| History of the Holy Rosary
Legend has it that the Blessed Virgin gave
the rosary to St. Dominic (1170-1221), the
founder of the Dominican order. Although
Dominicans have been great promoters of the
rosary down through history, the rosary as we
know it today took several centuries to develop,
and its route was nothing if not circuitous.
The ultimate source of the rosary as a prayer
form is the Book of Psalms in the Bible, writes
Dominican Father Frederick M. Jelly, in Madonna:
Mary in the Catholic Tradition. From the very
beginning, the Church claimed the psalms as part
of its Jewish heritage and placed their
recitation at the heart of its liturgy and daily
prayer. The practice of praying an Our Father
instead of a psalm caught on in the early
medieval period, and this marked the birth of
the rosary devotion. "In order to keep count of
the prayers," Father Jelly writes, "strings of
beads were used, and these would gradually
become our rosary beads."
Soon, to each of the 150 Our Fathers people began to add a short
phrase about Jesus and Mary, thus linking vocal prayer to
contemplation of the mysteries of the faith. Then, they substituted
brief meditations on Jesus and Mary from the Annunciation to the
Resurrection of Jesus and the Assumption of Mary.
According to Father Jelly, in the early 15th century a Carthusian
monk, Dominic of Prussia, helped to popularize this devotion by
linking 50 Hail Marys with 50 phrases about Jesus and Mary. "This is
the origin of the word rosary, since the series of 50 points of
meditation was called a rosarium (rose garden)." The rose, a symbol of
joy, referred to Mary, and "rosary" came to refer to the recitation of
50 Hail Marys.
About the same time, another Carthusian, Henry Kalkar, contributed
further to the development of the rosary by organizing the Hail Marys
into groups of ten (decades), with an Our Father before each.
By 1480, rosaries of 50 mysteries, one for each Hail Mary, had been
reduced to 5 mysteries, one for each decade. "In 1483," Father Jelly
writes, "Our Dear Lady's Psalter, a rosary book by a Dominican, makes
mention of 15 mysteries, all of which are the same as we have today
except the final two glorious mysteries." The anonymous Dominican
author combined Mary's Assumption and Coronation into one mystery and
named the Last Judgment as the final glorious mystery.
In 1521, Alberto de Costello, another Dominican, was the first to use
the term "mystery" to refer to the meditations for each decade of the
rosary. He attached a mystery to each of the 15 Our Fathers while
retaining 150 sub-mysteries for each Hail Mary.
During the 16th century, the 15-decade rosary became quite popular,
and in 1470 still another Dominican, Blessed Alan de la Roche, founded
the Confraternity of the Psalter of Jesus and Mary, which contributed
enormously to the rosary's popularity.
Finally, in 1569, Pope St. Pius V published a papal bull that is often
called the magna carta of the rosary, Consueverent Romani Pontifices.
In doing this, Pope St. Pius V formally established the prayer form
that had been developing for centuries and standardized the 15 Joyful,
Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries that we know today. He also made a
lasting contribution by definitively linking meditation on the
mysteries of Christ's life to the prayer of the rosary.
Since then, numerous popes have devoted much attention to the rosary,
notably Pope Leo XIII, Blessed John XXIII, and Pope Paul VI. In his
apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus, Paul VI reminded the Church
that the rosary is a "prayer with a clearly Christological
orientation."
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Pope John Paul II has called for a
renewal of the rosary as a meditation on the life of Christ as
seen through the eyes of his mother, Mary. |
On October 16, 2002, Pope John Paul II surprised the world with the
most significant document on the rosary in over four centuries,
Rosarium Virginis Mariae, and proclaimed Ocober 2002 to October 2003
the Year of the Rosary. In this apostolic letter, John Paul II appeals
to Christians throughout the world to rediscover the spiritual
richness of the rosary. He proposes some theological considerations
that he hopes will renew the centuries-old devotion and deepen its
contemplative dimension. He also responds to contemporary objections
to the rosary, noting that its Marian and repetitive dimensions do not
detract from but actually enhance its Christological and prayerful
depth.
Moreover, John Paul II suggests five new "mysteries of light" for
meditation. "I believe," he writes, "to bring out fully the
Christological depth of the Rosary it would be suitable to make an
addition to the traditional pattern which, while left to the freedom
of individuals and communities, could broaden it to include the
mysteries of Christ's public ministry between his Baptism and his
Passion." He names them the luminous mysteries for "it is during the
years of his public ministry that the mystery of Christ is most
evidently a mystery of light: ‘While I am in the world, I am the light
of the world' (Jn 9:5)."
In the conclusion of his letter, Pope John Paul II, noting that "the
Church has always attributed a particular efficacy to this prayer,"
entrusts the cause of peace in the world and the cause of the family
to the power of the rosary. At the dawn of this new millennium, we may
well hope that the Church will respond with vigor to his appeal and,
in rediscovering the spiritual richness of the rosary, contribute to
the spiritual rejuvenation of societies and families.
The Promises of Mary to those that
faithfully pray the Rosary
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