Paternosters

A new look...

2009-07-09T14:03:00.001-07:00

While this is not the Project That Ate My Life that I mentioned in the last post, it is one of the things I've been working on in the background:

The Paternoster-Row.org website, with all the introductory information on rosary and paternoster beads, has a new hosting site and a new look.

It was high time for a design update anyway, and the new site is going to make it lots easier for me to add new pages -- and eventually, to move this blog over there as well. Once I do that, I will no longer have to give people two web addresses: one address will get you to both. (Don't worry, this address for the blog will still work, too.)

Hopefully that will make it easier for people to both find the basic information and keep up with my new articles.

All that's missing on the new site so far is the Gallery page with links to some of the rosaries I've made for my teaching collection. The Gallery will be back as soon as I figure out how to do it under the new system. (For the Web-savvy, the site now uses Drupal.)

As always, comments are welcome, though I may not publish all of them. You can also e-mail me directly with comments through my profile page.

Back soon....

2009-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

It's nice to have fans ;)

I've been dealing with the Project That Ate My Life ever since the first of February, which is why no posts. I'm really touched that a couple of people have written and asked, so I figured I'd better say something...

No, I haven't discontinued this blog, and yes, I hope to be back soon. I have a new book to review and lots of other interesting stuff to talk about.

I'm also officially unemployed, as of July 1st (graphic design, writing, editing, publishing, if anyone cares). I'm taking the opportunity to pursue new skills and maybe even to clean my house ;) And my ego is in good shape because I taught a class this past weekend and had *18* people show up. (Usually it's more like 3 to 5.)

Thanks for asking.

(I'll take this down as soon as I have a REAL post to replace it.)

Rosary or not: the people factor

2009-02-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

part 3 of a series

The first essential of doing research on rosaries and paternosters is to be able to identify paternoster beads when we see them. This is especially important when we are looking at medieval paintings, prints, or statues; does a string of beads represent a rosary, or is it simply decorative?

(I have contemplated this question before: see parts 1 and 2 below. I'm gathering these into a series now because I have several more aspects I'd like to write about.)

There are several sets of possible clues. One is how people are interacting with the beads -- how and where they are being worn or held.

For instance, common sense suggests that a loop of beads held in the hands or hanging from an elbow is likely to represent prayer beads, and much less likely to be a belt or a necklace. Here's Prince Friedrich the Wise holding his beads.

(I wrote about these beads here.)

A person holding beads and kneeling, or putting their hands together in a "prayer" pose, is especially likely to be using them to pray with.

(Another example here)

Beads attached to a belt are also very likely to represent a paternoster or rosary. Beads hanging from a brooch, pinned to a garment, or wrapped around a wrist are also likely to represent a rosary.

Then there are a few odd cases. Probably my favorite is the gentleman on the far right in The Judgement of Daniel (detail below), a panel painting by the Master of Mariapfarr from Salzburg in about 1500.

I've always wondered whether his beads would go flying if he tried to draw his sword in a hurry. Now that I'm taking a closer look, though, the beads are below the sword's crossguard and are only looped around the scabbard; he'd probably be all right. There's another gentleman with his beads attached almost the same way here.

Rosaries worn around the neck are especially problematical. Today it's usually considered "sacrilegious" (at least in English-speaking cultures) to wear a rosary around your neck. I can't tell you how many people have told me that their Catholic grandmothers were horrified at the idea! But apparently in the Middle Ages and Renaissance it was more common, though I'm told it was still frowned upon by some. (I've written about this here.)

The problem is how to tell the difference between a rosary worn around the neck and a decorative necklace. This takes some serious digging through paintings and portraits of whatever period you're interested in. Necklaces and other secular jewelry made from strings of beads haven't always been the fashion in all centuries or all cultures. There are eras where people simply didn't wear them.

I hope to write more about this later. But to try to answer the question for 15th and 16th century fashion at least, I've started to collect portraits from that period of people wearing something that's clearly a necklace. I want to see what the similarities and differences are. Many of the necklaces made of beads seem to be very short, just at the base of the neck (like what used to be called a "choker").

I also have to mention the woodcut of a friar with "flying" beads here.

The Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus are something of a special case. It is quite common to see the Infant Jesus playing with a string of beads, which the Virgin is often (but not always) wearing around her neck. In most of the cases I've seen, I do think these are rosary beads.

However, a short string of plain red beads worn around the Infant Jesus' neck -- especially if there is a little branch-like thing hanging from it -- is more likely to represent the sort of coral necklace that was often given to babies because it was thought to avert the "evil eye." Compare the one shown toward the end of this article (which I'm sure is a necklace) to this one (which I think is a rosary). And just this week I found an image that has both! This is the Virgin and Child with St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, a votive picture commissioned about 1490 by Mathias Hierssegker in Austria.

Lastly, while I can't point to any examples at the moment, I'd like to investigate the pictures I've seen of women wearing a girdle (i.e. a belt) around their waists which is composed of beads. I am operating mostly on logic rather than data here, but I very much doubt these are rosaries. First, I've never seen one that had any of the "key" characteristics that signal unmistakably "this is a rosary" (more about this another time). Second, to use such a rosary to pray with, you'd have to unhook it from around your waist: I would think that taking off your belt would qualify as "undressing", which a lady would never do in public.

But of course I could be wrong about that ;) I've been wrong before.

If you want to test your powers of detection, take a look at these links.
· German couple holding beads.
· I think this lady has one set of beads tucked into the front of her belt and is holding another in her hands (closeup here).
· Saint Joseph (far left, in yellow) has beads tucked into his belt here.
· Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, in a 1400s portrait.

I think these are all rosaries or paternosters. Do you agree?

Previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Rosary or not?
Part 2: From a Spanish galleon

The Trisagion rosary

2009-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here is a rosary many people have never heard of: the Trinitarian or Trisagion rosary. It is quite different from the common modern rosary, and uses a different set of prayers.

The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives was founded in France in 1198. Their Rule originally required that one-third of their total income be devoted to purchasing the freedom of Christian captives who had fallen into the hands of slavers or pirates. (More information here and here.)

From an early date, the Trinitarians have used a form of prayer based on the Trisagion (sometimes Trisagium or Triagion, from the Greek “three” + ”holy”). This is a Byzantine prayer in praise of the Holy Trinity: its simplest form is “Holy God, Holy Strong One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us.”

The Trisagion rosary (usually called a chaplet) has three groups of nine beads. In reciting the chaplet, each group is preceded by the Trisagion and the Pater Noster. A special prayer is said on each of the nine beads: “To you be praise, glory, and thanksgiving for ever, blessed Trinity. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of power and might; heaven and earth are full of your glory.” Each group of nine prayers is followed by a Gloria Patri ("Glory be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..."), and the whole ends with a closing prayer.

As with other rosaries that are special to a particular religious Order, its history is rather cloudy. The first question is how long the Trinitarians have used the Trisagion and its associated prayers. The prayers themselves are quite old, and may well have come to the Trinitarians from Byzantium through their connections in the Middle East. The Trisagion itself can be traced at least as far back as the Council of Chalcedon(451 AD) and perhaps further. The use of these particular prayers by the Trinitarians may very well date back to the beginnings of the Order.

A separate question is when beads began to be used to count these prayers. Reciting a certain number of prayers does not necessarily imply the presence of beads -- prayers can be counted on one's fingers, by moving a peg from one hole to another, and so forth. One possibility, and the one I'd favor as the most likely time for beads to be introduced, might be the 14th or 15th century -- when other rosaries became popular, suggesting the concept of using beads as counters. Another possibility is the 19th or early 20th century, when rosaries of all kinds became an indispensable center of prayer life for many Catholics.

It's clear that the Trisagion rosary is not closely related to any of the common Western European forms. But while the prayers may have come from Byzantium, I am inclined to think that the Trisagion rosary in its current form is not very closely related to Eastern Christian rosaries either.

The Eastern rosary does not have the same connection to the 150 psalms as its Western cousin, but rather looks to the injunction of Jesus to “pray without ceasing.” The prayer used for the Eastern rosary is most often the “Jesus prayer.” It may be said in longer and shorter forms, a common short form being, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The number of prayers is most often 99 or 100 (sometimes 101 or 103).

The physical form of the Eastern rosary (Orthodox and Byzantine traditions) seems more often to be knots in a string, rather than beads. While some Eastern rosaries today are made with beads, others are still knotted, sometimes using special knots with symbolic significance. In the East, the rosary is also more of a monastic practice; it doesn't seem to have experienced any great surge in popularity among lay people (unlike the Western forms).

The Trisagion chaplet is unique, and unlike both the traditional Eastern and Western rosaries in almost every respect. Today it is rather uncommon to see a set of Trisagion beads, but they do turn up on eBay and are featured by some artisan rosary makers.

Or, of course, anyone can make their own ;)

ETA: I've been asked for a complete set of the Trisagion prayers used with these beads. The most complete version I've found is here.

Same theme, different beads

2009-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

New rosaries part 2

As I mentioned earlier, it has been interesting to look at the invention of some "new" rosaries and what they say about rosary history.

I have another, and rather different, example, on the "pro-life" theme. This is a rosary sold by Holy Love Ministries, started by a woman in Ohio who believes she has received visions of Jesus and Mary.

"New" rosaries (sometimes called chaplets) have originated in a variety of ways over time. Many, such as the mid-1800s Rosary for the Dead (invented by Abbé Serre of Nismes, France) or the Chaplet of the Precious Blood (Fr. Francesco Albertini, 1809), were the idea of a particular person. Quite typically the inventors were priests or spiritual directors who developed ideas that they thought would help people in their parishes or under their direction.

Other rosaries, such as the Rosary of Divine Mercy (Saint Faustina Kowalska, 1930s) or the Chaplet of Tears (a Sr. Amalia from Campina, Brazil, 1929), were founded by someone who believed they had a vision.

Visions are a touchy subject. They don't fit into modern society very well, so people who have visions tend to be dismissed as either holy or crazy (or both! ;). At the same time, vision and miracle stories are tremendously popular with the public, which from the Church's point of view doesn't help the situation.

Historically the Catholic Church has been cautious. Catholics are not required to believe in any particular vision, even the ones that have Church approval (although the Church teaches it's wrong to believe visions from God are impossible). Nevertheless, it's quite clear, and well understood by the Church, that not all visions are from God. Some are the products of imagination, wishful thinking, or psychological problems. The Church teaches that Satan can also produce convincing -- but fake -- visions.

Generally, the Church deals with visions according to guidelines laid down in the 18th century by Pope Benedict the Fourteenth (1740-1758). The first investigation of visions is usually the responsibility of the local bishop. If he is convinced a vision is "worthy of belief" he submits a report to the Vatican for approval. As you can see here, most visions are, in fact, not approved, and some are specifically disapproved. In the majority of cases, however, there is simply no decision yet. This "wait and see" period can be quite long.

