Curiosities
Prayer Beads in Other Traditions
Prayer ropes and chaplets
Eastern Christians pray with the prayer rope, called komboskini in Greek and chotki in Slavonic. Usually made of knotted black wool, with 33, 50, 100 or more knots, it accompanies the Jesus Prayer: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Tradition credits St. Pachomius, a fourth-century father of Egyptian monasticism, with devising its intricate knots, each woven from a series of tiny crosses.
Within the Catholic Church, the Rosary has many cousins. The Franciscan Crown, from the fifteenth century, has seven decades honouring the Seven Joys of Mary. The Servite Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows has seven groups of seven beads. The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, taught by St. Faustina Kowalska in 1935, is prayed on ordinary rosary beads. Even the English word 'bead' comes from the Old English gebed, meaning 'prayer'.