The origin of the prayer rope and the history of its development

Our knowledge of the prayer rope — a thing well known and dear to monastics and to believing Christians — has been preserved for us chiefly by oral traditions and by the tradition of the Church. Church tradition connects its introduction with St Pachomius the Great. Prayer on the prayer rope was appointed by St Pachomius for monks who could not read or write. The monks of the newly founded monastery knew, in the main, only the Jesus Prayer; so St Pachomius gave them a certain rule (a certain number of prayers to be said during the day, and the prostrations connected with them). To count the prayers and prostrations St Pachomius used the first prayer rope, which was a cord with knots. And since every monk, whatever his learning, was bound to say a certain number of prayers every day, the prayer rope very soon became a widespread and necessary thing.

Bishop Kirion (Sadzaglishvili)

Written sources about the prayer rope are scanty. It appears for the first time in the “Lausiac History,” where it is told how the monk Paul of Pherme prayed with pebbles. In the course of the day he had to say the prayer 300 times. So he kept 300 pebbles in his bosom and after each prayer took out one of them. As for prayer with prostrations, with which from the 4th century the prayer rope became closely connected, it comes from the very beginnings of Christianity. As is known, in the “Church History” of Eusebius of Caesarea it is told how the brother of the Lord, St James, prayed in the temple on his knees and asked God for mercy on people. From his frequent prayer, it is said, the saint's knees had grown hard like the knees of a camel. Irish scholars give us additional (possibly disputable) information on this question. St James, at prayer, bowed his knees on the stone floor of the temple 2000 times during the day and likewise 2000 times during the night, from which his knees became enlarged like a camel's. According to Irish scholarly literature he was also called St James the Knee-bender. So too, it is said, St Bartholomew bowed his knees. In the following centuries this practice became an inseparable part of monastic life. The practice of bowing the knees after prayer entered the Western Church from the East.

In this respect Irish monastic life is especially notable. Irish monks spread this practice in Western Europe, and the Church of Rome took it over from the Greeks. By the year 1200 the practice of bowing the knees after prayer was spread throughout Christian Europe. And since both prayer and the bowing of the knees meant chiefly the fulfilment of a rule, it was performed many times over. It is well known that monks were given a rule (a different number of prayers) according to their spiritual state; it is known too that the number of prayers to be said during the day and the night reached even into the thousands; so a thing was needed with which even an unlettered monk could count the number of prayers. Such a thing, as has been said, was the prayer rope. Theologically the prayer rope represents the spiritual sword, the word of God, which the one who prays must utter unceasingly and must always have in mind and in heart. The prayer rope is for the one who prays like that sword which the archangel holds in his hand.

Sulkhan-Saba explains the word “krialosani” (a Georgian form of Κύριε ελέησον, which with us is one of the names of the prayer rope) thus: “krialesvani (krialesoni) — beads strung for prayer,” “these are strung beads, or pieces of wood turned on a thread, for the saying of prayer.” D. Chubinashvili gives the following definition: “krialosani, krianesuli, savardi — strung beads for counting” — and there gives the Russian equivalent: “chotki.” Of savardi he writes: “150 beads of a prayer rope for the counting of the psalms.” Savardi Saba explains thus: “this is 150 beads of a prayer rope for the counting of the psalms, for the saying of the prayer for the Lord's mysteries.” The Russian name for the prayer rope is connected with counting: Чётки (от считать, счесть) — нитка бус, ремень с узлами или в борах для счёта молитв и поклонов, кожаные чётки, лестовка. According to the encyclopedia of F. Brockhaus and I. Efron, “chotki” is an object of wooden, glass, bone, amber or other beads strung on a round thread, which ends in a cross and is used for counting prayers and prostrations. The “lestovka” is a prayer rope made of leather and metal plates, used by the Old Believers. The German name of the prayer rope is Rosenkranz, the English prayer beads, rosary, chaplet; the French rosaire, chapelet; the Latin Astragalus. Saba names “corona” as the Latin name of the prayer rope. In Greek the prayer rope is called κομβοσχοίνιον, κομβολόγιον. (This is the name of a prayer rope that is not knotted but made of various materials.) The Greeks also call it Rodinos stefanos. If we examine the names of the prayer rope in various languages, we get the following picture: “skvnili” means knotting, that is, the making of knots; “krialosani” points to the fact that the Jesus Prayer is said on the prayer rope. Connected with prayer too is “prayer beads”; the prayer rope in Greek (kombhoskoinon, kombologion) means a knot; savardi, rosary, Rosenkranz and ρόδινος στέφανος point to the connection of the prayer rope with the rose; the last two names mean a wreath woven of roses; chaplet, chapelet and corona also mean a crown, especially one woven of flowers, while Astragalus means a thorny plant.

