Bede (2)
Bede (a prayer). Bede-roll was a catalogue or list of the departed, who were prayed for every Sunday from the pulpit. Bedesman (or precular) is a prayer-man, one who says prayer for a patron or founder, hence an almsman. In all the-cathedrals of the New Foundation, there are several bedesmen on the Foundation, who wear the Tudor rose on their breast, and serve as bell-ringers and assistant-vergers. Beads of jet were regarded as having virtue to help; beads of mystill were mixed beads; they were sometimes of wood and sometimes of stone, and, in England, often called a pair of paternosters, or, by the common folk, preculoe, or Ave-beads. A belt of paternosters is ordered to be said at the death of a bishop in the English Council of Cealcythe, of the 9th century. Abbot Paul, who inhabited the desert of Sceta, according to Sozomen, recited the same prayer three hundred times a day, and counted them by means of an equal number of little stones, like the cubes used in mosaic work, which he kept in a fold of his robe, and cast away one by one. In a painting of the 11th century, representing the burial of St. Ephraem, the monks carry chaplets in their hands, or suspended at their girdles. Alan, archbishop of Mechlin, in the 16th century, says that such crowns lasted in England from the time of Bede until the 7th century, and were hung upon church-walls for public use. The famous lady Godiva, of Coventry, according to William of Malmesbury, bequeathed a threaded chain of jewels, used by her at prayer- time, as a necklace to St. Mary's image. A similar chaplet is mentioned in the Life of St. Gertrude, in the 7th century. Most probably Peter the Hermit, about 1090, introduced the fashion with the Hours of our Lady among the Crusaders, having seen the beads of the Mohammedans. The Indians use beads, and the Jews have a chaplet called Meah Berakoth. The ascription of the chaplet to Venerable Bede is no doubt due to the similarity of name; but St. Dominic, in 1230. may be regarded as the author of the permanent use of the beads. The Rosary is a modern name. The Lady Psalter consisted of fifteen Paternosters, and a hundred and fifty Aves; the latter representing the Psalms of David, in place of which they were recited. The name of bede was transferred to the knobs on the prayer-
belts, and when pilgrims from the East introduced chaplets of seeds or stone, to round beads strung upon a string, which were used in place of a girdle, studded with bosses or notched on the part which trailed upon the ground. "Hail Mary" was unknown till 1229 or 1237, and then was used simply in the Angelic Salutation (Lu 1:28-42). Urban IV, in 1261-64, added the rest of the words to "Jesus Christ;" but the prayer or invocation is barely three hundred years old. SEE BEADS.
