Same theme, different beads

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 Bishop of Cleveland has now issued a statement, saying that the visions are not supernatural in origin. (Thanks to correspondent JH for the update on this.)

And there have certainly been other critics (another here). Some of the contents of the messages Maureen Sweeney-Kyle reports and publishes do 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. (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

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.

Gifts and ghosts

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.

Of flexwire and time machines

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 ;)

Posts in this series:

String or Nothing
The thread thread
String Theory
Threads of silk and gold
Wired
Flexwire
Of flexwire and time machines

Flexwire

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."

Posts in this series:

String or Nothing
The thread thread
String Theory
Threads of silk and gold
Wired
Flexwire
Of flexwire and time machines

Ooooooh, shiny!

I am writing a few shorter, less serious posts at the moment, because when you read this I will be on a two-week research trip to Europe. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;)

I've been meaning for a while to share a few of the photos I've gleaned of some nice modern rosaries. These are from my "amazing what you can do these days" folder, in that all of them are in one way or another made from materials that couldn't have been used, or in some cases didn't exist, a few decades ago. All but the last are from rosaries for sale on eBay.

There's a bit of a historical purpose here, too. One of the challenges in making medieval-style or replica rosaries is that it requires some "creative shopping." By and large, unless we are bead makers or metal casters ourselves (and I'm not), we are limited to what's available (and affordable!) on the commercial bead market, and that can be frustrating because modern fads are not the same as what was in fashion in (say) 1483.

For glass beads, various iridescent coatings have become very popular in the last few decades. They go by various names, including "aurora borealis," "vitrail," "iris," and "luster." To the best of my knowledge, these finishes on beads didn't exist until very recent times; most of them are not simply sprayed onto the beads but require modern techniques like vapor deposition in a vacuum.



Likewise, in the last ten years or so it's become possible to make an affordable cultured pearl out of just about any glass bead shape, so we now have not only natural-shaped pearls, but flat, square, faceted, twisted, petal-shaped and cross-shaped pearls. Cultured pearls in mass production were not possible until the beginning of the 20th century, when techniques were invented to reliably create pearls "in the round" that were not attached to the wall of the pearl shell. I should add that while natural colored pearls do exist, bright, colorfast dyes for pearls like the ones shown here are also quite a new thing.



While various shaped glass beads can be made by hand, the mass production of pressed glass beads in a mold is also fairly recent, dating back only to the early 1800s. While beads of other glasslike substances, such as faience, have been known since ancient Egypt, beads of true glass were mostly shaped either by lampwork techniques (which involve melting) or were cut as if they were semi-precious stone, which was expensive and required a lot of hand labor.



At times I gripe a bit, because the newer bead types in some catalogs seem almost to be crowding out the plain rounds, ovals, simple cuts, and other shapes I look for when making replicas. But historical bead types do still exist, though you may have to look a bit harder for them.

Finding out just how recent some of the new techniques are has also given me a renewed appreciation for traditional glass beads like those from Murano that contain gold or silver foil and other enhancements. Before modern finishes, the options for adding "sparkle" or "bling" to paternoster beads were a lot fewer and more expensive. Foiled beads must have been quite a welcome invention; they aren't cheap, but neither are they solid silver or gold.

And finally, here's a rosary someone made just for fun, out of recycled faceted glass beads and miniature Christmas tree ornaments! This was made by a student at the school I work for as an art project a few years ago, and I keep it in my box of modern examples because I think it's cute. ;)

My First Rosary

Recently I ran across a little package I'd been missing for a while. I've mentioned this before (in Home for Retired Rosaries), but now that people know I'm interested in rosary and paternoster beads, once in a while I get given an old or "extra" rosary that someone no longer wants.

The package I found contains my friend JH's first rosary, which she gave me after a class one day because she now has others she likes much better. It's a pretty little thing, with tiny (4 millimeter) sparkly pink beads and a nice 1960s-style medal and cross. (The "streamlining" of the figures and the diamond patterning on the cross are very characteristic of the '60s -- just to add a historical note here. :)



So I thought I'd share my own first rosary, which is of similar vintage. I bought it when I was somewhere around eight or ten, and it cost me a whole $1.00. (Which dates me, I suppose!)