Bishop Leonide (Okropiridze)

Prayer ropes were and are made of various materials, namely: of woollen thread, of glass, of precious stones — of amber, of jet and others. Prayer ropes of carnelian, pearl, resin and coral were widespread in Europe. They were also made of wood, of bone or of various plants, such as: the tears of the Mother of God, the tears of Job (Coix Lacryma-jobi L), the prayer-bead grass, or partridge feed (Lithospermum officinale L; purpureo-coeruleum L), Abrus precatorius L., which the Russians call chotochnik, and of the stones of dates and olives, and so on. The tears of the Mother of God are well known with us today. Its Georgian name must be a calque of the Russian (богородицыны слёзки). In Georgian, if we leave dialect varieties out of account, it is called mainly “chalamdzivi”; in Achara it is also called “tespes mdzivi,” and in Laz it is called “pespighi.” Since in Turkish the prayer rope is called “tasba,” “taspa,” both “tespes mdzivi” and “pespighi” must mean the plant used for making prayer ropes. It is probably significant too that the tears of the Mother of God (as we call the plant today) grow abundantly in Achara and Guria, which is reflected in the dialect name of the plant. In one of the photographs of Catholicos-Patriarch Kirion II his hand is adorned with a prayer rope of shells. In Saba we meet so-called glass, or clay, prayer ropes, which points to prayer ropes worked from a certain material and by a certain technique.

Jerusalem prayer ropes were made mainly of mother-of-pearl; pilgrims brought them to Europe in great quantity. The monks of Athos were famed for carving in wood and for making wooden prayer ropes. In the East jet and amber were preferred for making prayer ropes. They can be worked and polished better than other materials. They contain oil, which makes prayer ropes made of them pleasant to use. With us jet prayer ropes were popular. Deposits of jet were abundant in Imereti, especially at Tkibuli and Sagishre. The making of prayer ropes was the work chiefly of the people of Akhalsopeli, Dziruli and Okriba. In old times prayer ropes were polished with hazelnut oil.

A Christian (Orthodox) prayer rope consists of 10, 30, 33, 50, 100, 150 or 300 beads. It must end in a cross. Sometimes the cross has tassels as well, of which, by tradition, there should be 12. The number of the tassels on the prayer rope represents the number of the apostles. The tassels, it is said, were used as a hyssop too. They were used also for wiping away tears. Greek monks often fastened leather tabs — “martyrias” — to prayer ropes with movable beads, so as better to count the thousands of prayers to be said. A prayer rope of 10 beads is called a ring. One of 30 beads symbolically represents the age of Christ when He began to preach; one of 33, the age at which He was crucified; on a prayer rope of 50 people pray to the Archangel Michael and to the saints, and on one of 150 they pray the psalms.

According to the tradition of the spiritual son of St Seraphim of Sarov, Father Zosima, which has reached us through Alexander Gumanovsky, in the 8th century the Mother of God herself taught Christians to say “Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos” 150 times, which leads the believer to salvation. In Father Zosima's words, the forgotten prayer was recalled to Christians by St Seraphim. “In my hands is the book from his cell, in which many wonders are told which the prayer to the Mother of God worked, especially the saying of ‘Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos’ 150 times. If such a prayer is hard for you, say it first 50 times. After every ten say the ‘Our Father.’” By tradition, St Seraphim of Sarov prayed for the soul of every living and departed relative and acquaintance of all who asked him. He would walk round Diveyevo and say 150 “Our Fathers” and 150 “Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos.”