The pro-life rosary sold by Holy Love Ministries -- called the "Rosary of the Unborn(tm)" -- is another example of a rosary inspired by a vision. Maureen Sweeney-Kyle writes that the Virgin Mary appeared to her, showed her a special rosary, and requested that Holy Love Ministries produce this rosary for the world. She also says that Mary promised that "each 'Hail Mary' prayed on this rosary from a loving heart will rescue one of these innocent lives from death by abortion." (And other promises here)

The beads are an unusual design. The Ave beads (on which one says the "Hail Mary") are transparent blue teardrop shapes. Visible inside each one is a small flesh-colored embryo. The Our Father beads are crosses, each made out of four red teardrop shapes that represent drops of blood. Enthusiasts of this rosary find these beads beautiful and moving. People who don't share this viewpoint can have very different reactions. (Pictures here.)

This example of a "new rosary" comes from a vision on which the local bishop has not issued any statement. (It does have an endorsement from a bishop in Toronto.) And there have certainly been critics (another here). Some of the contents of the messages Maureen Sweeney-Kyle reports and publishes seem more than a bit strange.

Another source of unease among those who have commented about this rosary is the very tight hold the ministry maintains on everything related to this rosary. The name "Rosary of the Unborn" is trademarked and its designs are all copyrighted. The rosaries cannot be bought from anyone else -- all sales are direct. (Prices are comparable to more ordinary rosaries.) No one can buy the beads separately to make their own rosary: only finished rosaries are sold. And the ministry says that Mary's promises apply only to these particular rosaries, bought from them.

From a commercial point of view, close protection of a design is not unusual. The designs used are very distinctive, and I suspect that the "teardrop" beads especially were a bit difficult to engineer. Maintaining a monopoly on their product also ensures that any money raised goes only to Holy Love Ministries.

But on a rosary makers' mailing list a year or two ago one person very reasonably (I thought) asked, "... if this rosary can save so many unborn children and help end abortion, then wouldn't Our Lady want as many of them out there as possible?"

This is not the only distinctive rosary resulting from a vision on which no statement has been made by the Church. (In fact I talked about another one here.) These rosaries are created not by Church authorities, but by ordinary lay people. Rosaries have a long history of being a very "grass roots" form of prayer.

New rosaries

2009-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit behind the calendar here, but Catholics in many places in the last week or two were holding events to commemorate the Roe vs. Wade court decision on January 22nd, 1973. Many of these used the "Pro-life rosary" as their theme.

Whatever your opinion on this issue(and I'm not going to get into that at all), I find it interesting that "pro-life rosaries" have appeared. One of the things I've said repeatedly about rosaries is that there is not, and never in its history has been, only one "true" rosary. In the 1200s to mid-1400s (and perhaps earlier), there were many devotions that used beads, and out of those many (which I think of as the "primordial soup" ;) a very few of the variations (and one especially) arose, became popular, were endorsed by the Church, and have endured. Many other "rosaries" have been invented since, some using the same five decades as the common rosary of today and some not.

The best-known of the Pro-life-themed rosaries originated with an idea that came to a nursing student in Louisiana at the end of 1992. In basic form, it's a modern five-decade rosary, but it's quite easy to recognize when you see one because it uses a special pattern of colors in its beads. The crucifix can be any type, but the three Hail Mary beads between the loop and the crucifix are purple. The five decades are each made up of alternating colored and white beads: the first decade aqua and white; the second red and white; the third black and white; the fourth has three colors (red, white and blue); and the fifth, green and white. The marker beads (or Our Father beads) usually seem to be white or clear. These rosaries are still being made and distributed on a fairly large scale from the Office of Pro-Life Issues in the diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana. (Hmm. I should add one to my teaching collection.) And as far as I know, anyone is welcome to make rosaries according to this pattern: most of the rosaries given out from Lafayette are made by volunteers and donated.

The basic prayers of this rosary are the same as the common rosary of the 20th century: the Apostles' Creed, fifty Hail Marys, five Our Fathers and Glorias. The themes of each decade in the Pro-life rosary, on the other hand, may or may not be the usual Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious or Luminous "Mysteries." At least three different sets of special themes and meditations have been written for each decade of the Pro-life rosary, usually with an additional prayer on that theme to be said at the end of the decade. The ones I've found online are here, here, and here.

This is an excellent example of a "new rosary." Like most of the recent ones whose history is clear, it began as one person's idea, was endorsed by local Church authorities (the local bishop in this case), and became popular. (The common 20th century rosary came about in the mid-1400s in a similar way, as a local idea that spread. An amazing 100,000 people from all over Europe joined rosary guilds in just the seven years from 1475 to 1481.)

Another interesting thing is that both the common rosary and this one have benefited greatly from widespread literacy. Of course, once you have memorized three prayers and fifteen mystery titles, reciting the common rosary does not require a book -- that's one of its attractions for 15th century lay people. But from the very beginning, many rosary leaflets and handbooks have been published to encourage its use. Probably the most popular of the early rosary manuals was Unser Lieben Frauen Psalter (Our Dear Lady’s Psalter), attributed to Alanus de Rupe. Revised and reprinted many times by his followers, it went through seven editions between 1483 and 1502. In a similar way, the Pro-life rosary has spread through printed prayer cards and the Internet, as well as by word of mouth, public events, newspaper stories, and gifts of a Pro-life rosary from one friend to another.

A lot of people -- including some Catholics -- have an image of Roman Catholicism as an entirely "top-down" organization. But the constant invention and spread of new rosaries, I think, demonstrates that "grassroots" Catholicism is alive and thriving.

The beads of Nostradamus

2009-01-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

roses revisited, part 3

As I mentioned in Part 1, the first of Nostradamus’ two recipes (Chapter X of the book) produces an intensely scented rose extract or oil. Now we'll look at his second recipe (Chapter XI), which is for making pommes de senteur (literally “scented apples,” meaning pomanders) out of a whole list of things compounded together, of which the rose extract is only one.

Autre annotation pour composer pommes de senteur. Recipe Ladani purissimi z.ij. Storacis calamitici, Assae odoriferae, que nous appelons benioin Ann. z.i. Tricos de roses z.s. Pouldre de violete z.ij. Ambre & musc de chascun demy drachme. puis le tout soit pulverisé & pasté avec la surdite mixtion de roses: & soit faite paste fort malaxee par l’espace d’une heure: & aves d’une pomme de la plus souveraine senteur, & la plus durable qui se puisse faire au monde:

Here’s my best guess at a translation:

Another method for making aromatic balls: Take two ounces of the purest labdanum, an ounce each of Styrax calamites and Assae odoriferae (which we call benzoin), half an ounce of rose-tablets, one ounce of violet powder, and half a dram each of amber [ambergris?] and musk. Grind it all into a powder, knead it together with the rose-mixture mentioned earlier [i.e. the rose extract from the first recipe] for the space of an hour and you will have an aromatic ball of the most supreme perfume, and the longest-lasting that can be made anywhere in the world.

(By the way, these do not have opium in them! The ingredient mentioned is “labdanum” (note the B) not “laudanum”!)

So what we have here is about four ounces of ground-up plant resins (labdanum, benzoin and storax), an ounce and a half of powdered dry ingredients (rose tablets and violet powder), half a dram each of ambergris (or a substitute) and musk (both these last are waxy animal products), and an unknown quantity of rose extract.

There are some surviving objects from the Renaissance with a composition like this, or at least I think that's what they might be: there are a couple of small bear sculptures and a carved pendant from the 16th century that are said to be composed of “musk or ambergris,” though apparently they haven’t been analyzed in detail. I’d be unsurprised to find them composed of something similar to this recipe; I’d think pure musk or pure ambergris would be too soft as well as too expensive. (The resins were expensive, but both musk and ambergris were worth at least twice their weight in gold.)

What was Nostradamus' second recipe used for? And why does it say it makes "paternosters"?

Obviously the main purpose of compounds like this is to give off a pleasant scent. Many of the similar recipes I've looked at recommend leaving these scented balls or cakes in a dish on a table to scent a room, rather like potpourri. The same use is also prescribed for pastilles like the ones discussed in Part 2.

The same formulas are also recommended for burning like incense, which also makes sense. I certainly don't see any ingredients in them that would not burn, given a little encouragement.

Scented balls, or sometimes the paste before it hardened, could also be used to fill pierced metal or filigree containers, such as the pomanders that survive from this period in museum collections, or those seen in paintings (for instance, something like this, where a pomander is clearly part of a rosary:

And finally, beads. I think when M. de Nostradame says his recipe is for making "patinostres" he means beads: by the 16th century, a single bead could be referred to as "a paternoster," as well as the whole string.

There are a number of references to scented paternoster beads in period documents. Some of these are clearly pierced metal or filigree beads with scented stuff inside. (I am much indebted to R. Lightbown's chapter on paternoster beads in Medieval European Jewellery, which lists a number of these.) For instance, young Marie de France in 1377 had a paternoster of gold beads "filled with amber," probably real or imitation ambergris. Her father Charles V in 1380 had certain beads "full of musk" and in 1386 King Charles the Bold of Navarre paid for botones, probably paternoster beads, of gold and silver "that if pierced may be used for filling with musk."

Then we get to references that are harder to interpret. In 1300, Constance of Sicily, queen of Aragon, had a paternoster with "some beads of gold, pierced, and some of labdanum." In 1432 King René of Anjou had a paternoster with beads "of musk". The first of these especially suggests -- but doesn't prove -- that the labdanum was not inside a pierced gold bead, but perhaps was a solid bead by itself.

There is also a recipe from more than 100 years later that reads as follows (from From Mary Doggett, Her Book of Recipes, 1682):

Take a quarter of an ounce of civit, a quarter and a half-quarter of an ounce of Ambergreese, not a half a quarter of an ounce of ye spiritt of Roses, 7 ounces of Benjamin [benzoin], almost a pound of Damask Rose buds cut. Lay gumdragon [gum tragacanth]in rose water and with it make your pomander, with beads big as nutmegs and color them with Lamb black[lampblack]; when you make them up wash your hands with oyle of Jasmin to smooth them, then make them have a gloss, this quantity will make seaven Bracelets.

But while this, unlike Nostradamus, produces something that does have quite a lot of rose petals in it, it also has quite a lot of benzoin. And it is not a medieval or even a Renaissance recipe. And beads (if that's what they are) "as big as nutmegs" would be at least an inch in diameter, which to me makes it much more plausible to think in terms (again) of a bracelet with a single pomander hanging from it, rather than an entire bracelet of beads that big. (Though I could, of course, be quite wrong here -- any late 17th-century costumers may feel free to correct me ;)

So does Nostradamus' second recipe make beads? It very well could.

But is it evidence for medieval beads made from rose petals? I don't think so. We have evidence of Renaissance-era beads made from a lot of plant resins, a small amount of dried and powdered flower petals, and a rose extract. They are fascinating -- but I, at least, would not call those "rose petal beads."

All posts in this series:

Part 1: Roses revisited
Part 2: Rose pastilles
Part 3: The beads of Nostradamus

(P.S. This series took me a long time to write because I kept getting distracted by fascinating sidetracks: for instance, did you know labdanum was collected by clipping the beards of goats who had been grazing on the plant?)