Perhaps because I've had this one so long, I tend to think of it as sort of an archetypical modern rosary, with the very standard 6-millimeter faceted glass beads shared by so many other modern rosaries.

As I think I've mentioned before, I grew up in New England, which has a lot of Roman Catholics, due to past generations of immigrants from Italy and Ireland. I was brought up in a Protestant church -- then called Congregationalist, now part of the United Church of Christ. But when I was in elementary school, nearly all of my playmates were Catholic, and that definitely had an influence on me, to my parents' mild dismay.

I've always been interested in religion, but at that age, theology was really not the issue. It was the artifacts. My Catholic friends had an astonishing variety of religious THINGS, none of which we had in our church: statues, candles, rosaries, medals, scapulars, missal books, special dresses for First Holy Communion -- and of course the girls all got to wear their First Holy Communion dresses to school the day after, which made me quite envious of all the white frills and froufy stuff.

Being young and female, these things were as routine and unquestioned a part of my friends' lives as playing dolls. So of course I had to have some of these fascinating THINGS for myself. I still have all three of the rosaries I bought with my allowance. My secret "stash," kept in an old cough-drops tin, was of the tiny pictures of statues, medals and rosaries that I cut out of old mail-order catalogs. And I still have a couple of children's books, one of which is My First Rosary (featuring a very Caucasian, blond, blue-eyed Virgin Mary, which I now find quite amusing).

I knew the prayers and how to pray them, but I don't think I actually prayed the rosary very much in those years. It was more the sparkly beads -- and of course the "forbidden fruit" aspect of the whole thing -- that kept my interest.

When pi(ety) R square

(Apologies for the lack of recent posts here. I'm trying to get back to a regular schedule.)



As I've commented before, rosary beads in many eras tend to follow the same fashions as other jewelry of the same time period. I suspect this was actually even more true before the Protestant Reformation, since it seems to have been more common before that time to see a rosary worn as an everyday accessory, much as a modern person might wear a wristwatch or a cell phone. Of course, you would be even more likely to wear a rosary every day if you were a well-off or wealthy person, or if you wanted to show off beads that were particularly costly or precious.

What's interesting here is that in modern times there seems to be something of a time lag in styles. While there are a few decidedly modern rosaries for sale here and there, the overwhelming majority of rosaries are still the styles that were popular in the 1960s: 6-millimeter faceted glass beads, usually round or double-cone shaped, with a chain construction, a flat metal medallion at the joining of the loop, a five-bead "drop" or "tail," and a metal crucifix.

To some extent, the popularity of these faceted beads also shows up in today's jewelry. And if you consult bead catalogs, which carry beads and other supplies for making jewelry, there are still more styles, varieties, finishes, and colors of these small faceted beads than of any other bead type.

But especially with the rise of bead crafting, other types of beads have emerged as new favorites. These include flat cut shapes such as crescents, hearts, squares, diamond shapes and round disks. In the last few years, more and more such shapes have become available, including flat or rounded rings, some with a thread hole along the diameter, so that when they are strung they lie flat, edge to edge. I've also seen flat cutout bird, flower, shell, cross, star, and several varieties of leaf shapes, either cut from natural materials or made from pressed glass. The occasional rosary with star, heart, flower or shell-shaped beads has been showing up for years, but the shape that especially intrigues me at the moment is cubes.



While "cube" rosaries still aren't common, they are beginning to show up in some numbers. At least one of the major "brand name" rosary companies (HMH Regina) now offers a rosary with cube beads.

Cubes come in several styles: some are press-molded glass, with slightly rounded edges and corners. More expensive ones are cut glass, usually with faceted edges, so they're slightly octagonal in cross-section. The edge facets may occupy a greater or lesser proportion of the faces of the cube.



Still others have the eight corners of the cube cut off, making a more rounded shape with 14 facets -- though it's still recognizably a cube in origin.



One of the frustrations of historical research on rosaries is that the data on bead shapes is so spotty. (As is the detail on a lot of other aspects, of course, but this one in particular.) There are basically two sources of information. One is the collection of beads that survive from historical times. Most of these are found loose, with no indication of what they were originally part of, which limits what they can tell us. Still, if beads of certain types did not exist at some past period, they could not have been used for paternoster or rosary beads in that period.

