the history of which has just been traced, began to rival the
Pater. For the one hundred and fifty, one hundred, or fifty
Paters, some pious persons substituted a corresponding
number of Ave Maria; and the chaplet which hitherto had
been used to count the Pater was then employed for counting
the Ave. It became the "Psalter of Our Lady." Let us
remark, however, that during the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries this use of it was rare. But in the
fifteenth century the Dominican Breton Alain de la Roche
made on behalf of the one hundred and fifty Ave an active
propaganda, which he completed by the institution of a
confraternity. Moreover, he caused the faithful to believe
that St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order in the
thirteenth century, had been charged by the Holy Virgin
herself to propagate the recitation of one hundred and fifty
Ave Maria. Thanks to this pious falsehood, the devotion of
the chaplet in its new form had an always progressive
extension.

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