Preces

In Christian liturgical worship, Preces (Latin for 'prayers'; /ˈpriːsiːz/ PREE-seez), also known in Anglican prayer as the Suffrages or Responses, are short petitions said or sung as versicles and responses by the officiant and congregation respectively. Versicle-and-response is one of the oldest forms of prayer in Christianity, with its roots in Hebrew prayer during the time of the Temple in Jerusalem. In many prayer books the versicles and responses comprising the Preces are denoted by special glyphs:

• Versicle: ℣, a letter V crossed by an oblique line — Unicode 2123, HTML entity ℣
• Response: ℟, a letter R crossed by an oblique line — Unicode 211F, HTML entity ℟