The other source of information is written descriptions. Here's where the major frustration comes in -- we have the words, but exactly what do they mean? Many descriptions come from inventories and wills, which means their main purpose is to explain how many of them someone owns and (often) which ones are bequeathed to whom. They are written for people who have the actual beads in front of them, so they only need to include enough detail to say which is which.

I have yet to see any historical beads described as "cubes." But I've seen several beads described as "square." Are these cubes, or are they flat square or diamond shapes? In a few cases it's clear, as with a famous strand of gold-enameled beads once owned by Louis of Anjou (which I mentioned briefly here). The description, as given by Ronald Lightbown in Medieval European Jewellery, says:

"In 1379-80 Louis of Anjou had a set of twenty-one
gold paternoster beads of very capricious design.
They were small and square, with concave sides;
on one side they were enamelled with chequer-
work like a board for chess, on the other with
chequer-work like a board for tables [checkers?].
To each of their corners was riveted a tiny pearl."

Here it's clear they are flat squares, since they are described as having only two "sides."

As I've mentioned before, it would be nice for my purposes if I could document cubical beads in the Middle Ages, because it would give me one more shape to choose from in making modern beads in medieval styles. But them's the breaks: alas, our ancestors didn't have us in mind when they made their style choices :)

A, B, C, D, E, F, G....

A whim of fashion has suddenly made alphabet beads very popular in the last few years. You can now get cube-shaped beads with any letter from A to Z -- and sometimes more, including hearts, stars, crosses and punctuation marks. Sterling silver cubes are quite popular, but every bead medium from gold to glass to {shudder} plastic is represented.

It didn't take long for rosary makers to start playing with the possibilities. One of the earliest rosaries I saw on eBay with alphabet beads was this one, which spells "Santa Maria" (conveniently, ten letters) in every decade.



Imagination soon suggested other ways to use the alphabet. You can now get a rosary that spells out your name in full, which certainly makes it unmistakably yours. In earlier and perhaps more modest times, you'd have had your name more subtly engraved on the back of the crucifix.

Instantly popular, too, was the idea of a rosary with the names of family members, usually one name per decade. You generally can't sell this sort of thing on eBay, because it needs to be customized to the buyer. But there are plenty of people willing to make one for you.

More creative rosary makers have branched out into other messages. You can now buy a rosary spelling out the name of your favorite saint, or citing your favorite Bible passage ("JOHN+3+16"). You can give your parish priest a rosary that spells out "Father Jerome" or your parents an anniversary rosary with their names and the words "50 years." I've also seen rosaries customized with just initials, often on the three central beads of the short pendant between the loop of a modern rosary and the cross.

Clearly, once you receive a rosary like this, you are stuck with it forever, and if you don't like it your only recourse is to stick it in a drawer. You can't give it away.

And of course I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. Many of these rosaries are quite beautiful and well made, and a tangible reminder to pray for your nearest and dearest is something many people like to have.



I was interested to find, when I started tracking rosary sales on eBay, that there is a definite peak season for giving rosaries as gifts. That peak is not Christmas, as one might expect, although there is certainly an upsurge in sales then. Nor is it Easter or Valentine's Day, which might also have some logic behind them. The big holiday for rosary gifts is Mother's Day.

I sometimes wonder -- rather wryly at times -- whether some religious groups' emphasis on an exclusively masculine clergy is an intentional counterbalance. At least since the 19th century, in European cultures if not elsewhere, women have been regarded as the more "spiritual" sex, or at least have felt more free to display religious fervor in public. I certainly don't think men are any less fervent or numerous in their devotion. But in a culture where men don't cry in public and don't ask for directions when they get lost, you probably won't see a lot of them praying the rosary in public either.

Women in traditional families also seem to function as the "social secretary" or the one who keeps in touch with everyone. This may well explain the decidedly feminine slant I've seen to the alphabet rosaries offered for sale -- especially those with family names. Pastel colors, iridescent glass beads, and crosses decorated with flowers, leaves and curlicues abound.



