The Name of the Rosary

While editing and rewriting sections of my novel about medieval France I researched the development of the rosary. I came across a fascinating blog called Paternosters which was a name given to prayer beads in the medieval period. Here is an article about the origins of the the word "rosary" which I found quite interesting. To quote:

To get back to beads, however, traces of the earlier meaning of bid/bede as "a prayer" still remain. For instance, a wealthy patron in the Middle Ages may have supported poor bedesmen, who had promised to pray for the patron, and may have provided a bedehouse for bedesmen or bedeswomen to live in. Likewise, “bidding one’s bedes” in the Middle Ages does not so much mean praying with a literal string of beads, as it means praying for one’s bedes, that is, the people or requests one is obliged to pray for.

The word “rosary” originally meant a garden devoted to the growing of roses (c1440, “This mone is eke rosaries to make, with setes [seats]”)....Probably both the rose-garden concept and the book title contributed to the idea of referring to a collection of written prayers and devotions as a (metaphorical) rosary, such as the 1526 Rosary of Our Savyour Jesu or the 1533 Mystik sweet Rosary of the faytheful soule.

From here it was a short step to applying the term “rosary” to the specific prayer practice we have been discussing, including its string of beads.

Other European languages also call the rosary by a name referring to roses. In German it is a rosenkranz, in French a rosaire, in Italian and Spanish a rosario, and in Hungarian it is a rózsafüzért (literally a “rose string”). However in Austria it is more commonly a betschnur (“prayer string”) and in France, often a chapelet. (Read more.)

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Freedom & Justice Return to Latin America

 From The Enterprise:

Most Americans picture USAID as sacks of grain and boxes of malaria medicine. In Latin America that picture was badly incomplete. The agency’s inspector general reported that democracy, human rights, and governance made up its largest program category in the region, and the portfolio was candid about its purposes. It funded “political competition and consensus building,” civil society, independent media, the free flow of information, governance, human rights, and election-related work. Political competition is the contest for power itself. An agency that funds it inside another country has entered that country’s politics, whatever label it prints on the grant.

A political party resembles a business storefront. Voters see the sign, the candidates, the slogans. Behind the storefront runs a supply chain: the advocacy groups that draft policy, the institutes that produce studies, the journalists who decide which stories count as news, the monitors who certify an election as clean, the lawyers who bring the lawsuits, and the foreign validators who tell other capitals which side speaks for democracy. A party can survive a bad candidate. It struggles to survive losing its supply chain. USAID ran no storefronts in Latin America, but it financed a large share of the supply chain, and the goods on those shelves suited one kind of store far better than the other.

El Salvador shows how the arrangement worked in practice. When USAID concluded that Nayib Bukele’s government was backsliding, its inspector general recorded that the agency moved money away from four government institutions and toward civil-society groups working on transparency, anti-corruption, and human-rights monitoring. It paid for legal assistance and advocacy, for protecting activists and journalists, and for mechanisms that helped civic organizations and media push back against the government. Bukele did not deserve the pushback. Salvadoran voters had handed Bukele enormous majorities, and a US agency, having judged him objectionable, used American tax dollars to strengthen the people opposing him at home. Bukele saw it plainly. In a February 2025 post on 𝕏, he wrote that funds sold as democracy promotion were mostly “funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.” (Read more.)

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Beyond Love Songs: Troubadours and Cathars

 From Medievalists:

Although the troubadours’ poetry does not explicitly indicate a connection to Cathar beliefs, Aroux, Péladan, and Rahn postulated that the troubadours intentionally wrote in an ambiguous style called trobar clus (“closed style”) so that their affiliation to the Cathars would be disguised, lest they be persecuted for associating with a heretical sect. According to Aroux, the troubadours’ jongleurs travelled around France while singing their songs, and along their travels, revealed the lyrics’ secret messages to select listeners. While certainly interesting, these authors’ theories are highly speculative and suspect, and as stated by Karen Sullivan in her book Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature: "…in more recent years, critics have tended to dismiss the possibility of a link between Catharism and troubadour verse, to the point where two new surveys of medieval Occitan poetry do not even bother to refute this notion."

Despite the consensus among most scholars that the troubadours’ poetry does not indicate signs of Cathar influence, there is still contention among some who insist that certain troubadours harboured an affinity for the heretical sect, especially Peire Cardenal. Select verses from Cardenal’s works denounce and admonish the Catholic clergy – who he thought to be hypocritical – which has led some authors to believe that he was a Cathar sympathizer (since Cathars were very much opposed to the Catholic church). Cardenal’s disdain for the clergy is exemplified in his poem “Clergues se fan pastors.” The poem reads as follows: “Clergue se fan pastors, et son aucizedor, e par de gran sanctor, qui los vei revestir” which translates to “churchmen pass for shepherds, but they’re murderers. Dressed in their robes, they seem so saintly.” (Read more.)

