The Rosary and the Orthodox Prayer Rope

Both are strings of knots or beads used to keep count while praying. They are prayed differently, and they come from different centuries and different habits of prayer.

Counting prayers with the hands

Christians have long used a string to count prayers, so that the mind can rest on the words instead of the number. The earliest Christian monks of Egypt are said to have used knotted cords or pebbles to count their prayers. Two forms are best known today: the Rosary in the Catholic Church, and the prayer rope (in Greek komboskini, in Russian chotki) in the Eastern Orthodox churches. They look similar and do different things.

The Rosary: Hail Marys and the life of Christ

The Rosary is a set of prayers arranged on a loop of beads, with a short chain and crucifix leading into it. It is divided into groups called decades. Each decade is one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be, and while praying, the person meditates on one episode from the life of Jesus and Mary, called a mystery. Five decades make one Rosary. The mysteries come in four sets: the Joyful (the Annunciation to the finding in the Temple), the Sorrowful (the Agony in the Garden to the Crucifixion), the Glorious (the Resurrection to the crowning of Mary), and the Luminous, added by Pope John Paul II in 2002, which cover the ministry of Jesus from his baptism to the Last Supper.

The first half of the Hail Mary is taken from the gospel of Luke, from the angel’s greeting and Elizabeth’s blessing:

The petition that closes the prayer, asking Mary to pray for us sinners, was added in the Middle Ages. The Rosary took its present form between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. A tradition connects it with Saint Dominic, but historians generally trace it to a gradual growth in the late Middle Ages, and it was strongly promoted by Pope Pius V in 1569. The traditional full cycle of fifteen decades, 150 Hail Marys, matches the 150 Psalms, and the Rosary has been called “Mary’s Psalter” for that reason. Praying it all at once is rare. Most people pray one set of five decades at a time.

The Orthodox prayer rope and the Jesus Prayer

The Orthodox prayer rope is a cord of knots, usually of wool, in lengths such as 33, 50 or 100 knots. Orthodox tradition traces it to the early monks of Egypt, and it is often credited to Saint Pachomius, though the account is traditional and not certain. It is used for one short prayer, repeated:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This is the Jesus Prayer. It draws on two requests for mercy in the gospels, the tax collector’s cry in the temple and the blind man’s cry on the road to Jericho:

The practice is bound up with a tradition of silent prayer called hesychasm, and with the collection of Eastern Fathers called the Philokalia. The aim is to keep the name of Jesus in the heart through the day, not to move through a sequence of meditations. Many Orthodox pray the Jesus Prayer constantly, as an answer to Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing.” The rope is often worn on the wrist.

The prayers themselves

These are the traditional English texts. Wording varies a little between translations and churches.

The Our Father opens each decade. It comes from the Sermon on the Mount, and the Rosary uses it without the closing doxology (“for thine is the kingdom”) that Protestants and Orthodox add:

The Hail Mary is prayed ten times in each decade:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

The Glory Be closes the decade:

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

A full Rosary also begins with the Apostles’ Creed, prayed on the crucifix, and ends with the Hail, Holy Queen, an old Marian hymn that begins “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.” Many Catholics add the short prayer Our Lady of Fatima asked to be said after each decade, “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy.”

On the Orthodox prayer rope, the usual prayer is the Jesus Prayer in its full form, given above. A shorter form is simply “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Orthodox Christians also use the rope for other short petitions, such as “Most Holy Theotokos, save us,” asking the intercession of Mary, and “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” the Trisagion. Which prayer is used on which knot depends on the person’s spiritual father or rule of prayer, and there is no single required order.

The differences, side by side

A note on objections

Jesus warned his disciples against using “vain repetitions” when they pray. Protestants who do not use prayer beads often point to that verse. Catholic and Orthodox writers answer that the warning is aimed at empty babble, and that the Rosary and the Jesus Prayer are built from Scripture and aimed at attention to Christ. Both views are part of the long conversation, which our article on how the traditions read Scripture describes.