Picture bead rosaryThe first books on
how to use rosary beads were unavailable to most people,
and in any case,
the large majority of people in the fifteenth through
eighteenth centuries
couldn¹t read them. Pictures, though, are meaningful
to anyone who can
see, and it was through the pictures in churches¹ stained
glass windows
that the majority of lay people learned the stories of the
gospel. It is no
wonder that a 1483 printing of a book with pictures,
called ³Our Lady¹s
Psalter² became so popular that it went through seven
printings by 1503.
1 This book contained fifteen woodcut pictures of the
lives of Jesus and Mary,
and is the first picture rosary¹ we know of today.
At this time ninety-five
per cent of the population was illiterate and, as
evidenced by the book¹s
popularity, they embraced the chance to learn the
rosary bead devotion using
pictures. The rosary pictures were divided into
three pictures of five woodcuts
each, each woodcut designating a meditation
while telling the ten Hail Mary
beads. Most of these rosary bead meditations
are the same ones we use today:
The first woodcut shows the Annunciation, to
be meditated on while fingering
the first ten Hail Mary rosary beads. The
second woodcut is an image of the
Visitation, to be imagined and thought
about while telling the next decade
of rosary beads. And so on. Each bead
in the decade represents a Hail Mary
to be said while looking at the
appropriate picture. This learning how to
say the rosary by pictures was a
great boon to a largely illiterate Catholic
society, and is a part of the
reason for the popularity of rosary beads that
continued into modern times.
1 ³Beads and Prayers, the Rosary in
History and Devotion.² John D.
Miller. Burns and Oates. 2002. |
