On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Bill East wrote:
>
>
> William of Malmesbury wrote that
> > Lady Godiva of Coventry (died 1075) bequeathed to a statue of Mary 'the
> > circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that
> > by fingering them one after another she might count her payers exactly. In
> > thirteenth century these were called 'paternosters'; people who made them
> > were called 'paternosterers'; in London these people worked in street
> > called 'Paternoster Row'.
> >
>>Has anyone ever seen a medieval paternoster? Was it exactly the same as a modern rosary?
> Oriens.
>
>In 1290 the wife of Edward I of England purchased both paternosters and
coral and jet beads from a jeweler in London; other paternosters she
purchsed in the same year were described by her clerk as "de opere filarum" but
the meaning of that description is unclear. These purchases were almost
certainly intended to be strung as rosaries (red coral and black jet beads were
always a highly favored combination for medieval rosaries).
My understanding is that the beads were used to keep track of Aves and the
paternosters to count Our Fathers. In surviving medieval rosaries the
paternosters are larger than the beads and are often of gold, silver, or
sometimes rock crystal.
For Queen Eleanor's purchases see my *Eleanor of Castile: Queen and
Society in Thirteenth-Century England* (NY: St Martin's, 1995), pp. 57,
278 note 190.
John Parsons
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