Rose pastilles

2009-01-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

roses revisited, part 2

I promise I'll get to the second recipe from Nostradamus that I mentioned in Part 1, but first I want to digress a bit.

One of the ingredients in Nostradamus' second recipe is something called Trocis de roses. This means "rose tablets" or "rose pastilles" and there are a number of recipes for making them scattered through various sources. Like Nostradamus' first recipe, these recipes also are frequently thought to be recipes for rose-petal beads, because these trocis -- unlike the process followed in Nostradamus' first recipe -- are made by grinding up actual petals. (Nostradamus' first recipe, you'll recall, has you soak the rose petals and then throw them out and use the liquid.)

The earliest recipe I've seen for rose pastilles is from the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, which dates to the first century AD. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this translation, but here's the version I have. As you can see, there are other fragrant resins included in the recipe, so it's not just rose petals.

"Rose balls, or rhodides, are made this way. Of fresh roses before they become damp, 40 drachmas; spikenard, 5 drachmas; myrrh, 6 drachmas. These are beaten fine and made up into little troches, each weighing 3 oboli [about 1.5 grams -- Ed.]. These are then dried in the shade and stored in closely sealed jars. Some also add costus, 2 drachmas, and the same amount of Illyrian orris, mixing also honey, and wine from the island of Chios.”

There are also a great many late 16th and 17th century recipes for these scented pastilles, which may or may not use roses as an ingredient. Rose pastilles seem to be one example of a method of compounding herbs and spices that was used more generally. Culpepper's herbal has general directions for making pastilles, using gum tragacanth as a binder: "with this you may (with a little pains taking) make any Pouder into Past[e], and that Past[e] into little Cakes called Troches." Gervase Markham's The English Housewife (1615) has troches composed not of roses but of orris root, marjoram, sweet basil, cloves, sandalwood and citron.

One interesting recipe for rose pastilles is from an anonymous 16th-century Spanish manuscript called Manual de mugeres en el qual se contienen muchas y diversas reçeutas muy buenas (Mss. 834, now in the Biblioteca Palatina de Parma, Italy, and online here).

Here is the original recipe and a translation by Dana Huffman:

Receta para hacer pasticas de perfume de rosas:

Tomar una libra de rosas sin las cabezuelas, y siete onzas de menjuí molido. Echar las rosas en remojo en agua almizclada y estén una noche. Sacar después estas rosas y expremidlas mucho del agua, y majadlas con el menjuí. Y al majar, poner con ello una cuarta de ámbar y otra de algalia. Y después de majadas, hacer vuestras pasticas y ponedlas cada una entre dos hojas de rosas, y secadlas donde no les dé el sol.

Recipe for making rose-scented tablets:

Take a pound of roses without the flower heads, and seven ounces of ground benzoin. Put the roses to soak in musk water for a night. Remove these roses afterwards and thoroughly squeeze out the water, and grind them with the benzoin. And when grinding, put with it a quarter of amber [ambergris?] and another of civet. And after [they are] ground, make your tablets and put each one between two rose leaves [i.e. petals], and dry them away from the sun.

You may have noticed that in none of these recipes are you directed to pierce holes in these or to string them. The recipe from Manual de mugeres, in fact, is clearly for flat tablets, since each one is dried between two rose petals.

Next we'll look at Nostradamus' recipe and consider the ingredients used.

All posts in this series:

Part 1: Roses revisited
Part 2: Rose pastilles
Part 3: The beads of Nostradamus

Gifts and ghosts

2008-12-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

I'm running a bit behind on the Christmas stuff here, but thought I would just mention that I have written about medieval-style rosaries as Christmas presents here. (The short version: yes, anyone who uses an ordinary modern rosary can say the same prayers on this one.)

If you want to make a medieval-style paternoster as a gift, and you have a friendly local bead store, everything you need should be there. There's a shopping list here and simple instructions here. It takes less than an hour to put one together (less than half an hour, really, unless you have difficulties making a tassel). You may want to take the trouble to braid the cord you string the beads on from thinner thread, as it's likely to be more durable.

I wanted to share a few photos of several more modern-style strung rosaries I've made, all variations on a theme. The community I work for has a number of symbols they're fond of, including the color blue, an anchor (for hope), a heart, and a rose, and all of these were made for members or friends of the community.

This one is sodalite, with mother-of-pearl markers:

This one is mother-of-pearl, with lapis lazuli markers and a striped glass heart:

Mother-of-pearl again, but the marker beads are flat blue glass roses:

I particularly like this one, which is blue "goldstone" (a type of glass) with cloisonné markers:

And a detail:

I also passed a sad little milestone this week: for the first time, one of the rosaries I've made has been laid to rest. I made this one a couple of years ago for a friend's elderly mother. By special request it was rose quartz (her favorite color) with mother-of-pearl markers, the Virgin Mary with roses, and a cross with shamrocks. My friend's mother died this past week, and it was buried with her. I hope it brought some comfort to her and to her family.

Here is the one I made for her:

Perhaps hundreds of years from now, when the world has changed completely and these electrons are all dust, some archaeologist will see these beads and be touched by the thought that they brought someone a sense of peace.

Christmas blessings

2008-12-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

Time for my annual "Christmas card," with a wish that everyone may receive the gift of joyful wonder at this season.

I am always enchanted to discover yet another image of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus with beads. So many of these pictures were clearly painted by people who love and are well acquainted with REAL babies and how they love to play with things.

Infants approach the whole world with a sense of openness and discovery, as you'll know if you've ever tried to keep one from putting everything she encounters into her mouth. I have yet to see the Holy Infant shown actually chewing on beads or attempting to hang them on his mother's ear, but I'm sure that's going to happen any minute now in some of the paintings I've seen. Fortunately, the beads in the picture are usually (as here) red coral, a good and safe (if expensive!) choice for teething on.

This particular painting is one that's hard to find good pictures of, since the beads are quite small and don't have a lot of contrast with the background (especially not with the Virgin's dark dress and red cloak). I found a full-page version of it in Krone und Schleier: Kunst als Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöster ("Crown and Veil: The Art of Female Monasticism in the Middle Ages"), the catalog from a 2005 exhibition in the Ruhr Museum in Essen, Germany.

When the Virgin is wearing a long string of beads around her neck, they are usually supposed to represent a rosary. But if these are indeed rosary or paternoster beads, they are a little unusual. It's very common in such paintings for the beads to be red. But it's uncommon to see beads this small and numerous -- there are a little over 100 visible, which means that the closest of the "standard" forms would be a string of 150. If this is a paternoster, it's also unusual to see it shown as a string of beads all the same size: most of these paintings show a string with smaller red beads and larger "gauds" or markers of some other material. Gauds are a much clearer visual signal that what's being represented is specifically a rosary.

Certainly strings of uniformly sized beads with no markers are a recognized form of paternoster, and one that seems to have been common at least as early as beads with gauds. It's still not at all clear whether the form with gauds or the form without gauds is earlier, or whether they are both the same age: some of the earliest surviving paternosters from Western Europe have two distinctly different types or sizes of beads. Prayer beads from Eastern Christian traditions are generally all the same size, as are most of the Hindu or Buddhist prayer beads from farther east, which may or may not have been an influence on Christian ideas about prayer beads (the jury is very much still out on that one).

There's nothing about the origin of the painting itself that suggests whether this is a rosary or not. It's one panel of a large altarpiece with scenes from the life of Mary, originally painted around 1410-1420 for the monastery of Cistercian nuns in Fröndenberg. But I've been looking at paintings of necklaces that are clearly not rosaries from this general period, and I haven't seen anything quite like this. Hmmm... another topic to add to the never-ending list for further research!

Previous Christmas posts:
Christmas 2005
Christmas 2006
Christmas 2007

Computer "wallpaper" with rosaries

And a post about Christmas-themed rosaries (which I still think is kind of a strange idea)

Roses revisited

2008-12-10T15:43:00.000-08:00

part 1

Since I write about rosary beads, I do my share of myth-debunking, and like anyone else who has written about rosaries, I get a lot of questions about beads made of rose petals. As I've discussed in some detail here, modern rosaries made of rose-petal beads -- or imitations thereof -- are perpetually popular. And truly, it's a nice idea, at least when one is not smacked in the face with cheap imitation rose scent upon opening the box with the rosary in it. (I have such a rosary: I seldom open the box ;)

Nonetheless, there are some common myths about rose-petal beads, and the biggest one is that rose-petal beads have something to do with why this string of beads is called a "rosary."

I've gone into some detail here on exactly how the rosary got that name. Briefly, "rosary" began as a word for a garden in which roses are grown. From there, a few authors used it to refer to a collection of essays, such as the Rosarium Philosophorum, a 1386 treatise on alchemy by Arnaldus de Villa Nova. It was a short step to extend this from a book of written essays to a book of written prayers, and then to any other sequence of prayers, written or not. The name "rosary" for the devotion -- which dates back to the middle 1400s with this meaning -- was reinforced by the circulation of popular legends that envisioned each prayer said as a "rose" given to the Virgin Mary.

Petals, and indeed beads, are nowhere in this story.

(Incidentally, the author of the first rosary manual, Alanus de Rupe, hated the “rose” metaphor because he thought it far too evocative of sensual pleasure. But of course that may have been why it had such wide appeal. He preferred to call the devotion the "Psalter of Our Lady.")

The story is further complicated by a problem with dates. In order for rose-petal beads to have anything to do with the word "rosary," you first have to find out if rose-petal beads even existed at the time you're talking about. For rosaries, that would be the late Middle Ages, especially the first half of the 1400s when what we now know as "the rosary" was in development.

I've been looking for years for evidence of when rose-petal beads were first made, and so far, I have not found anything that clearly dates them any earlier than the 19th or early 20th century. Sources like a 1996 issue of "The Herb Companion" or Dover books' reprint of Rose Recipes from Olden Times by Eleanor Rohde, are quite willing to label rose-petal mixtures as "medieval," but without -- as far as I can tell -- consulting anything other than their own imaginations. (Typical quote: "Centuries ago, when knighthood was reportedly in flower, noblewomen made fragrant beads of petals plucked from castle rose gardens...")

It's quite easy to find multiple recipes for rose-petal beads (here's one) on the Internet: most of them involve putting rose petals through a blender and simmering the resulting mush gently for some hours. Some recipes add a binding material such as vegetable gum or flour and salt. Simmered in a cast iron pan, the mashed petals turn black, otherwise the color may be dark red, pinkish or orange. When the consistency is like clay, small amounts can be rolled into bead shapes and pierced with a needle before drying.

It was in following up another clue on this trail that I discovered something new this week (well, new to me, anyway). I discovered that a book that I'd dismissed as a figment of someone's fantasy actually does exist, and probably was written by the author it's attributed to. And while it still does not produce a recipe for beads made out of rose petals, what it does say is quite interesting.

The book is usually referred to in English by the title of a modern edition, The Elixirs of Nostradamus. To give him his proper name, Michel de Nostradame (known as Nostradamus) was a prolific French writer and professional apothecary who wrote at least two books in the mid-1500s on medicine, as well as a series of Almanacs and his famous collection of prophecies, first published in 1555.

