'Ave Maria' is the
Latin prayer commonly translated into English as '
Hail Mary'. The text is medieval, although the first portion, down to '...ventris tui, Jesu.' is very early, while the latter portion is later. The evident
Mariolatry of the second part is coherent with this later dating, and the spelling 'Jesu' rather than 'Iesu' is late, too.
Ave Maria,
Gratia plena;
Dominus tecum;
Benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.
Sancta Maria
Mater Dei
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
(
Amen)
That's as I learned it by heart at
secondary school. The usual
English text is:
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 prayer forms part of longer meditations such as
Angelus Domini and the
Rosary, as well as being used as a general-purpose prayer, particularly in the
Roman Catholic church. Although the prayer is thought of as
quintessentially Roman, it does in fact get some limited use in other traditions. The musical settings of this prayer are too numerous to mention, and to refer specifically to one composer's work as 'the Ave Maria' tends to lend the impression that only they have set it, or even that they (or their librettist) wrote the prayer itself.