I've strayed rather far from the alphabet here, into musings on the social roles of women and men. But I think there is a connection, if only this: rosary beads reflect the times in which they are made, and especially, the styles of contemporary jewelry. This broadens our field as rosary researchers considerably. Where historical data about rosaries is lacking, books on period jewelry can provide valuable insight, and it's not uncommon for a rosary or two to appear along with the book's rings, bracelets and other jewelry. Equally, comparing the style of rosaries to that of jewelry can give us insight into what the rosary means to those who choose, wear, and pray it.

Woodcarver at work

One thing I did not expect about having a fairly prominent website about rosary history is that I now get occasional requests by e-mail -- usually to help identify or date someone's old rosary, though most of the people who ask have rosaries from sometime in the 19th or 20th century, when I can't be of much help.

Once in a while I get something different. Last spring I got an inquiry from Dennis Collier, an artist who had been commissioned to carve a rosary from olive wood: himself a practicing Buddhist, he had no idea what a Catholic rosary should look like, how many beads it should have, or where to start. I sent him some basic information, for which he was very grateful.

Checking back recently, he's finished the project, and now has it up on his website. There is a wonderfully carved crucifix backed with a medallion, a rosary of fairly large plain beads, and a rosary case for the whole thing, made from a section of the trunk of the olive tree.



I hadn't heard a lot of details when he first asked, so I was interested to hear more about where the commission had come from and what he had been asked to do.

The initial request came from Katie Burchfield, a woman from Georgia who has reported visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and who feels she has been directed to present a rosary portraying her vision to Pope Benedict XVI. It's an interesting story: she was originally a Southern Baptist before her visions began, but has now converted to Catholicism, and a number of Catholic sources have been very interested in her experiences.

As Dennis Collier explains, her central vision has been of Jesus as the "bridegroom." The image she requested includes a crowned, risen Christ, astride a globe, with a sash emblazoned with the motto IHS and a star of David, and robes with the alpha and omega symbols on each sleeve. Dennis has done a lovely job of translating this into wood.



As with the overwhelming majority of modern reports of visions and miracles, official Catholic sources are politely silent on whether Katie's visions are considered "true" experiences of the supernatural. Many people over the centuries have reported such experiences, and modern society doesn't really have a conceptual framework into which such things easily fit. My own interest in this case is because I see it as a living example of a common phenomenon in the history of religion: one person's experience, being translated into a new image of devotion. Certainly such things now receive far wider public exposure than in the days before mass media and the Internet, but I don't think the phenomenon itself has changed much.

Poly play

It's a bit of a puzzle to me, but despite the wild proliferation of bead crafts as a modern hobby, few of the newer types of beads currently in fashion seem to make it into the rosary market. Among the glass beads especially, round faceted beads are overwhelmingly dominant in rosaries, to the extent that just about any other shape is likely to be described as "rare", "unusual", or "unique" (overused as these terms are on eBay).

The bead catalogs, by contrast, are full of flower shaped beads, cubes, flat diamonds strung corner to corner, teardrops, crescent moons, twists, sea shells and hearts. I'll keep an eye out for rosaries made from these, but while I've seen sea shells and hearts, the others seem to be few and far between.

More to the point at the moment, I do see the occasional artisan bringing into the rosary market something else quite modern: poly clay. If you're not familiar with this stuff, Sculpey and Fimo are two major brands, and it's available in craft stores. It's a very pliable and versatile clay-like material, and when baked in an ordinary oven, becomes quite hard and permanent.

Craftspeople love the stuff because it makes it possible to easily and quickly imitate, with ordinary home equipment, a great many things that glassmakers do with much more effort and difficulty, including cane and mosaic techniques. People go quite wild with poly clay, and at times produce some things that I personally think are extremely ugly -- but on the other hand, I've also seen many that were interesting, lovely, or both. Poly clay can be made into quite convincing imitations of Japanese lacquer work, carved wood or ivory, porcelain, semi-precious stones, and many other natural materials, or it can sport colors and textures due to no inspiration but pure art -- or perhaps, science fiction!

One particular artist, whose eBay ID is Capone31, has given me permission to show and write about some of her poly-clay creations.

Here are a couple of pieces typical of her work from a year or two ago:





She's also been able to incorporate bits of foil into some of her beads, imitating a Japanese technique called "mokume-gane." Here's one of those rosaries:





As you can see, the finished beads are polished smooth and given a protective coating. They look remarkably glass-like, in fact, and she reports that they are very sturdy in use and don't break.