The book usually called the "Elixirs" originally had a very long title beginning Excellent et moult utile opuscule..., but it's more usually referred to as the Traite des fardemens et des confitures (Treatise of Cosmetics and Preserves) and was first published in 1555 (or 1552, it's not clear). There doesn't seem to be any doubt that Nostradamus wrote it, although as was very common in those days, he takes a lot of his material from earlier published works. (Copyright in the modern sense did not exist back then.)

I doubt that I could have found this seven or eight years ago when I first became interested in this question, but there are now at least two places on the Internet where you can see actual facsimiles of Nostradamus's publications online. One is the Nostradamus library at Repertoire Chronologique Nostradamus but I prefer the images at the related site Prophecies Online which also contains a (partial) English translation.

The pages of interest are 55 through 59, which contain Part I, Chapter X and Chapter XI. Right there at the top of page 56, sure enough, is the word patinostres (his spelling) and the recipe that follows certainly starts with gathering a large quantity of roses. (It says "five or six hundred, more or less" -- de cinq à six cents tant du plus que du moins) (I get tired just thinking about this!)

However (and it's a big however) the recipes that follow are not your classic recipe for beads made out of mashed-up rose petals.

There are in fact two recipes: in the first (Chapter X), you are instructed to make an extract of the rose petals and then throw the petals out and boil down the liquid. One of my correspondents has tried this, and she says what it actually produces is a very concentrated, strongly scented rose oil. As Nostradamus wrote them, the instructions say the recipe produces a "sweet-smelling, long-lasting paste" (une paste laquelle sera d'une bonne odeur durant longuement), but in the end it is described as "as thick as boiled honey" (asses espes comme miel cuit).

This is the recipe I've usually seen mentioned as producing "rose-petal beads," but clearly that's not quite what it does. This is made clearer by the next recipe, which I'll discuss in a future article.

All posts in this series:

Part 1: Roses revisited
Part 2: Rose pastilles
Part 3: The beads of Nostradamus

The rosary rebellion

2008-11-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Reformation of the church in England was a long, complex and sometimes bloody process. For those interested in studying this process, I think that one of the great contributions to the literature of religious history in England is Eamon Duffy's account of the Reformation, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580.

This was the first book I encountered on the history of the English Reformation that begins by examining the state of religion in England before the break with Rome, and it was also the first history of the subject I read that was not written from a specifically Protestant point of view. I grew up in a Congregational church, and English-speaking Protestants, understandably, tend to dwell on the aspects of the Reformation that represent their own beginnings. But Duffy's book takes a more comprehensive view. It's joined the short list of books that I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the history of popular devotion, including the rosary.

One of the most interesting rosary-related stories in the book is this one, which I will quote in Duffy's words.

Sometime in Whit week 1549 Walter Ralegh (the father of the famous seaman) was riding to Exeter. Near the village of Clyst St. Mary he overtook an old woman on her way to Mass; she was praying upon a pair of rosary beads in her hand. Ralegh, a staunch supporter of the Reformation, challenged the old woman, asking her what she meant by carrying such beads, "sayenge further that there was a punyshmente by the law apoynted agaynste her and all suche as woulde not obeye & folowe the same & wch woulde bee putt in execution vpon theime." The old woman hurried to the church, where the parishioners, already disgruntled by the imposition of the 1549 prayer-book on the previous Sunday, were gathering for Mass,

"and beinge impacyente & in an agonye with the speches before paste betwen her & the gentleman begyynethe to upbraye in the open Churche verie harde & unsemelie speches concernynge religion, saienge that shee was thretned by the gentleman, that exvcept shee woulde leave her beades & gene over holie breade & water the gentlemen woulde burne theym oute of theire howses & spoyle theim."

The enraged parishioners all but lynched Ralegh, a local mill was burned, and the rebellion escalated. The incident, not without elements of farce, was to end in black tragedy. When ultimately Lord Russell was dispatched by Somerset to put down the rebellion, Clyst St. Mary was the scene of a particularly bloody pitched battle, in which the local peasantry were ruthlessly butchered, along with all the prisoners captured by the royal forces then and previously. The village was put to the torch. Archbishop Cranmer's dislike of beads and holy water had cost the people of Clyst dear.

This mini-rebellion -- to put it in context -- was a local but very significant incident in a larger movement, generally referred to as the Prayer Book Rebellion. The immediate trigger, and the chief grievance of the protesters, was the imposition of a new Prayer Book, which was markedly more Protestant in its declarations of doctrine than many people were prepared to countenance.

Generally speaking, London was the center of Protestant thinking at this period, and in more outlying areas such as the west of England, there were plenty of people who saw no reason to change the ways of thinking and methods of worship that had served them well for hundreds of years.

King Henry VIII had begun the process of reformation in 1534 by denying the authority of the Pope and declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England -- while retaining for himself many Catholic beliefs and practices. The bishops and commissioners he appointed, however, tended to be much more avowedly Protestant. The resulting mix of religion and politics meant that the attempt to bring about a countrywide reformation progressed by fits and starts through the rest of Henry's reign, and enforcement of change at the local level was often sporadic and uneven.

The death of Henry and accession of Edward VI changed all this. A decree specifically banning rosary beads and a number of other Catholic practices was published in 1547. (Below is a nice piece of propaganda, showing some of the now banned items, "Certaine of the Popes marchandize lately sent ouer into Englande")

As this incident shows, however, we have plenty of evidence that people were still using their rosaries. As Duffy points out, the mention of "holie breade & water" indicates that it was not just beads that were the focus of the disagreement, but other specially blessed things as well. Nonetheless, the beads were an easily visible symbol, and the fact that they could be part of a dispute that sparked an armed conflict is some indication of how strongly people could feel about their beads.

Beads from the Inventory of Philip II

2008-11-24T14:04:00.001-08:00

A recent discussion on the Paternosters mailing list has made me think about all of the fascinating -- and often knotty! -- little questions that arise when we try to make sense out of the very brief descriptions of paternoster beads that survive in inventories, wills and similar lists. Often the description is all we have in the way of data about what the beads were like.

As I've commented elsewhere, these descriptions were not really written for us, hundreds of years later. They were written, for the most part, to assist in keeping track of someone's possessions during life, or sorting out how much they were worth and who they should be passed on to after the owner's death. Since whoever was doing the sorting usually had the actual beads in front of them, only the minimum description was needed, just enough to identify which of several possible sets of beads was being referred to.

On top of that, we are also dealing with historical spelling and vocabulary, which -- to say the least -- are often not identical to the modern versions of either. And as you might expect, some of the words used in the descriptions were never common words in the first place, or else they're being used in a specialized sense -- rather like the word "gauds" in English, which was originally borrowed from the Latin word for joy (Gaudete = Rejoice!) and can mean jewels or ornaments in a general sense, but which when applied to Christian prayer beads specifically refers to distinctive "markers" separating groups of other beads.

The recent discussion on the Paternosters list provided an excellent example, and several of us amateur scholars attacked it with zest.

The question came from Katherine Barich, to whom I am profoundly indebted because she just loves collecting and reading through old inventories in search of interesting bits about historical clothing. This takes a peculiar intellectual gift that I don't think I have. Fortunately she has been very generous about sharing what she finds, and periodically I get an e-mail from her with more paternoster listings for my slowly growing database.

Here's the entry she found in the inventory of Phillip II of Spain, taken in 1594. It is in "Archivo Documental Espanol - Tomo X - Inventarios Reales Bienes Muebles Que Pertenecieron a Felipe II" by F. J. Sanchez Canton.

Un rosario, que tiene sesenta y tres perlas avemariadas y otras cuatro en la cruz, con siete estremos de oro, labrado de medio relieve, con nuebe ruvies en cada un y otro estremo de oro en la cruz con diez ruvies. Tasado en trecientos y noventa y seis ducados.

Philip II, son of Emperor Charles V, was a Hapsburg and brought most of Spain (and for part of the time, Portugal as well) under his rule for a substantial swath of the 16th century. Here's a portrait of Philip II with a rosary, although clearly these are not the beads described in the inventory (for one thing, they're the wrong color):

I'm going to walk through the process I went through to try to make sense of this entry, because I think it's a good example of the sorts of things we frequently encounter.

Here's what Babelfish says (these "translations" always make me giggle):

A rosary, that has sixty and three Rep them avemariadas and other four in the cross, with seven estremos of gold, worked of average relief, with nine rubies in each and a other estremo of gold in the cross with ten rubies. Appraised in three hundred and ninety and six duchies.

OK, fixing the obvious idiocies, we have:

A rosary that has 63 Ave Maria beads [pearls]?, and four more in the cross, with seven [gauds]? of gold, worked in middle relief [bas- relief]?, with nine rubies in each; and another [gaud]? of gold: the cross with ten rubies. Appraised at 396 ducats.

I'm grateful, by the way, to the colleague who clued me in to Babelfish as a deeply flawed, but nonetheless very useful, tool in deciphering a language. What it does do well is to translate a lot of the common words for you, all in one fell swoop, so you don't have to spend your time looking up words like nuebe and sesenta and tasado. Then you attack the less common words one by one, or those that Babelfish clearly doesn't have a clue about.

This is especially helpful for anyone who isn't a full-time scholar. I, for instance, can read French reasonably well considering that the last time I formally studied it was decades ago, and I understand enough about most of the Romance and Germanic languages that I can at least tell which parts of the sentence are what and which way the grammar is going. But for the rest, it's a matter of lots of looking in dictionaries and a good deal of guesswork.

A bit of digging in my ancient Spanish dictionary (Appleton's, 1943, which I got for free from a book exchange) reveals that perlas are indeed pearls, and not (as in German) beads: the normal Spanish words for beads seem to include abalorio and (somewhat more obscurely) chaquillo. (The dictionary lists several more, including cuenta which seems to literally mean "counter.")

Estremo isn't in the dictionary. Hm. I wonder if it's supposed to be estreno, which has to do with "commencement, beginning, inauguration." (16th-century Spanish spelling? Who knows?) At any rate, there are seven of these estremos (plus one), which makes sense if there is one before each decade and extra ones before and after the last three beads.

The online dictionaries I find in a quick search don't contain either estremo or estreno. Going the other way, they prefer to translate "gaud" as adorno (decoration) or joya (jewel). Appleton's translates "gaud" as objecto charro (showy or flashy object).

If the estremos are indeed gauds, we are still not quite home free with the translation. We still have to decipher "y otro estremo de oro en la cruz con diez ruvies." Literally this says "and another estremo of gold en the cross with ten rubies."

First question, what does en mean in this context? Prepositions are notoriously tricky to translate, especially since their use is often strongly idiomatic. Literally the estremo seems to be "in" the cross, which doesn't make very much sense, so I would guess it means "next to."

Second question: which object has ten rubies? The lack of punctuation, or of any relative pronoun, means it's not clear whether we have an estremo with ten rubies, and a cross, or an estremo, and a cross with ten rubies. The fact that all the other estremos have nine rubies each makes me think it's a little more likely that the rubies belong to the estremo. We've also been told already that the cross has four pearls, so perhaps it doesn't need rubies as well. Alas, the jewels were probably re-set and the gold melted down long ago, so we'll never know.

