Ave Maria, ah'va mah ree'ah, (Hail, Mary), the first two words of the angel Gabriel's salutation to Mary (Luke I, 28), and the beginning of the very common Latin prayer to the Virgin in the Roman Catholic Church. Its lay use was sanctioned at the end of the twelfth century, and a papal edict of 1326 ordains the repetition of the prayer thrice each morning, noon and evening, at the hour indicated by the bells called the Ave Maria or Angelus Domini.