GoodCatholics atPrayer 353
thirteenth-century example, perhaps from a Franciscan environment,
went:
Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you;
the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Behold the handmaiden of the Lord;
be it done unto me according to your word.^68A splendid full-page image of the Annunciation flanks this prayer on the
opposite page of the codex, giving inspiration for the mind as the text gave
words for the voice (fig. 53 ). Filippo of Ferrara knew of an illiterate man who
could not memorize the Pater Noster, something even children could do.
But he did memorize the Ave Maria and used it as a blessing whenever he
took a drink at the local tavern. Filippo also knew a knight who had entered
a religious house in penance. The monks gave up trying to teach him the
psalms. Trying the Pater, they found even that was too long for him. ‘‘So
they taught him the Ave Maria.’’^69 This was the prayer for everyone. Mira-
cles big and small confirmed the power of the angelic salutation. One woman
was accustomed to regular, almost perpetual, recitation of the Ave. She had
to take dinner to her husband in the garden one day. Before going, she
invoked Mary’s blessing on her sleeping child and said an Ave Maria over
him. While she was outside, the untended fire spread and destroyed the
house. But the child was found unharmed in the ashes, shielded by the
Blessed Mother.^70 The Ave’s miraculous reputation and its biblical, indeed
heavenly, origin gained it, beside the Pater Noster, an unchallenged place in
Catholic piety. Together, the Pater and the Ave were all the prayers anyone
really needed.
With this small repertoire of formulas and the centrality of vocal prayer,
desire for extended devotions turned naturally to repetition. Before 1201 ,
the Humiliati created an ‘‘Office’’ for lay members consisting of sevenfold
repetitions of the Pater for each of the seven clerical hours. To their Paters,
they added recitation of the Credo at the hours of Prime and Compline.^71
- Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana,msPl.xxv 3, fol. 363 v: ‘‘Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Spiritus Sanctus superveniet
in te; virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi. Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat michi secundum verbum tuum.’’ - Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1552(xvcent., original ca. 1330 ), Filippo of Ferrara,Liber de
Introductione Loquendi, 1. 2 , fols. 1 v– 2 r. - Ibid., 2 : 18 , fol. 6 r.
- Meersseman,Dossier,App. 1. 10 (Humiliati Rule of 1201 ). On the Humiliati Office, see John Wick-
strom, ‘‘The Humiliati: Liturgy and Identity,’’AFP 62 ( 1992 ): 198 – 200. Repetition of Paters and Aves
flourished, in spite of clerical concerns about ‘‘rote recitation’’: see Trexler,Christian at Prayer, 35.