A final interesting point about this rosary: it has 63 pearls. This strongly suggests a Brigittine rosary, which has six decades (rather than the usual five) and three extra beads at the end. I've heard this was a popular type of rosary in the 16th century, but haven't run across many examples. The only surviving example I can recall is this one, which is Portuguese and 17th century:

There are several ways the beads of such a rosary could be arranged: this one has all 63 beads in one loop, with six groups of ten and a final group of three. There are only six gauds here, as there are none next to the cross. Other examples of rosaries often do seem, at this period, to have gauds beginning and ending all of the decades including the first and last, so I would not be surprised at all to see a Brigittine rosary with eight gauds.

Of flexwire and time machines

2008-11-20T16:40:00.000-08:00

string theory, part 5

As I discussed previously, "flexwire" or nylon-coated wire has become the most popular modern material for stringing rosaries, and it requires some new techniques.

Modern rosary makers, being used to a type of rosary where the beads don't slide, have had to figure out how to string a rosary on flexwire so that the beads maintain their spacing and don't move. The solution most of them use is to string one to several very small beads between each main bead of the rosary. This also nicely covers the wire, which many people don't find very attractive -- particularly the early versions of coated wire, which resembled stainless steel wire from the hardware store. Many people have become very creative with these "betweens" (in German these would be "zwischenperlen," which I think is a delightful word!). Rosary makers like Mary's Prayers Rosaries may use two or three different types of small beads between each large one, which can make quite an attractive contrast.

With the newer types of coated flexwire, which come in at least a dozen different colors, it would seem logical to me to experiment with making modern rosaries with beads that can slide as you count them. This would mean leaving some of the wire exposed, but if it's pretty, why not? So far I haven't seen anyone try this, but it would be interesting to see how well it works and what people think of it -- and how the flexwire stands up to abrasion when beads are sliding back and forth.

As we've seen, flexwire is pretty much immune to a lot of the problems of rosaries made with string: it's very resistant to tangling and kinking, to breaking by being pulled on and to metal fatigue. But it's not perfect. To the surprise of some rosary makers, rosaries strung on flexwire can stretch with use.

You'd expect this with fiber-based threads -- in fact I've had to re-string some of my paternosters where the silk thread has stretched. But it's rather a surprise to see the same thing happening to wire. Jennifer of Miracoli Rosaries reported that one of her customers' rosaries stretched nearly an inch after just three months of regular use. On checking her stock, she found that several rosaries made with stone beads that had been simply stored hanging up for a year had also stretched.

This caused a bit of consternation on the Rosary_makers mailing list. What could have caused it? The answer seems to be that the metal wire in flexwire is not a single strand, but several strands, braided. If it's subjected to a lot of tension, it turns out that this braided strand can stretch a certain amount, even though the individual wires in it don't. This is especially likely to happen if a light weight of flexwire is used to string heavy beads, so the advice is to use the heaviest weight that will go through the bead holes. (Most flexwire comes in at least two or three thicknesses.)

The other thing that can cause stretching is if the strand of flexwire is used right off the spool, and is then pulled very tight to fasten it off after stringing the beads. This can be prevented if you "relax" the wire before using, or stretch it a few times between your hands, and perhaps let it hang overnight with the beads on it before finishing off.

To sum up, flexwire has a lot of advantages, and has made it much easier for creative rosary makers to produce strong, durable rosaries very quickly. But I have to point out that there's one type of project for which it still doesn't work very well. That is for close replicas of historical types of prayer beads from before 1600. If you want to make your beads look like they just fell through a time machine from the 15th century into your living room, even the newer, more flexible varieties of coated wire still don't work quite like silk thread. Here's an example from Rosary Workshop:

A rosary strung on flexwire simply does not hang the same way as one strung on silk, and it doesn't look the same lying on a flat surface either. The flexwire resists bending, so the strand of beads tends to lie in a gentle, nearly straight curve, and the loops where the end of a strand of beads attaches to a pendant or medal, fall in wider and more gradual curves. There are quite a few historical paintings that show a rosary casually tossed on a side table or step and about to slide off the edge, and you can definitely see the difference in the way they hang.

(The above example is a detail from Antonello da Messina's St. Gregory Triptych, 1473.)

Fortunately, most people are not trying to pretend that their rosary dropped through a time machine from some other century, so the different drape doesn't matter in the least. I cheerfully admit to being a modern person myself, and I'm thankful for many things about modern civilization, including the Internet! Historical rosaries are not the only beads I string ;)

all posts in this series

Part 1: String theory
Part 2: Threads of silk and gold
Part 3: Wired
Part 4: Flexwire
Part 5: Of flexwire & time machines

Flexwire

2008-11-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

string theory, part 4

Silk thread and wire links, the rosary-stringing methods of choice for most of history, are no longer the only choices. Within the last decade or two, there's been a revolution in the bead-stringing world. Various forms of plastic-coated wire are now the "string" of choice for many uses.

The first coated-wire product to hit the market (or at least the first one I became aware of) was "Tiger Tail," which is a miniature braided stainless-steel cable covered with nylon. Originally it came only in the natural silvery color of the wire, but you can now buy gold-colored versions too. In more recent years, Acculon and other companies have produced a number of variations, including different thicknesses and even more colors.

Unlike common crafting wire, which is generally made of soft copper or brass, these are mostly based on stainless steel wire, which is much stiffer and very springy. This is especially true of the early versions, which are braids of 3 or 7 strands of wire. More recently, manufacturers have produced 21- and 49-strand versions as well (three braids of 7 and 7 braids of 7, respectively). When more strands are used to produce the same size braid, the individual strands have to be thinner, and thinner strands of wire tend to be more flexible and less springy. This means that the 21- and 49-strand versions are considerably more flexible and "drapey" than the 3- and 7-strand types.

Flexwire (as I'll call this type of product in general) has some advantages over both wire-linked construction and fiber-based string, particularly if your main concern is sturdiness. Because the core of flexwire is metal, it can support very heavy beads, such as the denser types of stone beads. It's also very resistant to tensile stress -- it won't break easily when you tug on it, or if it catches on something. Tension breaks seem to be the main problem with most modern strings of beads, so this is a big advantage for makers of modern necklaces, bracelets and rosaries. The springiness of flexwire also means it's not very subject to breaking from metal fatigue, which occurs if a small area of wire is bent sharply back and forth several times and becomes brittle.

(This rather interesting modern rosary strung on flexwire is something I saw a couple of years ago on eBay. I have it labeled as "eclectic"!)

However, using flexwire also requires some differences in technique. Since it's hard to bend flexwire sharply, it's difficult to tie knots with it; the knots tend to resist tightening because of the wire's stiffness, and later to slip out because of the smooth nylon coating. This means that in order to secure the ends of the wire, instead of a knot you have to add a "crimp bead." These are small tubes of metal of just the right degree of hardness. The end of the wire is passed through the loop of a clasp, medal, or other ending and doubled back on itself. The crimp bead is slipped over both of the parallel wires and then squeezed with pliers to grip both wires tightly. This supplies the friction necessary to keep the wires from springing apart and the beads slipping off. (If a crimp bead is squeezed too firmly, it can cut through the nylon coating, weakening the wire.)

I'm much indebted here to Rosary Workshop and to the members of the Rosary_Makers mailing list, many of whom use flexwire to make modern rosaries. Several of them graciously answered my many questions about flexwire and any potential problems with it, and gave me permission to quote them.

Laura Eckert of Still Stone and Moss, for instance, did some testing of her own, and reports: "I held both ends of a piece with pliers and yanked as hard as I could. (I'm pretty strong.) After many mighty yanks, the wire finally broke -- right at the edge of the pliers. Could have been the sharp edge of the pliers that cut the wire. (For necklaces, I use a clasp that WILL break, so nobody gets strangled.)

"I tested crimp connections the same way. No crimps ever lost their grip. Even the crummiest crimps held -- this could be due to SoftFlex's nylon coating. Crimps closed with gentle pressure held as well as crimps closed with a death-grip. (I use crimping pliers -- the kind that first dent & then wrap the crimp.)

"I bent a piece of SoftFlex firmly at a U-turn angle with pliers, and the wire did "remember" that bend. Under ordinary conditions, it doesn't kink. For two-plus years, I've kept a rosary strung on 49-strand SoftFlex jumbled in the bottom of my purse -- when I pull it out, it falls into position without any weird bends. Rosaries left draped over the top of a 1/4" board for several months developed a slight bend, but returned to normal when suspended for an hour or so.

"No problems with abrasion to report after 4-plus years of use with a variety of beads, including stone & metal. No signs of wear even at the crimp points on a bracelet worn daily for several years."

all posts in this series

Part 1: String theory
Part 2: Threads of silk and gold
Part 3: Wired
Part 4: Flexwire
Part 5: Of flexwire & time machines

The REAL Paternoster Row

2008-10-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

One recent distraction is that I'm preparing for a long-overdue overhaul of the Paternoster-Row website, including some new material. One new bit that I'm particularly happy about is that I've finally found a decent, copyright-free map (from a survey made in 1762, I think) that clearly shows the original Paternoster Row in London. (as always, click to enlarge)

(Lots of old London maps can be found online, by the way -- for instance here, here, and here.)

If you're not familiar with London geography, Saint Paul's is in the western part of the old City of London -- the central "square mile" of London that lies inside the Roman walls. You can get an approximate idea of where this is here. (It's a map of sites mentioned in Charles Dickens, but I've had trouble finding good diagrams of the City -- most show far too much detail and you can't see the boundary.)

A view of the Paternoster Row area with a bit more context is here. I've taken the liberty of marking the old London city wall in bright blue and highlighting Paternoster Row in yellow. The upper part of the map including St. Paul's is the City Ward of Faringdon Within. (There's also a Faringdon Without, which logically enough is outside the old walls.)

I had hopes, when I was in London a couple of years ago, of having someone take a photo of me for the website showing me casually leaning against a Paternoster Row street sign. It would have been lovely, but there's a slight problem:

The only street sign I could find was twenty feet up on the side of a building.

I also discovered that modern "urban renewal" has obliterated parts of the old Paternoster Row in order to create an open space called Paternoster Square. Personally, I wish they hadn't: when I was there, admittedly in rather chilly March weather, Paternoster Square struck me as one of the bleakest, least friendly and most utterly deserted spaces I saw. It's an expanse of bare paving with one sculpture, a column, a few granite block "benches" and not much else, and the building fronts around it are equally blank.

Here's a pretty good aerial photo of Paternoster Square from Wikipedia.

The two exceptions to the universally blank building fronts that I found amusing were these:

I'm old enough to remember when geeks were called "squares," so I also wanted to someone to take a photo of me leaning up against the doorway under this sign, but the only bystanders at the time were most uninterested.

And this one just seems totally incongruous -- though perhaps not to Londoners, for whom Paternoster Row is just another familiar street name.

God's penny

2008-09-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

A bit of fallout from the trip to Leiden that I hadn't mentioned is that Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood gave me a "Godspenning" -- literally, "God's penny" -- that she had come across in her collecting. This is an interesting variation on one of the common types of "finger" or "ring" rosaries that I wrote about awhile back.