Metropolitan Nazari (Lezhava)

We shall not touch here upon the technique of knotting a prayer rope. We shall only add that a prayer rope must be knotted with prayer. By church tradition, in knotting each knot the one who knots is weaving a crown of thorns [1]. It is said that if all the knots are not knotted exactly, the one who knotted them was not praying consistently, with sufficient attention.

As we noted, a different number of prayers and prostrations is performed on the prayer rope, which is called a rule. It is well known too that on the prayer rope people pray chiefly the Jesus Prayer. There is an extensive literature about the Jesus Prayer, the discussion of which goes beyond the bounds of our article. Prayer on the prayer rope can replace every prayer except the Liturgy. If a monk or a nun cannot be present at the services for some reason, they can pray on the prayer rope instead. In penances prayer on the prayer rope is performed in various ways. In the skete of St John the Baptist on Mount Athos [2] in the 19th century, where Romanian monks laboured, they knew such a practice: behind the door of the refectory hung a prayer rope. If during the meal someone had committed a fault (for example, had not obeyed the abbot), they took the prayer rope, stood in the middle of the refectory, prayed the Jesus Prayer on the prayer rope and each time made a great prostration. The rest ate their meal. And one of the monks read something profitable for the soul. A prayer rope hung in the church too. If any of the monks dozed off, even for a minute, the one standing beside him would light a thin candle from the lamp and fix it beside the sleeping monk. When the monk awoke and saw the lighted candle, he understood his fault, took the prayer rope down from the wall, stood in the middle of the church and for half an hour performed the rule. This practice was established where there were cenobites [3]…

It is said that the prayer rope entered the Western Church from the East, where it is known by the name of the rosary. This process is also called “latinisation.” On the prayer rope people at first addressed the Lord, and during prayer they also made prostrations. The practice of saying the prayer to the Mother of God on the rosary entered the Western Church and became established in the 11th–12th centuries. It gained particular popularity. The tradition of saying the prayer to the Mother of God on the prayer rope, in the opinion of church historians, also entered the West from the Eastern Church, and the veneration of the Mother of God furthered it.

Of interest to us is the tradition that in the 9th century in Ireland the monks read the whole Psalter every day. The local people too wished to pray with them, but because they could not read or write they said only the “Lord's Prayer” and “Rejoice, thou that art highly favoured”; and their life in the world allowed them only periodic, interrupted prayer. Since daily business forced the one praying to break off the prayer, they carried small stones or knotted threads in a bag, on which they counted the prayers. These stones and knots are considered the earliest rosaries.

In Europe the rosary was first used in written sources in the 13th century in the sense of “the mystical rose garden of St Mary.” The etymology of the rosary is connected with the rose, namely with the garlands of roses with which the Mother of God was adorned. Involuntarily there comes to mind the Russian Orthodox icon called “the Unfading Flower,” on which the Mother of God holds in her left hand a large flowery bouquet (made up of various flowers, among them the rose). In the Catholic world the rosary had other names as well: paternoster, the psalter of the Mother of God, or the crown. In England, by the sea shores, there grows an evergreen flowering shrub, rosemary, or the sea rose (sometimes Mary too is called a rose), which blossoms best when the noise of the sea is heard. Rosemary blooms on the night of the Nativity.

Abbot Benedikt (Barkalaia), superior of the Georgian monastery on Athos

The rose and the lily were considered the queens of flowers in the East. In Syria and Palestine many kinds of wild rose grew. From the rose a fragrant oil was prepared; it was used as a medicine too. In the opinion of T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov, the Indo-European name of the rose must denote both the cultivated plant, from whose flower oil was first obtained, and the wild rose, that is, the dog rose. Symbolically they are one as well. The connection of the rose, together with the lily, and of other plants, especially white flowers, with the Mother of God is universally known. This question, however, is a wide one; discussion of it is the theme of a separate conversation and study and goes beyond the bounds of the present article.

