MEMORARE

A prayer beginning, "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary." Of unknown authorship, it has been attributed to St. Augustine, to St. John Chrysostom, and with more reason to St. Bernard or to Claude Bernard, "poor priest" of Paris. Passages in sermons of St. Bernard echo the theme (PL 183:428), but none comes close to the actual wording of the Memorare. The manuscript tradition can be traced only to the 15th century. It appears as a section of a longer prayer in the Antidotarius animae of Nicolas Salicetus (1489). J. Wellinger included it, possibly as a separate invocation, in his Hortulus animae (1503). Claude Bernard (1588–1641) did much to popularize the Memorare, teaching it in hospitals and prisons, working miracles of grace through Mary's intercession. Bishop Hefele [Kirchenlexikon (1882), "Bernard, C."] assumed that because of the similarity of names, St. Bernard's was substituted for Père Bernard's. The Memorare first appeared in the 12th edition of the Raccolta (Rome 1849).

Bibliography: h. thurston, "Notes on Familiar Prayers: The Memorare, "Month 132 (1918) 269–278; repr. in his Familiar Prayers, ed. p. grosjean (Westminster, Md. 1953) 152–163, with refs. to earlier literature. a. boudinhon, "Notes sur les prières les plus usitées," Revue du clergé français 100 (1919) 246–260, e. campana, Maria nel culto cattolico, 2 v. (Turin 1933) 1:801–807. g. s. sloyan, "Marian Prayers," Mariology, ed. j. b. carol (Milwaukee 1954–61) 3: 80–81.

[m. i. j. rousseau]