, Spain, a city in Spain
* Province of Toledo, Spain
* Toledo, Ohio, a city in the United States
Toledo may also refer to:
Places Belize
* Toledo District
* Toledo Settlement
Bolivia
* Toledo, Orur ...
(
fl.
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
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
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
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."
![Illuminated human alphabet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Illuminated_human_alphabet.jpg)
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. Amen." was added later. The petition first appeared in print in 1495 in
Girolamo Savonarola's . 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 Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italian Peninsula, Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation ...
. The
Dutch Jesuit
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, abbreviation = SJ
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, founders ...
Petrus Canisius is credited with adding in 1555 in his
Catechism
A catechism (; from grc, κατηχέω, "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult c ...
the sentence
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
Pope Pius V ( it, Pio V; 17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri, O.P.), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1566 to his death in May 1572. He is v ...
included the full form as now known in his revision of the
Roman Breviary
The Roman Breviary (Ecclesiastical Latin, Latin: ''Breviarium Romanum'') is a breviary of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. A liturgical book, it contains public or canonical Catholic prayer, prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notati ...
.
The current Latin version is thus as follows, with accents added to indicate how the prayer is said in the current