To make clear how Christianity regards the original meaning of the rose, we shall call on St Basil's comments on the Hexaemeron: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” St Basil explains this verse in the following way: “At the word of the Lord the bushes grew thick, and out of the earth came every tree (pine, cedar, cypress, fir). Every small tree at once became thick and branching. There appeared the plants needed for a crown: roses, myrtles and laurel, which did not exist on the earth before. All the plants began to live at once, each with the marks and properties proper to it alone. But the rose was without thorns. The thorn appeared on it later, so that beside beauty we might always have the sense of sin and might remember the sin because of which the earth gives back to us for our labour ‘thorns and thistles’ (Gen. 3:18).” As we see, the rose is a flower of paradise, which in its earthly manifestation grows with thorns. From the explanation of St Basil the Great it is also seen that crowns were woven of roses. It is universally known that in the Roman Empire, on joyful and on mournful occasions and for religious purposes, a crown was made of flowers, which people and sacrificial animals wore. It is known too that it was a sign of glory. In Christian symbolism roses of two colours chiefly appear: white and red. The white is a sign of purity and chastity, while the red rose is the symbol of Christ's blood shed on the cross. The rose of paradise is connected with the cross too, on which the Saviour was put to death. “…In the figurative vocabulary of the early Christian age the cross and the rose are often identified with each other and are used in the same context, or even one in place of the other” (K. Machabeli). And since in the early Middle Ages the rose was thought of as the tree of life, we believe that it became one of the plant symbols of the cross, taking into itself the meaning of suffering, of resurrection from the dead and of eternal life. Moreover, it is precisely the red rose that must represent such a meaning. Here too we wish to note that on most Christian churches, in Georgia as well, there is found the so-called eight-petalled rosette, which, as is known, corresponds to the term “rosette.” We believe that it must mean the term “rose” and must reflect its symbolism. It is precisely the rose that must be depicted on churches by the rosette, and its round form, its circumference and its eight petals must express the symbolic content of eternal life beyond the grave. Such views were clearly reflected in the beliefs connected with the departed. Therefore the rose is a symbol both of eternal life beyond the grave and of resurrection from the dead. In Rome the graves of the departed were adorned with garlands of roses, and for this reason the rite was called Rosaria or Rosalia. On the tomb of St Alexander three rose bushes were depicted, on one of which a dove sat. In Tunisia too we meet gravestones on which roses and doves are depicted. On mosaic epitaphs are depicted roses, on their branches a crown, a dove, and a cross set with precious stones, raised up among roses. The rose is abundantly depicted in the catacombs. We believe that the basic Christian symbolism of the rose, which appears at the end of the 3rd century in the work of Cyprian of Carthage about the martyrs (Ad Martyres — to the martyrs), is the blood-stained martyr, while the crown woven of roses is the martyr's adornment, the reward in sign of the witness to the word of God and of victory over evil. Indeed, the name of the first martyr himself, St Stephen, means a crown. We consider very noteworthy the information we read in the work of K. Kekelidze. Namely, discussing St Athenogenes, he writes that “vardavari must mean an adornment made or woven of roses; what is meant in the martyrology is the ‘martyr's crown’ with which Athenogenes was adorned.” We believe that this opinion is strengthened by the lives of many saints and by the prayers offered to them. For example: “As a rose from thorns didst thou spring up, O holy Barbara.” In the life of the holy martyrs Bidzina, Shalva and Elizbar [4] we read: “Shining forth in their struggle, they shine brightly and sparkle for ever like unsetting lights. Like the lily and like crimson roses, dyed purple with blood, they flower richly and pour out fragrance abundantly upon our churches.” From what has been said above, and from the fact that the red rose was connected with saints burnt in fire (their ashes turned into red roses), the martyr's crown must have been woven of red roses. The crown of roses is a symbol of heavenly joy, of the reward received for virtue.