Here's what it looks like. The photo shows both sides of the same coin.

(Many thanks to Henk 't Jong, of 't Scapreel, for his help with the translation and background on this.)

The text is (not surprisingly) in Dutch. Here's what it says.

On the front:

Heer wat wilt U dat ik doen zal
"Lord, what do you want me to do?"
This is accompanied by a rooster, symbolizing morning.

GOD red ons uit de nood! Geef vrede aan de wereld.
"God, save us from distress. Give peace to the world."
This has a sun, symbolizing (I think) noon.

HEER blijf bij mij - het wordt nacht
"Lord stay with me, night is coming."
This has a crescent moon, symbolizing night.

On the back:

Wie u vervolgt, vervolgt MIJ.
"Who persecutes you, persecutes Me."
This side has a cross made of barbed wire.

Around the edge on the front side are ten small bumps and an eleventh, larger bump -- so this can be used to count the prayers of the rosary. On the back, in tiny letters, one in each point of the star, it says GODSPENNING, and "58" at the base of the cross.

Henk says:

"The 58 means that it dates from 1958. At this time and a bit later it was sold door to door for 1 guilder to help persecuted and displaced 'Volksdeutscher' (German nationals in Slavic countries) from the east of Europe (from behind the Iron Curtain) to the west who were living in very poor circumstances in abandoned hovels, bombed out buildings, bunkers and barracks. They were made by a religious group called 'Oostpriesterhulp' (Eastern priests help) and distributed through parochial networks. Nowadays they are religious collectors' items, but on our national E-bay site, Marktplaats, they often go for €10 or less."

Obviously, this little pocket accessory can be used to count the prayers of the conventional rosary. The inscription, however, makes me wonder whether some particular devotion may have been intended by it, perhaps at morning, noon and night, reciting one of the three inscriptions on the front of the coin each time.

When I see a simple devotional object like this, I always wonder whether there are any older historical versions. So far, I haven't found one. All I've come up with is several references to something quite different with the same name. In both English and (Henk tells me) Dutch, the "God's penny" is the symbolic deposit of one penny paid to conclude an agreement to buy something. Once the "God's penny" has been handed over, neither party can back out of the deal. It's also called an "earnest-penny" in English.

This seems likely to have originated as a pre-Christian custom, to invoke the blessing of the gods on the transaction -- and, presumably, their wrath on anyone who breaks the bargain. There is a Latin word for it, arrabo, which is discussed by the first-century AD author Aulus Gellius in one of his Attic Nights essays. I ran across this via Google Books, which had this charming footnote in a 1795 translation of the Attic Nights by William Belloe:

"The arrha was the earnest-penny given in bargains. Barthius says it is a Hebrew word: Arrabo vero vox pure Hebraica est -- Venantius Fortunatus, a [saint and] Latin poet [from the late 6th century], calls the death of Christ arrham salutis, the earnest-penny of salvation."

Dragging this fascinating topic back kicking and screaming to paternosters, however...

It occurs to me that the relatively modern Godspenning does have something relevant to say. I've noticed in my research that people who aren't especially well informed about medieval artifacts can miss some very relevant details in a painting, details which may have significance, simply because they don't recognize what they're looking at. For instance, you might mis-identify Catherine Pole's rosary beads here as a decorative belt, and miss their religious meaning. (A second look reveals that she is actually holding them in her hand, not wearing them.) A portrait of an Englishwoman conspicuously holding rosary beads after King Henry VIII's break with Rome is certainly significant!

My outstanding example of understanding what you're looking at, however, is this painting, where Saint Joseph is holding something in one hand that looks like a rather peculiar leather belt with round scales on it.

Because I know what I'm looking at, I can identify this as a type of prayer counter, what I usually call a "disk rosary." (These are a current research project of mine, by the way, so if anyone else sees one of these, I'd appreciate knowing about it. I have less than a dozen examples.)

Now that we know what the modern Godspenning looks like, it will be interesting to see whether anything that looks like it shows up in a medieval context. Perhaps somewhere out there, someone will find an otherwise inexplicable something that looks like a little toothed gear, or a notched coin, and it will turn out to be... this.

Through medieval eyes

2008-08-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

pretty pictures, part 4

I made this set of green beads as another gift recently, and it presented some interesting opportunities. As is common in today's society, not all of my friends are Christian, and in fact the woman I made this for is Pagan. But since she's a re-enactor, I wanted the beads to look acceptably medieval-Christian. The colors she requested were green, white and black, and as I often do, I used a nicely non-sectarian silk tassel for the pendant at the end.

The green heart is a personal symbol (again from Venetian Bead Shop), and as I was contemplating what else I might add, I thought of the little flat silver charm you see attached.

It's been sitting in my box of charms for several years, since I bought it along with the similar one I used on a little six-decade set of coral beads. Both of these little square charms are fine silver from India, stamped with (presumably) figures from Indian legends. I immediately claimed the first one for one of my own projects.

This six-decade rosary was one of my fairly early ideas. I had found a nice string of small pink beads that were reasonably priced, real coral and not dyed (which is uncommon). The marker beads were part of an eBay purchase: they were sold as rock crystal, but the price was very reasonable, so I wasn't too disappointed when I got them and discovered they were glass, as shown by the round air bubbles in one or two of them. (Rock crystal may have flaws, but not visible, perfectly round bubbles.)

Besides being an example of beads with six decades, I made this project as an example of the sorts of miscellaneous charms and accessories that might have been hung on a medieval rosary. The cross is Ethiopian, which is admittedly rather an improbable stretch for what a medieval European might have had available. I rummaged through my charm box and found a hand with "palm reading" lines on it, which I thought made a plausible "good luck charm," as does the crescent moon. The little silver pendant with a stone in the center is a carnelian, which actually was a good-luck charm in the Middle Ages. The round medal is a very worn Sacred Heart medal -- somewhat post-medieval in form, but as I said in an earlier post in this series, the devotion itself was known in the Middle Ages.

I liked the little square charm from India, because if I try to look at it through the eyes of a medieval European, my immediate identification is that it's Saint George... or perhaps Saint Martin of Tours, except that he seems to be wearing some sort of helmet and no cloak. He's clearly on horseback, and there is a diagonal line starting in the upper left corner that could be a spear or a lance, although if you look closely you see that he's not actually holding it.

People who have studied the religious thought of the Middle Ages more deeply than I have may certainly correct me here, but my own guess is that a medieval person, seeing such a thing, would try to fit it into a conceptual framework that he or she knew, and that means it would be identified as a saint, or perhaps a knight -- some sort of familiar image.

The pendant I still had sitting in my box was more problematic. With my modern eyes, I can see that it's possibly intended to be one of the round-breasted women characters from Indian legend, but it's much harder for me to fit that image into a plausible medieval-Christian context.

It's a bit of a stretch, but I wonder whether a medieval person might see this as one of the virgin martyrs who was stripped and tortured -- Saint Agatha, perhaps?

On the other hand, as a "goddess" image, it's now found an appreciative home.

Wired

2008-08-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

string theory, part 3

I've been writing about string, since during the period of history I'm most interested in, the vast majority of all rosaries were made from beads threaded on some sort of string -- often silk, sometimes linen or other materials. But starting in the late 16th century (I think), we begin to see the occasional set of beads with the wire-linked construction we're used to seeing in modern rosaries.

Dating this innovation is challenging, since -- as I keep saying about other paternoster history questions -- we just don't have a lot of surviving rosaries from that time period to provide us with data. And unlike some of the other questions I've researched, period paintings and illustrations are no help here, since they don't usually show this level of detail -- we're lucky, in fact, if they even show anything of the string, as they do in a few cases such as the Hoccleve portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer, where you can just about see that the thread is red. Nor do inventories and documentary evidence usually shed much light on how a rosary is constructed: usually the only details are what material the beads are made of, and sometimes their number.

As I've mentioned earlier in this series of posts, wire-linked construction has some advantages over string: the chain of beads is less breakable and doesn't need re-stringing as often. On the other hand, a wire chain is less flexible than beads strung on thread, and it's still prone to kinks and tangles. Since the beads are fixed in place and not movable, the different construction also changes the way the beads are handled while praying. Rather than beads sliding along a thread one by one, the entire chain of beads moves through the hands, one bead after the next being held between the fingers.

As a method of construction, wire linking is very simple, but somewhat labor-intensive, since until recently each loop on a wire-linked rosary had to be made by hand. Instructions for this are fairly easy to find, but most people find that it takes a bit of practice to be able to make even, consistent links that look nice and hold their shape well.

The first essential is the choice of wire. It needs to be strong, even in thickness, and thin enough to pass through a bead easily. It also has to be the right hardness. The same metal can behave quite differently depending on whether it is "hard" or "soft," and wire for making chains has to have just the right balance between the two. When metal is heated and cooled, it becomes "soft," which means it is more malleable, but easily pulled out of shape. As it is bent, twisted, hammered or worked in other ways, it becomes "harder," which means it will hold its shape better, but it also becomes more brittle and prone to break. For making chains of beads, the wire must be bendable so you can make loops, stiff enough that the loops will hold their shape under stress, but not so hard that it will break.

We take abundant supplies of fine metal wire for granted today, but for a long time all wire was hand made and somewhat expensive. Comparing a beautiful woman's hair to fine metal wires was a compliment to its shine and liveliness! Wire-drawing only became a major industry in Western Europe in the late 1500s. It's probably no coincidence that a number of crafts requiring consistent supplies of even, strong wire blossomed around that same time -- not only wire-linked bead work, but for instance also silk knitting, which requires fine wire needles.

Anyway, to make a long story short -- I haven't yet seen any examples of wire-linked paternoster beads that I am convinced are original and date to much before 1600. I've been shown a few groups of rosaries that have some wire linking and a photo caption saying "XV Jh." (German "Jahrhundert" meaning "century") but none of them convince me. In one case, the style of the metal parts looks very much like 18th-century filigree. Another seems to be something constructed from part of a broken rosary, and I don't see any clear indications of date on that one either.

The wire-linked beads that do look more convincing are a few tenners. Considering Bishop Fugger's beads are wire linked and date from somewhere between about 1604 and 1626, this isn't too surprising. The added labor of forming wire loops might make a bit more sense when there are just a few beads to link.

The earliest long rosary that I know of with wire links is this Portuguese rosary of aloe wood, with a somewhat vague date of "early 17th century" according to the book I got it from. You'll note, by the way, that this is a six-decade rosary, with 63 beads, sometimes called a "Birgittine" rosary.

Rosaries and paternosters are notoriously difficult to date precisely, and like any other jewelry, they were also subject to re-making and repairing as they became damaged or tastes changed. I'm certainly open to the possibility of earlier wire-linked beads, but so far both the evidence I've seen, and what I know of the social and technological background, lead me to think that late 16th to early 17th century is still the most likely date for this innovation.

all posts in this series

Part 1: String theory
Part 2: Threads of silk and gold
Part 3: Wired
Part 4: Flexwire
Part 5: Of flexwire & time machines

Still more pretty pictures

2008-08-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

part 3

This next batch of medieval-style rosaries were made for friends as special gifts. Among the people I hang out with, many are medieval re-enactors, so a medieval rosary is an appreciated gift, whether the recipient actually uses such a thing for religious purposes or not.

