The Rosary

Etymology

"Mid-15th century, "rose garden," from Latin rosarium "rose garden," from neuter of rosarius "of roses," from rosa "rose" (see rose). The sense of "series of prayers" is 1540s, from Middle French rosaire, a figurative use of the word meaning "rose garden," on the notion of a "garden" of prayers. This embodies the medieval conceit [practice, conception, habit] of comparing collections to bouquets (cf. anthology ["a collection of flowers"] and Middle Latin hortulus animæ, "prayerbook," lit. "little garden of the soul"). This sense was transferred around 1597 to the strings of beads used as a memory aid in reciting the rosary."[1]

History

St. Dominic and Our Lady

The legend

"When the Albigensian heresy was devastating the country of Toulouse, St. Dominic earnestly besought the help of Our Lady and was instructed by her, so tradition asserts, to preach the Rosary among the people as an antidote to heresy and sin. From that time forward this manner of prayer was 'most wonderfully published abroad and developed [promulgari augerique coepit] by St. Dominic whom different Supreme Pontiffs have in various past ages of their apostolic letters declared to be the institutor and author of the same devotion.' That many popes have so spoken is undoubtedly true, and amongst the rest we have a series of encyclicals, beginning in 1883, issued by Pope Leo XIII, which, while commending this devotion to the faithful in the most earnest terms, assumes the institution of the Rosary by St. Dominic to be a fact historically established. ... We will confine ourselves here to the controverted question of its history, a matter which both in the middle of the eighteenth century and again in recent years has attracted much attention."

Historical assessment

Impressed by this conspiracy of silence, the Bollandists, on trying to trace to its source the origin of the current tradition, found that all the clues converged upon one point, the preaching of the Dominican Alan de Rupe about the years 1470-75. He it undoubtedly was who first suggested the idea that the devotion of "Our Lady's Psalter" (a hundred and fifty Hail Marys) was instituted or revived by St. Dominic. Alan was a very earnest and devout man, but, as the highest authorities admit, he was full of delusions, and based his revelations on the imaginary testimony of writers that never existed.

Paternoster Beads

• The use of beads to count prayers is found in many religions around the world.
• Monks developed the tradition of substituting saying 150 "Our Fathers" (Latin: Paternosters) for saying the 150 Psalms for the repose of the souls of the dead. Monks who could not attend choir for the recitation of the Psalms also said Paternosters as a substitute.

Catholic Encyclopedia, "The Rosary"

"The Countess Godiva of Coventry (c. 1075) left by will to the statue of Our Lady in a certain monastery 'the circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly' (Malmesbury, 'Gesta Pont.', Rolls Series 311). Another example seems to occur in the case of St. Rosalia (A.D. 1160), in whose tomb similar strings of beads were discovered. Even more important is the fact that such strings of beads were known throughout the Middle Ages — and in some Continental tongues are known to this day — as 'Paternosters.' The evidence for this is overwhelming and comes from every part of Europe. Already in the thirteenth century the manufacturers of these articles, who were known as 'paternosterers,' almost everywhere formed a recognized craft guild of considerable importance."

"It was only in the middle of the twelfth century that the Hail Mary came at all generally into use as a formula of devotion. It is morally impossible that Lady Godiva's circlet of jewels could have been intended to count Ave Marias. Hence there can be no doubt that the strings of prayerbeads were called 'paternosters' because for a long time they were principally employed to number repetitions of the Lord's Prayer."

Development of the "Hail Mary"

The final addition to the Angelic Salutation is attributed to St. Peter Canisius in the mid-16th century.

"In any case it is certain that in the course of the twelfth century and before the birth of St. Dominic, the practice of reciting 50 or 150 Ave Marias had become generally familiar. The most conclusive evidence of this is furnished by the 'Mary-legends,' or stories of Our Lady, which obtained wide circulation at this epoch."

Development of the Mysteries

See the Mysteries of the Rosary for notes on the twenty mysteries currently in use by the whole Church. Other schemes have been and are used by particular groups with different spiritualities.

"The practice of meditating on certain definite mysteries, which has been rightly described as the very essence of the Rosary devotion, seems to have only arisen long after the date of St. Dominic's death. It is difficult to prove a negative, but Father T. Esser, O.P., has shown (in the periodical Der Katholik, of Mainz, Oct., Nov., Dec., 1897) that the introduction of this meditation during the recitation of the Aves was rightly attributed to a certain Carthusian, Dominic the Prussian. It is in any case certain that at the close of the fifteenth century the utmost possible variety of methods of meditating prevailed, and that the fifteen mysteries now generally accepted were not uniformly adhered to even by the Dominicans themselves. To sum up, we have positive evidence that both the invention of the beads as a counting apparatus and also the practice of repeating a hundred and fifty Aves cannot be due to St. Dominic, because they are both notably older than his time. Further, we are assured that the meditating upon the mysteries was not introduced until two hundred years after his death."

Timeline

200-300	Counting beads used to develop the habit of "constant prayer" in the Eastern tradition.
480-547	St. Benedict laid the foundations for all later monastic and religious life by writing a rule for his community of monks. The monks recited the 150 Psalms on a regular basis. The custom of reciting 150 Our Fathers then derived from the tradition of reciting the Psalter in common.
1075	The Countess Godiva of Coventry left her counting beads, made of precious stones, to a monastery. These beads were almost certainly used to count Paternosters (Latin for "Our Father").
c. 1150	First stage of development of the Hail Mary.
1160	St. Rosalia buried with beaded strings.
1170-1221	Lifetime of St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers
c. 1200	Medieval guild for "paternosterers," makers of beads to count "Our Fathers."
1470-1475	Alan de Rupe, OP, first suggests that St. Dominic was associated with the origin of the Rosary.
1555	St. Peter Canisius first publishes a version of the Hail Mary that concludes, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners."
1597	"Rosarium" (Latin) and "rosaire" (French), meaning "rose garden" or "collection of roses," first applied to the recitation of 150 Hail Marys.
1883	First of a series of encyclicals that treated St. Dominic as the author or recipient of the Rosary.
1382-1461	Dominic of Prussia added Scriptural verses to each of the 150 Angelic Salutations. This was an antecedent of the development of the Mysteries of the Rosary.
1566-1572	Pope St. Pius V standardized the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary after the Council of Trent.

Repetition

Jesus teaches, "In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words" (Mt 6:7). We do not know what the pagan custom was to which Jesus refers. In our day, the Tibetan tradition of using prayer wheels or prayer flags seems from the outside to be a matter of "vain repetition."

There are many Scriptural passages which encourage repetitive prayer:

• "Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thess 5:16-18).
• "He told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary" (Luke 18:1).

• The parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow encourages us to keep on making the same prayer, even when we do not immediately receive what we ask for (Lk 18:1-8).
• The same point is made by the parable of the friend begging at midnight (Lk 11:5-8).

• The tax collector prayed repeatedly, "O God, be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:9-14). This is the heart of the second half of the "Hail Mary."
• Jesus repeated Himself in His Agony in the Garden (Mt 26:44).
• The four living creatures pray the same prayer without ceasing: "Day and night they do not stop exclaiming: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come" (Rev 4:8).
• The Psalms were used repeatedly in Temple worship, and many of them use repetition in their structure:

- Ps 19

- Ps 119

- Ps 136, the "Great Hallel."

The power of such repetition is not found in the number of prayers we pray, but in the faith, hope, and love which cause us to continue to ask God to give us "every good gift [that] comes down from above" (James 1:17).

Links

• Wikipedia, "The Rosary."