Priest Razhden Khundadze

Thus the crown of roses is the martyr's crown and the sign of that reward which is called eternal blessed life. It is precisely upon such martyrs, who bore witness to Christ with their own blood, that the one altar of the earthly catholic Church stands, and it is precisely their unity that constitutes the heavenly Kingdom of the martyrs, who behold the Lord sitting in glory upon the throne. But to their number, of course, belong not only the martyrs condemned to death and ended in torment. Such also are those monastics, holy fathers and mothers, who while still alive are able to subdue the needs of the body, to become martyrs and from here to be united with God; their reward is the martyr's crown. It is a crown of roses, and in our view it has a material form. It is the prayer rope, as is directly indicated by one of its Greek names: ρόδινος στέφανος, which means a crown woven of roses, and by the German Rosenkranz as well. That the prayer rope is connected with a crown is clearly seen from its French and English names: chapelet, chaplet. The martyrological crown of thorns is the meaning of the Latin word Astragalus and of corona. The connection of the prayer rope with the martyrs, we believe, must be underlined also by the 12 tassels mentioned above and by the Greek “martyria.” The connection of the prayer rope with the rose is confirmed by the meaning of the words rosaire, rosary, Rosenkranz and savardi.

Very interesting to us is an article published in the newspaper “Kavkaz,” where the way of making a prayer rope is described. To make a prayer rope, rose petals were pounded in a copper mortar, and the pounded mass is placed in a damp spot until it turns into a dark, sticky mass. Of this mass they make little balls, pierce them and dry them. The dried and hardened balls are strung on a thread and a prayer rope is made of them. Of such a mass they made purses in the East, which they adorned with gold and silk. Sulkhan-Saba names “rodi” as a synonym of the rose and points to its Greek origin. As is known, in Georgia mortars were called rodini, pili, kvija. There was a mortar made for pounding this or that product, for example for garlic, or for obtaining hemp oil. Rodini and pili are large mortars, while kvija is a small one. We wish to put forward a bold suggestion: did not “rodini” mean a mortar for roses? That is, was it not a mortar intended specially for pounding rose petals? The more so if we take into account that with us, as has been said, there were mortars intended for particular products. Besides this, in Georgian there is the suffix -in- (parallel with -is-), which historically was the mark of the genitive case and has now grown together with the stem. If our suggestion is right, may we not assume that rod-in-i was a mortar for roses? Rosaries of rose petals are made even today in America. This is an old American way of making them, which was handed down to generations of Catholic monastics and has come down to us. In its turn, it must have entered Europe from the East. It is thought that this practice was brought to America by Franciscan monks when they settled in California. In America water is added to the rose petals and, by the natural process of fermentation, a prayer rope is made in 4–6 weeks. The rose balls are made by hand. These balls are called rose stones. They keep their fragrance and have a pleasing appearance. Rose rosaries are made in memory of a notable date (of a birthday, of the birth of a child, of a wedding and so on).

From all that has been said above we may say that the prayer rope must have appeared in the Eastern Church in the 4th century in connection with monastic life. In the early Middle Ages it must have passed from a simple instrument for counting prayers to a connection with the martyrological crown of the rose, and especially of the red rose, and have expressed the theological meaning of a martyr's life. So the prayer rope is a crown of roses, eternal blessed life, with which the believer is rewarded for God, for a virtuous life and for unceasing witness to Him.

The prayer rope of 150 beads for counting the psalms, which in the Eastern Church was connected with the Mother of God, was especially taken up and developed by the Western Church. Thus the origin of the European rosary is connected with the Eastern Church. The prayer rope, which arose in North Africa, passing through part of Asia and through Europe, took a distinguished place on the American continent as well.

Nino Ghambashidze, the magazine “Faith and Knowledge”

[1] — For supplying this information we thank Eter Urotadze.

[2] — A skete is a small brotherhood of special spiritual strugglers set apart from a monastery.

[3] — Cenobites are monks who live in a communal monastery, in a cenobium.

[4] — The Holy Martyrs Bidzina, Shalva and Elizbar, the Patriarchate of Georgia, the Diocese of Tskhinvali and Nikozi, 1999.