Since "decoding" the instructions given by Alanus de Rupe for a special rosary for a penitent knight, I've made several sets of these beads with special markers.

It took me quite a while when I made the first set to find a "multi-colored" bead I liked for the first marker. Most of the multicolored beads I could find in catalogs were either very cheap and badly made, or they were covered with little pink rosebuds. I didn't think that was very suitable for a bead supposed to symbolize our "multitude of sins." Eventually I found a millefiori bead, as you can see in this example.

The light-colored marker bead is mother of pearl here, the red is carnelian, the black is jet, and the gold is a foiled-glass Venetian bead from Venetian Bead Shop. Once I found sources, I bought several of each of these types in the 10-millimeter size, so I can now put together a set of "Beads of Death" without having to run out and shop for the parts.

The small beads for this rosary are green glass, the cross is another one from Rosary Workshop, and the little silvery-looking pendant is a hollow sterling-silver bead, with the ends plugged, and a few grains of earth from the Holy Land inside. One can fairly easily buy little "souvenir" containers of "Terra Sancta" and water from the River Jordan, but I happened to acquire little vials of both a few years ago that were about to be thrown out, and I've made good use of them.

This next set of beads is a "tenner." I have a couple of strings of 14-millimeter jasper beads, which seem to be about the right size for this common men's accessory, so that part was easy.

The hardest part of shopping for "tenners" is finding a good thumb-ring for the top. It's not at all difficult to find nice-looking plain silver rings in "finger" sizes, but finding a sturdy, closed ring about an inch in diameter and without egregiously non-period decoration isn't easy. I hoard them when I find them, and I had this one in my stash, so I used it.

The brass "gold" ring suggested using small brass "gold" beads between the larger jaspers, but what to do for the end? The friend I made this for said he wouldn't mind having a cross, but I didn't see anything affordable in the right size that I liked. Then I thought about the dark jasper cross that I'd picked up at the craft store, without any project in mind. I've never seen anything quite like it in a medieval context, but there are certainly coral and rock-crystal crosses (though not this shape) and the occasional wide-armed cross (though I usually can't tell what material they are -- I suspect wood). I decided this was good enough, and after wrestling with it a bit to get the flimsy silver-colored bail off, added it to the string.

The little gold pelican is definitely not medieval in style, but the pelican on a nest is a well-known medieval symbol of self-sacrifice, since the pelican was thought by classical authors to feed its young by stabbing its own breast so the offspring could feed on its blood.

The recipient has, he tells me, already to put this string to good use. He used it to amuse himself during a very long meeting by keeping count of the rounds of applause every time someone received yet another award.

Threads of silk and gold

2008-08-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

String theory, part 2

In my previous post, I focused mostly on plain silk, which seems to have been the thread of choice for medieval rosaries, and discussed some of the reasons it breaks. Here I'm going to discuss other types of silk thread, including silk with gold.

Since the biggest problem with silk thread is weakening by abrasion from the beads sliding along it, you'd think that people would choose threads that wouldn't be harmed by abrasion. Not so, apparently. I have seen a number of references to beads threaded on, for instance, "crimson silk and gold." And -- if I had any doubt that the gold was actually part of the stringing and not just decorative -- King Rene d'Anjou had a rosary "strung on a cord of silk and gold thread."

Before the days of plastic coatings it wasn't easy to make gold thread, or even imitation gold thread. Gold is a soft metal, and while it's possible to make a very thin gold wire that can be woven like thread, it is rather fragile and breaks when repeatedly bent back and forth. In embroidery it was mostly laid on the surface of the cloth and held down with stitches, rather than being threaded into a needle and passed in and out of the fabric.

Gold wire is also very heavy and expensive, so ways to make a thread that was lighter and more affordable were invented early. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, most gold thread was made by beating gold very thin, cutting it into strips, and wrapping the strip in a spiral around a "core" thread, usually yellow silk. The silk core made the thread much more flexible and less breakable.

On the other hand, the actual gold coating on the thread was quite thin. This meant that while the thread would bend readily and you could, with care, actually pass the thread through fabric, its tolerance for abrasion was still very limited. In embroidery this thread was still mostly laid on the surface of the cloth and stitched down (called "couching"). I have difficulty imagining why anyone would thread beads on something this easy to damage -- yet clearly it was done.

A fragile thread might be made somewhat sturdier if it is not simply twisted, but actually braided or woven. I started out using ordinary silk twist to string paternoster beads with, and I think that is one reason I've experienced so much thread breakage -- especially because I haven't plied my own from reeled silk, but used commercial twist from machine-spun silk. (The Japanese Embroidery Center has been recommended to me as a source of reeled or "flat" untwisted silk.)

As with any fiber, the first step is to make a single thread out of collected fibers. Silk twist is the next step in processing, where two threads -- each composed of many fibers -- are twisted around each other. I suspect that this results in relatively long stretches of fibers being exposed to wear between the places where the threads twist around each other. The twist also does not exert a great deal of pressure on the individual fibers or prevent them from moving. My guess is that this means that when a few fibers are abraded and break, the breakage has a good deal of freedom to spread to other nearby fibers as they take up the load released by the broken fibers.

A compound thread that is braided or woven, on the other hand, has much shorter exposures of fiber, and the intersections where groups of fibers go over or under each other are generally tighter and exert some pressure to keep the fibers from moving. So we might expect slighly better survival of threaded paternoster beads strung on braided or woven thread. I'd be very cautious about generalizing from the very few examples that exist, but indeed I'm aware of at least two surviving strings where fragments remain of a braided or woven cord. (Of course there are also surviving bits of twisted cord, so I wouldn't call the question settled.)

One is this set of 15th- or 16th-century jasper beads from Salzburg, which -- if I remember correctly -- were found on a length of pink silk cord that had been tablet-woven.

Tablet weaving, or card weaving, is a technique usually used to make narrow flat strips by a technique that combines twisting and weaving threads together. It's an ancient technique and quite common in the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. A slight modification of the technique produces a round woven cord with a hollow center.

Simple braiding is of course another very common techique for producing cord. I was particularly charmed to discover "whipcord braiding," which uses two people and four hanging bobbins to produce a round four-strand plait very quickly and easily. (There's a YouTube video here.) I think we tend to under-estimate how many period techniques were done with two or more people cooperating, since as modern people we are more likely to produce our crafts alone.

A third technique, which was common in the Middle Ages and Renaissance but largely forgotten in modern times (until its recent revival), is called "fingerloop braiding," and uses (as you'd probably guess) loops of thread carried on the fingers rather than straight cords with loose ends. It can be very fast, and produces fascinating, intricate patterns. It's pretty much limited to making short lengths of cord -- a yard or two at most -- but for the length you need for a paternoster, that's no problem.

Just last weekend a friend for whom I've made a paternoster commented that hers needed re-doing and she was planning to make a fingerloop braid for them. I've also made a copy of my "Magdalen" beads for another friend (seen above), also with a fingerlooped cord. I'll be interested to see whether these wear better and last longer, but I suspect they will.

all posts in this series

Part 1: String theory
Part 2: Threads of silk and gold
Part 3: Wired
Part 4: Flexwire
Part 5: Of flexwire & time machines

More pretty pictures

2008-08-10T13:50:00.000-07:00

part 2

Here are more of my recent projects.

(By the way, I've had a couple of comments and e-mails about these beads, asking if they are for sale. No, I don't make paternosters for sale, although I'm sure there is a market out there for them. I'd much rather teach people to make their own! There are full instructions in Bedes Byddyng, and the materials are neither hard to find nor expensive. A while back I also posted a "shopping list" and instructions.)

I posted some, but not all of the sets of medieval-style rosary beads that I made to take with me to Leiden in March. Here are a couple that didn't make it into the first batch I posted.

These are actually two of a color combination I've made several of, and will undoubtedly make more. I bought something like 20 strings of these opaque red glass beads for a special occasion, and I still have a number left over. The clear marker beads are rock crystal -- though not especially good quality rock crystal -- and at the particular moment I bought them, were actually less expensive than glass beads the same size.

Based largely on what I see in paintings, I tend to make most of my "ordinary" medieval-style rosaries from 8-millimeter beads with 10-millimeter markers. Those seem to be the approximate dimensions of the smaller medieval rosaries I see (there are some much bigger). These particular ones have 12-millimeter markers because that was the size that was on sale at the time.

Red coral was -- again, judging by paintings -- a very popular choice for rosary beads in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, for those wealthy few who could afford them. I don't know whether red coral in that period was widely faked, but I would be surprised if it wasn't. These glass beads certainly look to me like the sort of thing someone might choose in the Middle Ages who wanted a cheaper imitation of coral. A knowledgeable eye, seeing these close up, would know they weren't real coral, if only because of the absence of flaws and scratches -- glass is significantly harder than coral. It's also noticeably heavier, but you'd have to pick the beads up to know that. From a few feet away, these would probably have looked quite splendid.

I commented once that red coral beads with rock-crystal gauds seems to be a combination one sees a lot in medieval rosary paintings -- but when challenged, I couldn't come up with a lot of examples. I've collected more examples since, but it's gradually become apparent that it is indeed a common combination, but specifically in the rosaries shown in paintings of the Virgin Mary and saints. That means we don't know whether it was actually a popular combination in real life, or whether it represents some sort of ideal "type" of the rosary, thought suitable for particularly holy contexts.

Since I was trying to assemble some representative types of rosaries, I also made this string, which is the full fifteen decades recommended by Alanus de Rupe, rather than the more common sort abbreviated to five decades.

I've seen several 15th- and 16th-century rosaries with a heart as a pendant rather than a cross, so I looked for something that seemed suitable and came up with this pendant from Rosary Workshop. It's not quite ideal for a rosary, since it has a hollow back rather than being cast in the round, but I liked it.

A heart encircled by a crown of thorns today is usually thought of as representing devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In its present form, this is a post-medieval devotion, having become popular as a result of visions experienced by Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who died in 1690. But it can readily be demonstrated that a number of medieval saints and lay people also cherished a special devotion to the heart of Jesus, though it wasn't necessarily represented in the same way. Rosary Workshop doesn't know the exact source or date of this particular heart, but it reminds me most strongly of Mexican and Central American "milagros", so that would be my guess.

String theory

2008-08-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since we discussed threads. Up until about 1600, most paternosters and rosaries were strung on a thread of some sort. Having had some interesting discussions on thread with the folks in the Paternosters Yahoo group, I thought it might be a good time to revisit the subject.

