The modern Hail Mary was birthed in the sixteenth century; prior to this, the Hail Mary existed both as shortened versions of the modern one, and with completely different structures. The earliest form of the prayer, dating to the twelfth century, was simply “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb”, itself a combination of two Biblical verses that have been used together since the seventh century. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the name “Jesus” was added to the end (in case you weren’t sure who Mary’s son was, I guess?).
But this wasn’t the only “Hail Mary” being circulated among the Catholic laity and monastic orders. In fact, there are a number of German and Latin Marian psalters and early rosary forms that were composed of 150 different Ave Marias each! Here are a couple of examples of some of these other Hail Marys.
“Hail Mary, rose without thorns,
You were born to comfort me.
A queen of high birth,
help me that I shall not be lost.”
(13th Century)
“Hail Mary, branch of Jesse,
From you came the Noble One,
Jesus, your Child, whose sweet Name
Took away from us all our sins.”
(late 13th, early 14th Century)
“I greet you, rose garden of heaven,
The chosen, the pure, the tender one.
You noble, sweet rose blossom,
Entreat God for me through your goodness.”
(14th Century)
These different Hail Mary’s were usually correlated to one of the psalms; the prayer would attempt to summarize the theme of a particular psalm, and then connect that theme to Mary or Jesus. “Hail Mary” devotions like this would continue to be composed up until the seventeenth century, but the sheer diversity found even within a single devotion made it hard to memorize; the modern rosary, with its singular form of the Hail Mary and its focus on the narrative of Christ’s life, was much easier to perform without having a written text in front of the devotee.
Source: Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages, by Anne Winston-Allen
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