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The Angelic Salutation And The Black Death

The Annunciation ~ Frederic James Shields

From Aleteia:

This second part (“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death”) is believed by many to have been added during the plague to ask for the Blessed Mother’s protection from the fatal disease. Venerable Fulton J. Sheen explains this origin in his book The World’s First Love.

Since it seizes upon the two decisive moments of life: “now” and “at the hour of our death,” it suggests the spontaneous outcry of people in a great calamity. The Black Death, which ravaged all Europe and wiped out one-third of its population, prompted the faithful to cry out to the Mother of Our Lord to protect them at a time when the present moment and death were almost one.

An expert in Marian devotion, Fr. Donald H. Calloway, confirms this conclusion in his book Champions of the Rosary and explains how, “After the Black Death, the second half of the Hail Mary began to appear in the breviaries of religious communities, especially those of the Mercedarians, Camaldolese, and Franciscans … the people of the 14th century greatly needed the ‘hope-filled’ dimension of the second half of the Hail Mary prayer.” (Read more.)

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Foreign Policy and the Oil Clock

 From AND Magazine:

Gulf exports excluding Iran were back at the pre-war average in September, about 16.5 million barrels a day, Kpler tracking cited by Just the News. Iranian loadings have been near zero since the July blockade. Bessent said about 15 million barrels remain on the water, nearly all for China, and that Tehran runs out of oil to trade in about two weeks. That is his clock, not a confirmed cutoff. Just the News

Brent settled Friday at $102.25, down 6 cents. WTI finished at $91.11, down $1.76. For the week, Brent was up 0.11 percent, and WTI was down 1.6 percent. Saturday quotes were still about $102 for Brent and $91 for WTI, roughly 42 percent above the February baseline near $72. The Brent–WTI gap, about $11, is the Hormuz signature: waterborne crude is repriced, U.S. inland crude less so. Business Recorder, citing Reuters and Hormuz Monitor

The Friday dip was the diesel story, not a peace story. French President Macron chaired a G7 call. EU countries agreed to a French proposal to release part of their diesel stocks over about 20 days. It was not clear the G7 had agreed on volumes. A stock release can loosen diesel for a few weeks. It does not replace barrels that are not loading in Iran, and it does not reopen the strait. Capital Economics said another release could tip the market into a slight surplus only if the recent pickup in non-Iranian Gulf flows holds. Business Recorder (Read more.)

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Elites Keep Saying It's Not True

 From David Strom at Hot Air:

Most religions have some version of an evangelical streak, and rightly so. If you believe that you are following the one true path, it is your duty (in most religions) to spread the word. There are exceptions, like Judaism, but the principle mostly holds. 

What makes Islam particularly aggressive is that it is not just a religious tradition or set of beliefs; it is a totalitarian ideology that doesn't allow for a separation of politics and religion, and that is based on the belief that civil law and religious duty are the same thing, and that its mission is to spread Islam to the entire world through all necessary means. Islam has always spread through conquest and, ironically, colonialism. In many ways, it is the opposite of Judaism in that regard, despite the fact that Jews are accused of being the ultimate colonialists. Jews are almost uniquely particularist, with no impulse to spread the word and little interest in territorial expansion beyond their historical borders. (Read more.)

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Queen Anna (Stuart Queens Trilogy Book 1)

 

 From Amazon:

A crown won in the eye of a storm. A queen who refuses to be broken...

Princess Anna of Denmark sails for Scotland to marry King James VI, but storms ravage her fleet, igniting a deadly obsession with witchcraft in her new home. Arriving in a strange and paranoid court, Anna finds her new husband’s bed is a treacherous place.

Surrounded by whispering courtiers and shifting alliances, Anna refuses to remain a passive pawn. When the court takes her children to raise them away from her, the young queen draws her line in the sand. From the windswept castles of Scotland to the glittering, dangerous English court, Anna is restored to her rightful place in history.

 Once again, historical novelist Tony Riches proves that true events make the best stories, especially when based upon solid research, as well as loyalty to the original personalities of the actual characters. Anna of Denmark has been largely overlooked by novelists as dull and dutiful, a quiet presence in the background of the rollicking Jacobean court. Tony paints a vibrant portrait of a great Queen who left an indelible imprint on the art and culture of the era, in addition to mothering the Stuart dynasty. While not caving to anachronisms of the feminist interpretations of history, Tony's depiction of the Danish princess, who became the bride of the son of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, respects the framework in which Anna found herself as a very young girl. She had no concept of the type of man she had married nor of the demons which tormented him. Nevertheless, she was expected to provide heirs along with the veneer of an amicable family life, all while her husband chased handsome young men, growing more obsessed with each passing lover. Realizing, after much disappointment, that she had to cultivate a life for herself, Anna remodeled the palace she renamed "Denmark House" as a refuge of order and beauty.