The original threads of old paternosters and rosaries seldom survive. Having now owned and worn a number of medieval rosaries, I have a better appreciation of why that might be. Even silk thread -- which was probably the strongest available fine thread in the Middle Ages -- is neither unbreakable nor immortal. I don't wear my medieval-style reproductions all that often, and some of them are on their second or third stringing within ten years. Friends to whom I've given such beads have brought them back for re-stringing after as little as eighteen months, and discussions on some of the mailing lists I subscribe to include comments from people who wear necklaces of Anglo-Saxon or Viking-style beads, who also report that these need to be re-strung every couple of years (which provides an opportunity to re-arrange them, so it's not all bad).

(By the way, the photos in this post are just here as decoration. They are paternosters I've made at various times, mostly as gifts.)

Threaded rosaries are inherently more prone to breakage than the wire-chain construction so common in modern rosaries. My guess is that wire-chain construction began to gain in popularity at the end of the 16th century for precisely this reason. Wire chain has some disadvantages -- it does tangle and kink, sometimes quite badly, as the wire loops at the end of each link catch on each other. Putting each bead on a separate wire link also means you cannot slide the beads along the thread as you count them; instead, the entire rosary is passed through the hands, one bead at a time, which gives a different "feel" to the counting process.

Thread breakage in period must have been very common. I no longer wonder why so many of the threaded paternosters and rosaries mentioned in 15th- and 16th-century wills and inventories have strange numbers of beads, such as 114, 32 or 83 ;)

Why and how threads break depends on what kind of stresses the thread is subjected to. Tensile strength is one factor -- how hard it is to break a thread by pulling on the ends. Another factor is resistance to abrasion -- how much the thread is weakened by the friction of beads sliding back and forth. A third factor is "fatigue" -- how much something is weakened by being repeatedly bent in different directions. Silk thread is pretty good on the first, not good on the second, and the third is (as far as I know) no problem at all. Metal wire is very good on the first two, not so good on the third.

One thing to consider is that medieval silk thread may well have had more tensile strength than modern silk thread, so perhaps modern experience is not quite comparable. Most silk thread today is machine-spun, which requires that the very long silk fibers be chopped into short pieces. "Reeled" silk, which preserves the original fiber length, is likely to be stronger, and in fact a lot of modern synthetic fibers like nylon make strong thread at least partly for the same reason. Much of the silk thread available in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (if you could afford silk at all) was reeled, so this may have made a difference. It would be interesting to test the two types and see how different they are.

Another thing to consider is how much care is taken by the wearer of the beads to keep them out of situations where they might break. Modern rosaries are often rather carelessly knocked around, carried loose in the bottom of a pocket or purse, or perhaps hung from a car's rear-view mirror (however much this is frowned on by safety experts!). In the Middle Ages, rosaries seem to have been more often worn out in the open like jewelry, often pinned to clothing, wound around an arm or hanging from a belt. This puts them in situations where they are very likely to catch on something, and I've had several sets of beads do exactly that while I was wearing them -- a dangling loop catching on a doorknob, for instance, or the most recent instance where the cross at the end of my Saint Hedwig beads got caught in the crack of a wooden bench, and the string snapped when I stood up quickly.

I would guess, however, that silk thread's major weakness is from abrasion due to friction. It seems to have been the custom to slide each bead along the thread as it is counted while praying. The beads can also slide back and forth as they are picked up or put down, worn or carried. As far as I can tell, medieval rosaries did not have knots between each bead (as, for instance, pearl necklaces often do). That would have interfered with sliding them, and incidentally it also means that if the thread does break you are likely to lose several beads rather than just one or two. (So far I've mostly been lucky enough to find all the beads when mine have broken, though there are still three little red glass beads in my car somewhere.)

Friction between beads and thread also depends on craftsmanship. Virtually all modern beads are machine-made, and the holes are likewise drilled by machine. This guarantees a smooth hole inside, but it can leave fairly sharp edges where the hole enters or leaves the bead. I would guess that when beads were made by hand, the openings of the holes could have been smoothed with a file, and if so, abrasion would have been lessened.

Other threads available at the time probably shared some of these weaknesses. The most plausible thread for rosaries for those who could not afford silk is probably linen or hemp. Both of these are fairly strong in terms of tensile strength -- especially if the linen is "line" spun using the full length of the fibers -- but they are also not as smooth as silk, which would have increased the friction between thread and beads. Wool thread is not very likely as a stringing material because it also has a rough surface, and compared to the others, it is relatively short-fibered and has much less tensile strength. A single reeled silk fiber may be dozens of feet long in the uncut state. Linen and hemp fibers are often as long as the plant is tall, as much as three or four feet. The longest wool fibers I know of are six to eight inches, and they are far more commonly found in the one- to three-inch range.

all posts in this series

Part 1: String theory
Part 2: Threads of silk and gold
Part 3: Wired
Part 4: Flexwire
Part 5: Of flexwire & time machines

Pretty pictures

2008-08-04T09:09:00.001-07:00

Since the early days of this blog, I've made comments from time to time about the attempts people make to create new, medieval-style rosaries based on what we know about beads in the Middle Ages. Trying to make replicas and re-creations is always interesting, and can sometimes teach us a lot about what the historical artifacts were like and how they were made.

Such attempts are, of course, ultimately imperfect, because we aren't in the Middle Ages and don't have a lot of complete, detailed evidence about exactly what medieval paternosters and rosaries were like. Nor are we medieval people, so we are sure to guess wrong at times about how they would have done things. Nor (as I mentioned in Creative Shopping and More Creative Shopping) do we have exactly the same materials available that they did. So all such attempts will involve compromises. But that's part of the challenge, part of the (dare I say) fun. ;)

I fairly often make such medieval-style rosaries as gifts, and since I just finished a batch of them, I thought I'd share some photos, and talk a bit about the decisions I made in making them and why I made them as I did.

I should point out that these are not "data", and I don't think anyone else should necessarily use them as models. They are not medieval, though I think they are reasonable approximations in some ways, with some additional compromises made for the sake of the particular people I'm giving them to.

This one, for instance, I made for someone as a thank-you. She's a professional artist, and since I've seen her work I know she likes these colors. And someone had given me a strand of the dyed, somewhat irregular freshwater pearls that are so common in the bead catalogs these days. The marker beads, by the way, are leftover jasper from my green jasper paternoster.

But.... dyed pearls in the Middle Ages? No, the technology for creating intense, permanent color on pearls was only developed within the last few decades. Pearls can be dyed with fabric dyes, but the color tends to be pale and to fade fairly quickly. And dyeing pearls doesn't seem to have been in fashion in the Middle Ages, perhaps because pearls were so astronomically expensive in the first place (more valuable than diamonds, at least some of the time).

This next one was made for someone who likes (as I do) the combination of fairly dark and saturated blue, red and green. The marker beads are lampworked ovals with gold foil, which does seem to be a style of bead that was made in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, though I have no evidence one way or the other about their use in rosaries.

I'm not very satisfied with the tassel on this one. Tassel-making is my least favorite part of making medieval-style rosaries, and also the most fiddly, expensive and time-consuming, but the ready-made tassels I can find for sale are even more expensive and tend to be made of rayon, which doesn't stand up well to wear. I also haven't studied medieval tassels in enough detail to know much about whether multicolored tassels were in fashion, or if so when or where, or how they were constructed, whether the colors were randomly mixed throughout the strands or in sections, or for that matter what stitches were used to secure them.

It's clear from surviving beads and from paintings that the charms and accessories that were hung from medieval rosaries were not necessarily religious. But the dragonfly charm on this string is quite modern, both in concept and in style. (The recipient likes dragonflies.) The charm is made from cast base metal, colored with a modern resin rather than a true enamel. Also, for some reason dragonflies don't seem to be very frequent as an artistic motif in the Middle Ages. I don't know why, but they don't seem to have attracted much symbolism, either positive (like lions or eagles) or negative (like snakes or foxes).

I'm much happier with this next rosary, which also contains swirled and foiled beads. This is for someone who likes red, gold, and all things Italian. I chose amber-colored glass beads because I made it to go with a particular dress that I hadn't seen yet, and while different amber and yellow hues often look all right together, reds are much more difficult to match.

I'm a bit concerned about this string, because the thread seemed to snag once or twice as I was pulling it through the beads. I felt them with my fingers, and slid the beads back and forth a few times, and didn't find any rough spots, but lampworked beads are made by winding hot glass onto a "mandrel" or rod, and since their holes are not drilled, but formed as the bead is formed, there may be rough spots inside where I can't see them.

By wearing, using and giving medieval-style paternosters, I've become very aware that, as I tell the recipients, silk thread is neither immortal nor unbreakable. Beads threaded on silk will have to be re-threaded, at least once every few years, and perhaps more often if they are worn a lot. The average lifespan seems to be about two years, which is less than I would have thought. I do have some theories about string, which I plan to write about at some point.

More pretty pictures another time ;)

A thousand flowers

2008-07-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

part 2

I posted a few days ago about one type of lampworked beads used in paternosters, namely the kind with looped and dragged surface decoration. Everything else I know about lampworked beads should easily fit into one more post, with some room left over! ;)

Another fairly easy technique for decorating the surface of lampworked beads is to roll them in "frit" -- which is what glass workers call little ground-up bits of glass. "Frit" can be made from leftover bits of glass in whatever colors are available, ground up and sifted to produce bits of whatever size range the glassmaker wants.

The hot bead is rolled in the frit, and when the resulting bits are melted into the surface of the bead, you get random dots of color, something like the beads below. (These have a thick layer of clear glass added over the spotted core.)

500 Jahre Rosenkranz includes one rosary made from spotted, or as the description says, "marbled" glass beads. Unfortunately the photo is small, black and white and terrible, but here it is, for what it's worth:

Millefiori

The gift rosary I made that prompted me to investigate lampworked beads in the first place is shown below, and it's the reason these two posts are titled "A thousand flowers." That's the literal translation of "Millefiori," the type of beads I used for the Ave beads.

I will happily recommend Venetian Bead Shop, where I bought these: they carry a wide variety of colors, shapes, foiled and sparkly beads, swirls, hand-blown hollow beads, and many other types traditionally made in Murano, the glassmaking district near Venice. Their shipping is fast and their prices very reasonable. Occasionally they are out of stock of a particular color, but seldom for long.

Millefiori beads are created by first making a rod of glass out of many smaller rods, arranged in a flower-like pattern and melted together. The rod is then drawn out into a long, thin cane, and slices from such a cane will all show the same flower pattern. To make a millefiori bead, several such slices will be applied to the surface of a hot bead of some other color, which is then quickly rolled smooth. (You can see that these beads are hand made, because some of them are more smooth than others!)

These beads are quite nice: I've seen so-called "millefiori" beads from other countries that are much less well done and look more like multi-colored mishmash than flowers. These are sometimes labeled as "ethnic," which always makes me snort.

What I don't know here is when and where millefiori beads have been actively made and traded. The technique seems to have been known in Italy in the 15th century, but this says nothing about whether it was popular or rarely used. Wikipedia (for what it's worth) seems to think that millefiori beads have only become really common in the last century or so. Resources, anyone?

This paternoster was made for someone who likes "everything Italian," hence the bright colors. I tried a couple of different shades of plain blue glass for the marker beads before I found one that looked right.

This just about concludes all I know about the use of lampworked beads in rosaries! But I'd certainly like to find out more.