Sub Tuum Praesidium

This is the oldest known Marian prayer. Textual witness to the Sub Tuum Praesidium (“Under Thy Protection”) exists going back to at least the 6th Century, and probably to the 3rd. This prayer is used in enough of the ancient churches that there’s every reason to believe it goes back even earlier than that.

The version recorded here is an eleventh-century Latin translation, with the English translation of the Latin. After that’s the Greek version (likely the original), followed by its English translation.

Sub tuum praesidium
confugimus,
Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias
in necessitatibus,
sed a periculis cunctis
libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta

We fly to thy protection,
O Holy Mother of God;
Do not despise our petitions
in our necessities,
but deliver us always
from all dangers,
O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.

Ὑπὸ τὴν σὴν εὐσπλαγχνίαν,
καταφεύγομεν, Θεοτόκε.
Τὰς ἡμῶν ἱκεσίας,
μὴ παρίδῃς ἐν περιστάσει,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ κινδύνων λύτρωσαι ἡμᾶς,
μόνη Ἁγνή, μόνη εὐλογημένη.

Beneath thy compassion,
We take refuge, O Theotokos:
do not despise our petitions in time of trouble:
but rescue us from dangers,
only pure one, only blessed one.