The Origin of the Rosary as a Meditative Prayer

(Sharing at the Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help on 18 September 2010)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in our approach to the month of the Rosary in October, a weekly sharing has been presented on aspects of the Rosary.

Last week’s sharing illuminated a beautiful Ignatian way of meditating on the great mysteries of our salvation when we pray the Rosary. This week we shall detail a little background to the history of the Rosary.

The rosary evolved over a long period and from a variety of sources. Even before Christ’s time, stone pebbles, beads of wood and knots of rope had been used to count prayers by followers of other religions.  The use of repetitive prayer in the Church seems to have evolved among the desert monks. In the 4th century the prayer rope was used by the Desert Fathers to count repetitions of the Jesus prayer.  By the 5th century, the order of public prayers called the Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office was established, to fulfil the Lord's command to pray without ceasing. The 150 psalms of the bible comprised the most important part of it and were chanted by the clergy and monks in monasteries.

Lay people took a liking to this beautiful and harmonious devotion but, as they could not read Latin and were unable to memorise the Psalms, they prayed the Pater Noster (Our Father) in place of the Psalms. Thus grew the practice of chanting 150 Our Fathers, using a string of beads to count them, dividing them into fifties. This chaplet or string of fifty beads came to be known as Paternoster cords or beads, to be repeated three times, as an alternative to the traditional longer strand of 150 beads.

When the Irish brought the devotion using Paternoster cords to Europe, the faithful had begun to recite the Angelic salutation (the first half of the Hail Mary), which took its place along the Creed and the Our Father as a standard prayer. In time, the 150 Hail Marys prayed became known as the Marian Psalter.

In the 12th and 13th Century, the Albigensian heresy ravaged Christendom in southern France.

St Dominic de Guzman was distressed at his lack of success in preaching to counter it and, in desperation, turned to the Mother of God for help.

By tradition, she appeared to him in 1214 and told him to use her Psalter in conjunction with his preaching of the mysteries of our salvation.

St Dominic eventually succeeded in winning over the people back to their Christian faith, attributed to the intercession of Our Lady.

Now we know the number of prayers and the method of counting them, let us see what the prayers contained. In the 12th century, there developed two main streams. One contained the Marian Psalter, or 150 Hail Marys with an Our Father preceding each decade. The other was the “Ave Psalm Psalter”.

The Ave Psalm Psalter consisted of 150 rhymed stanzas, each beginning with the word Ave, each paraphrasing a theme from its corresponding Psalm, with an example shown here from Psalm 6.

The insertion of a series of scenes from Christ’s life into a traditional litany of praise to the Virgin was first found in an early 14th century Marian Psalter. Although addressed to Mary, the stanzas promoted meditation on the life, passion, death and resurrection of Christ.

The widespread acceptance of the rosary as a prayer of devotion was developed two hundred and fifty years after Dominic by Alanus de Rupe a learned Dominican priest and theologian. Through his devotion to the Blessed Mother, Alan reinstated the rosary in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The form of the Rosary we pray today is believed to be from his time, and is sometimes called the Dominican Rosary.

In 1569 Pope Pius V officially established the devotion to the rosary in its present form with 15 mysteries divided into Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries.

The Glory be and The Apostles Creed were added to the rosary prayer during the 17th century.

In 1917, Our Lady of Fatima asked that the Fatima Prayer be added to the rosary.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II introduced the five luminous mysteries as an optional addition.

In summary, each time we pray 50 Hail Marys our meditation on each mystery is in continuity with a prayer tradition that traces its practice to a worship of God, in thanksgiving for the Salvation achieved through Jesus Christ, that originated at least 1,700 years ago.

Next week our sharing at Novena to our Mother of Perpetual Help will explore the Benefits of praying the Rosary.

Editorial note:

The Albigensian heresy was a late echo of Gnostic and Manichaean heresies. It questioned the goodness of creation, teaching that all matter, including the human body, is evil. It denied the Resurrection and ultimately, the Incarnation. It also rejected the sacraments of the Catholic Church, the Old Testament, material possessions and the whole concept of the cross in Christian life, and condemned marriage. Pope Innocent III eventually ordered internal crusades against the Albengensians resulting in much shedding of blood. However, St Dominic took a more spiritual approach to this heresy. The poverty of the Dominicans challenged the austerities of the Albigensians whilst the mysteries of the Rosary helped re-establish the truth of the profound goodness of creation, which was confirmed by the Incarnation.