The Marian prayer of unshakable confidence — a fragment of a longer fifteenth-century prayer, long and wrongly called 'the Memorare of St. Bernard,' spread through the Church in the seventeenth century by Fr. Claude Bernard and indulgenced by Pope Pius IX in 1846.
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
The dated sources the library holds, oldest first — in their own words.
The Memorare is the closing portion of a longer fifteenth-century prayer to Our Lady, "Ad sanctitatis tuae pedes, dulcissima Virgo Maria," of unknown authorship — not, despite its later name, a composition of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (who died in 1153).
In seventeenth-century Paris, Fr. Claude Bernard (1588–1641) — "le pauvre prêtre," the poor priest, known for his ministry to the poor and to prisoners condemned to death — spread the Memorare far and wide, having more than two hundred thousand leaflets of it printed in several languages. The likeness of his surname to St. Bernard's helped fasten the old misattribution.
Pope Pius IX enriched the Memorare with indulgences by a rescript of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences dated 11 December 1846 — establishing the form of the prayer now in common use.
“I have looked in vain for some discussion of the authorship of this prayer. As the Anima Christi is often called the Prayer of St. Ignatius, though it was in use hundreds of years before St. Ignatius was born, so it is certain that "the Memorare of St. Bernard" is a misnomer.”