As an author of Stuart-themed novels myself, I would recommend Tony's Queen Anna as an introduction to seventeenth-century England for those who wish to explore it in either novels or biographies. The seeds for the calamitous Wars of the Three Kingdoms are sown in the reign of James I who, on one hand, was a scripture scholar and theologian, deeply conscious of his duties as the Lord's Anointed. On the other hand he could be highly intemperate, whether in his love of drink, in his overzealous hunting of witches or in his passion for his own sex. Anna brought dignity, glamor, and continental sophistication to the court, be it in Scotland or in England, as well as bearing the first royal princes and princesses seen in England since the days of Henry VIII. She could not save either her family or her kingdoms from James, though, and the repercussions of his behavior upon their youngest son Charles. All this and much more is shown, not told, in the novel, as the reader is invited to draw their own conclusions from such a lively yet heartbreaking rendition of the past.

This painting by Paul van Somer has an interesting role in the novel

 

Queen Anna by Tony Riches is available HERE.

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The Ancient Parable

 From James Howard Kunstler:

Translation: Chuck Schumer knows that the Democrats have already been thwarted from rigging the election, from flooding the polls with illegal immigrant voters, with dead voters, with voters who moved out of state but still got mail-in ballots sent to their old addresses, with voters registered as living in Walmart parking lots, and so on. Chuck Schumer knows that the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is sending hundreds of lawyers to observe the action in swing state polling places. ICE might even be on hand to see who turns up.

So, Chuck Schumer is pretending that the Republicans will try to do what the Democrats actually did in several previous elections (including the last midterm, 2022, viz., AZ, GA, NV), and would have liked to do in this midterm, but can’t. The Democrats will holler like crazy about it before the election to plant this idea in credulous minds. They will jump up and down going woo-woo-woo on Election Day itself to water the idea. And after the election they will blitz every critical precinct with lawsuits to prevent the vote from being certified, using select “activist” judges to issue TROs and writs to delay election results and de-legitimize the vote.

And if none of that avails — which it won’t — they’ll call out their ground troops, Antifa, BLM, Free Palestine, LGBTQ2S+, the furious transsexuals, the hysterical cat ladies, and suchlike to make a giant ruckus so as to provoke the president to invoke emergency powers to quell the mayhem. And then they’ll point at Mr. Trump shrieking, “See! Tyrant!” (Read more.)

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The Need for ‘Sprezzatura’

 From The Habsburg Way:

At the turn of the 16th century, there were few places more esteemed than the Italian city of Urbino. Thanks to the inspired rule of the Montefeltro Dukes of Urbino, the city hosted one of the most illustrious courts in all of Europe, with a cultural output that rivalled Florence and Rome at their Renaissance heights. Castiglione had fond memories of his own time there, and indeed wrote Il Cortegiano as a debate taking place at the court of Urbino. The topic of the debate was simple: what makes the ideal courtier?

Initially, the courtiers ask whether noble birth is an essential prerequisite. While agreeing that it gives a powerful stage to a man, they also largely agree that it merely projects the reality of who that man is, enhancing his vices as much as his virtues. Very quickly, the courtiers observe that there is something far deeper at play than status alone:

“Besides his noble birth, then, I would have the Courtier… endowed by nature not only with talent and beauty of person and feature, but with a certain grace and (as we say) air that shall make him at first sight pleasing and agreeable to all who see him; and I would have this an ornament that should dispose and unite all his actions, and in his outward aspect give promise of whatever is worthy the society and favour of every great lord.”

Baldassarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, I.14

Grace is a word that appears again and again in the texts of Renaissance Italy. It was used to describe honorable conduct, and to describe the works of Raphael, arguably the greatest painter of the Renaissance, whose hometown also happened to be Urbino. One of the courtiers present, Cesare Gonzaga, underlines this apparent importance of Grace by agreeing that it is “universal seasoning, without which all other properties and good qualities are of little worth”. But what actually is it?

To answer the question, Castiglione coins a new word, Sprezzatura. There is no direct English translation of Sprezzatura, but Castiglione helpfully defines it for us:

“To practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought”

Baldassarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier I.26

In other words, no matter the context it is applied to, a graceful man is one who is able to make the difficult appear natural. Appear, however, is the crucial word. It may well have taken arduous study and years of practice to reach this level of confidence, but the secret to charisma lies in downplaying the preparation. (Read more.)

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