More recently, she's been producing a series of rosaries that use poly clay just for the marker beads. This is quite understandable, as it's very labor-intensive. A lot of work already goes into these rosaries because they are made with wrapped loops, which take significantly more time to make, but are much more durable. I picked this one to show because it's very sophisticated in its clay technique:





Then there is the stuff that's a bit more "out there" and fun. Because the clay is resistant to breaking once it's baked, it's possible to make a reasonably sturdy rosary that looks like this (which is in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux):



Admittedly, this is not the sort of thing you'd want to carry around in your pocket, and it probably wouldn't stand up too well to that kind of wear and tear either. The artist admits she was thinking more that someone might display this sort of thing on a wall or table as religious art. "Wall rosaries" are something I've discussed before on this blog, in fact, and while they are not as popular as they were 50 years ago, some people really like them.

Perhaps the market for rosaries is conservative now because a lot of people see the rosary prayer itself as something old-fashioned or out of date. Rosaries may be seen as something you buy for your grandmother, rather than for yourself, so while historical rosaries tend to follow the fashions in jewelry of the time they were made, right now rosaries seem to be made and sold in fashions more typical of the 1950s.

On the other hand, the rosary is not dead by any means. The high school students who have made rosaries in art class at the school where I work have been really interested in what they were doing and how their finished rosaries would be used. A number of their rosaries were made with touches of humor and decidedly modern beads. October is traditionally "rosary month", and it's interesting to see that this 500-year-old tradition is still alive and well.

Beans and seeds: II

As I've already mentioned in Bean Beads a few days ago, beans are certainly not the only type of seeds that have been used in rosaries. At least a couple of additional types seem worthy of mention here.

One is the teardrop-shaped pod produced by a grass named "Job's Tears" (botanically, Coix lacryma-jobi). This is usually referred to as a "seed," but it's actually a very hard, woody pod that forms around the tiny flowers of the grass. The seeds inside are high in protein, mild tasting and quite nutritious, and Job's Tears was historically grown in India and the Far East as a cereal grain (sometimes called aday). It's actually rather closely related to sweet corn (Zea mays).



The pods are naturally smooth and shiny, whitish gray, yellow, purple or brown, and they seem to take dyes fairly well. Conveniently for those who want to use them as beads, they already have a natural hole through the center. The teardrop shape is probably the reason for the name, and a lot of people appreciate the "tears" symbolism.



As with the other seeds I've mentioned, it's very difficult to know just when or where such seeds were first used to make rosaries. It's entirely likely that they were used first for jewelry and adopted for use as prayer beads just as many other jewelry materials have been.

OooooooooooOooooooooooOooooooooooO

Quite a different notable -- or perhaps I should say notorious! -- seed used in rosaries is the rosary pea or rosary bean (Abrus precatorius). The seeds are small, roundish, very hard, and brilliantly red with a black spot.



The reason this plant is so notorious is that the seeds contain a compound called abrin, one of the most toxic poisons in nature. The pea or bean family (Fabaceae), to which the rosary pea belongs, actually contains quite a few toxic plants with compounds of this general type, but this one is unusually potent.

Fortunately for all concerned, the poison is only released if the very hard seeds are chewed and swallowed, but a single seed could easily kill an adult human. The poison is also of a singlularly nasty type: rather like the poison of "death angel" mushrooms, it can bring active cell metabolism to a complete stop, causing the collapse of major body systems. There is not much that can be done to counteract this.

The rosary pea is native to India, and the Wayne's Word botanical website notes that, "Because of their remarkably uniform weight of 1/10th of a gram, seeds of Abrus precatorius were used by goldsmiths of East Asia as standard weights for weighing gold and silver. In fact, the famous Koh-i-noor diamond of India, now one of the British crown jewels, was reportedly weighed using seeds of Abrus precatorius."

The attractive red color means that rosary peas sometimes turn up as part of the seed necklaces commonly sold to tourists in tropical climates, and a warning about rosary peas used to be part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's standard information for returning tourists -- I don't know if it still is.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend using them. Hopefully we are all too sensible to chew on our rosaries, but there are so many other possible materials with far less risk attached.

