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. 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 favor among the monastic orders. In point of fact there is little or no trace of the Hail Mary as an accepted devotional formula before about 1050. The story, however, in this explicit form cannot be traced further back than Hermann of Laon at the beginning of the twelfth century. Our Lady then showed her pleasure at this homage and rewarded the saint with the gift of a beautiful chasuble (Mabillon, Acta SS.
Ildephonsus approached “making a series of genuflexions 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’. Ildephonsus going to the church by night found our Blessed Lady seated in the apse in his own episcopal chair with a choir of virgins around her who were singing her praises. Ildephonsus of Toledo must probably be regarded as apocryphal. Similarly a story attributing the introduction of the Hail Mary to St. 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. Gregory the Great as the offertory of the Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent. John Damascene, or again in the “Liber Antiphonarius” of St. We are not surprised, then, to find these or analogous words employed in a Syriac ritual attributed to Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (c. 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 are in any case most striking, and the Anglican Revised Version now supplements the “Hail, thou that art highly favored” of the original Authorized Version by the marginal alternative, “Hail thou, endued with grace”. 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. “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 obtain for us the blessings we need both for this present life and for the life which has no end.” Amen.” is stated by the official “Catechism of the Council of Trent” to have been framed by the Church itself. Finally, the petition “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Elizabeth (Luke, i, 42), which attaches itself the more naturally to the first part, because the words “benedicta to in mulieribus” (i, 28) or “inter mulieres” (i, 42) are common to both salutations. The second, “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb (Jesus)”, is borrowed from the Divinely inspired greeting of St. 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). It is commonly described as consisting of three parts. The Hail Mary (sometimes called the “Angelical salutation”, sometimes, from the first words of its Latin form, the “Ave Maria”) is the most familiar of all the prayers used by the Universal Church in honor of our Blessed Lady.