Download or read book Stories of the Rose written by Anne Winston-Allen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In its most basic form, the rosary is a series of prayers and meditations designed to bring the worshiper closer to God through the Virgin Mary. But, as Anne Winston-Allen shows, there was no single text of the rosary prayer: different versions, some in German and some in Latin, evolved over the course of the late Middle Ages as communities of believers experimented with their own forms. She also finds that rosary prayers were influenced by secular, even courtly literature that used images of the rose and rose garden; in the rosary, Mary is the Mystical Rose.".