Bean beads

...from Bombay to Bethlehem*

I strongly suspect that the item I saw for sale a few days ago on eBay, labeled "Rosary Beans", was a typo.

But maybe not.

As naturally formed "beads," various seeds, beans, and fruit pits have been used over the centuries for just about anything beads can be used for, including rosaries. (There's an interesting website on bean and seed beads from a botanist's point of view here.)

Obviously, not all types of beans are suitable as beads. In order to make a good rosary bead, a bean or seed needs to be pleasantly shaped, firm, dry, and not prone to spoilage or splitting -- which means ordinary edible beans of the type used for soup are far from ideal, since they are specially selected to have thin skins and split easily.

I don't think anyone knows how old the Hindu rosary is: it almost certainly pre-dates the Christian era, and the Western rosary may have been derived from it (or may have been an independent invention -- no one really knows). But from at least the 11th century, worshippers of Shiva have used rosaries (malas) of Rudraksha seeds. These are the hard, somewhat prickly fruit-pits from Elaeocarpus or "blue marble tree", a tropical tree distantly related to cacao and cotton.

I don't have a lot of firm dates for when or how other seeds came to be used in rosaries, especially since surviving rosaries that appear in collections without documentation are very difficult to date. Some of the most suitable seeds are not native to the area I focus on (Western Europe), and not likely to have been commonly imported until at least the early Renaissance.

Seeds that have, like the rudraksha, some sort of sacred associations are especially attractive for use in rosaries. The "bean" rosary that first attracted my attention to this topic, in fact, is made from seeds referred to as "spina Christi," supposedly from the tree used to make Christ's crown of thorns.



These are flattish, very hard, bean-like seeds, probably from Zizyphus spina-christi, a small thorny tree common in Palestine. I'm still searching for better photos of these seeds to see if that's really what they are: the one really good photo I've found so far of the tree and its seeds shows seeds that aren't as flat or as smooth as the seeds used to make the rosary appear to be.



Another popular rosary material from Palestine is olive pits, especially those associated with the Mount of Olives. I have a very nice modern rosary whose Ave (Hail Mary) beads are olive pits, and whose marker beads are mother-of-pearl. The joining piece is a Jerusalem cross. I've also seen rosaries that are described as being made from olive pits, but whose beads are smooth -- either the olive pits have been polished, if that's possible, or else this is a mistake for beads made from olive wood from Palestine, which are also quite common. Here's a closeup of my "olive pits" rosary.



Last, at least for the moment, is a type of seed rosary that I've seen several of over the years, without really knowing what they were or where they came from. The first one I saw that had any kind of description or distinguishing mark was this one, which includes a medal of Pope John XXIII.



I've since seen other examples, and I became intrigued enough to bid on one at eBay, but owning one hasn't gotten me any closer to knowing what type of seeds these are. I feel particularly embarrassed about this as I have a degree in botany -- though I haven't used it in many years.



I can, however, say confidently that this is something in the "umbellifer" family of plants (its old name, now call the Apiaceae). This is the family parsley and Queen Anne's lace are in, and their seeds tend to have lengthwise stripes, which are actually little tubes full of aromatic oils. Unfortunately many of the seeds look very similar and are hard to identify. And this is also the family that contains poison hemlock, so nibbling on unknown umbellifers is seldom a good idea!

The one tenuous scrap of information I actually have about these seeds is that (or so I'm told) these are special rosaries made from seeds gathered from the Pope's summer "vacation home" garden. That would explain why they're not very common. I will suspend belief, however, until I see more evidence.

(Part 2)

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*this title was inspired by a cookbook, Bean Banquets from Boston to Bombay. Quite a good cookbook, too.

Light in the darkness

I'm a bit behind on my regular updates here, so I don't think I've mentioned yet that I am now the proud (?) owner of a piece of 1960s religious art for which I have a sneaking fondness: a glow-in-the-dark rosary.



I'm not sure whether this particular style is still available new; I would guess that it's not as popular as when it was first introduced. I rarely see anyone actually using one for prayer. For sheer rock-bottom cheapness, it's been superseded by another type, where the beads are molded directly onto a connecting string:



Collectors, however, still like the "classic" chain-structured form like the one I bought, and rosaries like that one sell very well on eBay for close to the same price as new rosaries.

The commercial use of chemicals that absorb energy in daylight and glow dimly in the dark afterwards dates back at least to the 1930s. Zinc sulfide with minute amounts of copper added was one of the first such compounds discovered, and since it's quite cheap and easy to make, it begins to show up in specialized markets as early as 1947. Unlike the glowing hands of some wristwatches (which require no "recharging") no radioactive materials are involved -- it's a purely chemical process, and even relatively nontoxic -- the FDA allows small amounts to be used for Halloween makeup.

Glow-in-the-dark plastic hit the consumer market in the late 1950s and early 1960s and became an instantly popular gimmick for all kinds of uses, ranging from practical (light switches) to ridiculous (fright wigs). Zinc sulfide produces a rather dim greenish glow -- you really have to be in almost complete darkness to see it. It also doesn't last very long, glowing for anywhere between fifteen minutes and an hour or two. Other "phosphors" (as the glowing substances are called) discovered more recently, such as strontium aluminate and various cadmium compounds, will glow for several hours. Newer compounds may also be brighter and glow in different colors.

The reason to own a glow-in-the-dark rosary somewhat escapes me. I'm sure it is rationalized as "you can find it in a dark bedroom," and perhaps others do wake up from nightmares at 2:00AM and reach for the rosary more often than I do.

But I suspect its real appeal is the pleasure (usually an innocent one) of having a rosary in a new and fashionable material. A somewhat childish pleasure, I admit, but did not Jesus say we must become like little children?

Rosary for the Dead

Roman Catholics who feel nostalgic for the way religion was practiced before the Second Vatican Council sometimes lament that "no one offers things up for the souls in Purgatory any more."

It's probably true that the ordinary Catholic-on-the-street doesn't pray for the dead as much as before. Some of the reasons, however, are good ones. Catholics no longer feel as much like a beleaguered and persecuted minority, and correspondingly, have largely emerged from a supportive but rather suffocating cultural ghetto, and now feel more part of society at large. More stress has also been laid on God's love and mercy in recent years, rendering Purgatory less frightening. And modern psychology encourages people to question the need for unnecessary personal suffering rather than passively accepting it and "offering it up."

But if you believe that prayer for others is a good thing, there is certainly no shortage of people who need prayer.

Prayers for the dead have taken many forms over the centuries, but I was rather surprised to find that the formal, 4-decade "Rosary for the Dead" dates back only to the middle of the 1800s. According to the Basilian Fathers' website, it was invented by Abbé Serre of the Chapel of the Hôtel Dieu at Nismes, France, and promoted by the Archconfraternity of Notre Dame du Suffrage.



This rosary (or more properly, chaplet) consists of 4 groups of 10 small beads: according to some traditions, these are in memory of the 40 hours Christ is thought to have spent in "Limbo" between the crucifixion and the resurrection. (A recent pronouncement from the Vatican noted that "Limbo," the resting place of the good but unbaptized dead, is now regarded as an obsolete attempt to explain God's mercy.) Between these are larger "gauds" or marker beads. In its original form, the chaplet had a medal of the Archconfraternity, representing the souls in Purgatory.

The chaplet begins with the psalm "De Profundis" (Psalm 129 or 130, depending on the numbering system). (It's the one that begins, "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee: O Lord, hear my voice.")

On the large beads is said "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may eternal light shine upon them." On the small beads is said, “Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation.” Other prayers are sometimes added.

Like anything else that isn't quite standard, you sometimes find this four-decade rosary being sold on auction sites as "RARE!" or "UNIQUE." It's become less common in the last few decades, but it's still around, and if you want to add one to your rosary collection it shouldn't cost more than any other rosary of similar date.

Hey, Jude

It's been brought to my attention that this is the 101st post in this blog, so I'm celebrating, in a minor sort of way. Who would have guessed that I could keep talking this long and never run out of things to say? (Wait, don't answer that.....[grin])

Anyway, I've had a little time recently to go exploring in eBay again, and found some interesting stuff, sparking ideas for future articles. I've mentioned before that I find it useful to keep an eye on eBay -- it's an interesting window into the modern rosary market and its stories and trends.

I thought at first this rosary was a case of mis-identification. Here are the pictures:





This is listed as a "vintage rosary with St. Jude's image in beads." The seller says, "Each clear bead has an image of St. Jude inside, seen from both back and front, in pink set against a cloud like background. Beads are plastic or similiar composition. The metal at the bottom of the loop has an image of St. Jude on one side and 'St. Jude Pray for Us' on the reverse."

St. Jude is well known as the saint of "impossible causes", whose prayers are requested when a situation seems to offer no hope of a positive outcome. While devotion to him (as with all saints) is not as intense or visible as it was before Vatican II, I still see classified ads saying "Thank you, St. Jude" pretty regularly in the diocesan newspaper. Perhaps I owe St. Jude a small debt for the success of this blog, as well.

These beads are a well-known type from (I think) the early 1960s, except that the more usual version has a small blue figure of the Virgin Mary inside each clear plastic bead. Given the size of these beads (half an inch at most) the inside figure is generally pretty crude and not very detailed. But considering that it's relatively easy to produce a compound plastic bead like this, I'm a little surprised that there don't seem to be many types of them -- ones with roses inside, for instance.

I at first thought that the pink figure in the beads had to be Christ, showing the Sacred Heart on his chest. In part, I was misled by another rosary up for sale this week, which has ordinary round beads for the decades and these same heart-shaped beads as markers -- and it also has a medal of St. Jude in the center. But this one identifies the figure inside the bead as Christ.

A commenter has since convinced me that this really is Saint Jude after all: for which, my thanks. Here's a closeup:



The key is what is displayed on the figure's chest. If this were Christ, it would be a heart shape, representing the Sacred Heart. But instead it is a round plate with a head on it. Apparently a common identifier for Saint Jude is to show him carrying a roundel diplaying the head of Christ. I can only say "Ooops!" [grin].

Both rosaries are marked as being from Italy, so perhaps that is the source of these beads. I'll have to look at the next blue Madonna-in-plastic rosary I see and find out if those seem to be from Italy as well.

I have to confess that I consider plastic beads to be inherently tacky, and that this type of bead is classified in my mind (and my file folders) under the heading of "bizarre." Still, it's a historical phenomenon, and there are quite a few rosaries with beads of this type around, so someone liked them. And God, after all, pays far more attention to sincerity of heart than to bad taste in beads.

The Rosary Comic Book

Another from the Department of What Will They Think Of Next :)

I have never personally felt the need for it, but there is now a rosary in comic-book form. Titled (unsurprisingly) The Rosary Comic Book, it's written and illutrated by Gene Yang and is on sale for $5.95 at quite a number of "Catholic shopping" websites. (Googling on the title turns up several.)



The blurb for the book says:

"The Rosary Comic Book tells the story of the lives of Jesus and his mother Mary. You can read it, as you would any regular comic book. Or you can pray with it, using the pictures instead of the beads of a traditional rosary. Whichever way you decide to use it, The Rosary Comic Book will bring you closer to Jesus and Mary!"

Paperback / 56 pages / Dimensions: 5 1/4" x 8 1/2" / ISBN: 081986479X

What WILL they think of next?

A Bad Blue rosary

My quest to accumulate a few "bad" modern rosaries is having some nice results. My friend Joan (thanks, Joan!) stopped by the local St. Vincent de Paul charity shop and picked up a couple of the little plastic-and-nylon-cord rosaries for me, to add to my collection of rosaries NOT to use if you want to create a historically correct impression for the Middle Ages or Renaissance. They did not, after all, have plastic back then.

I've also been hoping to find a not too expensive modern rosary that demonstrates what I mean when I say that many modern rosaries have medals and crosses that shout "modern art!" Usually those come labeled "Art Nouveau" or "1950s" when someone has them for sale, and they're priced at collector's prices... in the $30 to $50 range.

However, I saw this one, bid on it and won -- and it's just what I was after:



The beads are plastic, and each one has an embossed image of Mary on it -- not totally tacky, I've seen worse, but the center piece (especially!) and cross are so excruciatingly typical of the 1960s that I hope people will get the point I'm trying to make in my classes.



Of course, probably what I should really be doing this month is getting more pages up on the main website, so I can point people to examples of what they should be looking for in a medieval or renaissance rosary, rather than examples of what they shouldn't. :) But that's not quite as much fun (wicked grin)!