The rosary is the best-loved devotion in the Catholic Church. But where did it come from?
Contrary to pious belief, it did not descend ready-made from heaven. The familiar story that Our Lady herself gave the rosary to St. Dominic in the thirteenth century was thoroughly debunked more than a hundred years ago.1 No early lives of the saint, no evidence collected for his canonization, no records, documents, treatises, sermons, or artworks originating with the Friars Preachers connect the rosary with Dominic (d. 1221) until a Dominican named Alanus de Rupe (d. 1475) made this claim. He proved so persuasive that by 1480, a Dutch Dominican friary had commissioned a painting illustrating “The Legend of the Rosary of St. Dominic.” Countless artworks2 would reproduce this error over the years as Dominicans became the chief promoters of both rosary and legend.
So, the question remains: how did our familiar rosary of fifteen decades of Hail Marys spaced by Our Fathers and divided into three sets of Mysteries originate? No one person devised it. Our rosary was slowly shaped by many hands over the course of many years. It owes its final form to choices made by the praying public, simple and learned alike.
To begin at the very beginning, prayer beads are older than our rosary. Counting prayers with beads, pebbles, or other markers is not unique to Christianity. Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims also pray on rosaries to honor gods, the Buddha, or Allah. Christian prayer-counting seems to have originated among the Desert Fathers around the fourth century. Illiterate monks used pebbles or pegs to tally the 150 Our Fathers, they said, instead of the 150 Psalms recited by monks who could read.
The prayer ropes/ladders of Eastern Christendom stem from such devices. Western monastics and laity also copied this practice. St. Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelles (d. 659), supposedly owned prayer beads as did England’s famous Lady Godiva (d. 1041). Duchess Catherine of Cleves had her own beads of coral, pearls, and gold painted in her Book of Hours (ca. 1440) and. Chaucer’s Prioress (ca. 1390) wears a set. There are even late medieval paintings of Baby Jesus or Mary holding prayer beads.
The demand for such devotional aides was so great that “paternoster-makers” constituted a profession by the thirteenth century. They made prayer beads from wood, glass, bone, horn, shell, ivory, jet, amber, or gems. Strands of these were worn around the neck or arm, or, as men preferred, clipped to the belt. Luxury versions added tassels, pomanders, or extra devotional ornaments. Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane in London are examples of places connected with this industry.
But strings of prayer beads had not yet evolved into the rosary.
Initially, the Our Father was the prayer repeated on medieval beads. Then, in the eleventh century, people also began praying Gabriel’s salutation to Mary with her name inserted: “Ave Maria, gratia plena.” A hundred years later, St. Elizabeth’s greeting was added: “Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui.” Adding the name Jesus at the end in the fourteenth century completed the medieval version of the Ave Maria. The second half of the prayer, “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortia nostrae” only entered the Roman Breviary in 1568, although the doomed Dominican reformer Savonarola had first published the text in 1495.
Reciting runs of 50-150 “short” Ave Marias on prayer beads became a popular medieval devotion, especially in Germany and the Low Countries. Unfortunately, this practice could also feel mechanical and boring. So, by the end of the thirteenth century, clerics were composing “Mary Psalters” that added Scriptural tags to the Aves. Originally, these were the antiphons of the psalms from the monastic liturgy. Other experiments attached non-Biblical verses in praise of Mary to the Aves, then stanzas linking Mary and Jesus, then brief narratives tracing the life of Christ.
By the turn of the fifteenth century, this category of sequential prayers became known as a rosary, from the German Rosenkrantz (“rose garland”), rendered in Latin as rosarium. Alternatively called chaplets or crowns, rosaries were pictured as circlets of roses. Prayers said on earth became flowers to crown Our Lady in Heaven.
A Carthusian monk called Dominic of Prussia (d. 1460) composed a rosary that attached 50 specific life of Christ meditations to the Aves. Although this became popular in and around Germany, Dominican friar Alanus de Rupe, originator of the St. Dominic legend, objected to the Carthusian’s system as well as the name “rosary.” Claiming the authority of dubious personal visions, Alanus founded a Confraternity of the Psalter of the Glorious Virgin Mary at Douai in 1470. The brethren were to pray 150 Aves divided by 15 Paternosters. Alanus proposed several confusing sets of meditations to go with his Mary-Psalter. His fellow Dominican Michael Francisci simplified these to one theme per 50 Aves: (1) Mary’s joys, (2) her sorrows, and (3) her heavenly joys.
When Dominican Jacob Sprenger founded the first rosary—he insisted on the term rosary—confraternity at Cologne in 1475, it enrolled more than 100,000 people in its first ten years and gained papal approval in 1478. (Sprenger’s other claim to fame was having his name posthumously attached to the definitive witch-hunters’ manual Malleus Malaficarum written by Heinrich Kramer.) Sprenger’s original statutes did not specify particular themes as long as three sets of 50 Aves (white roses) with five Paternosters (red roses) were recited weekly. Free and open to everyone, membership offered indulgences and a share in the merits amassed by the group. Being able to aid the souls in Purgatory was an extra incentive to join.
But then a guidebook for the new confraternity published at Ulm, Germany in 1483 happened to include a “picture rosary.” Although picture rosaries accompanied by text had appeared a few years earlier, this particular example had a unique impact. This set of crude woodcut diagrams by an unknown hand marked the birth of the rosary as we know it. The textless images divide the 150 Aves and 15 Paternosters into three sets: “white” (joyous), “red” (sorrowful), and “gold” (glorious) rosaries. Each of these is further divided into five roundels of 10 roses enclosing simple illustrations of events in the lives of Mary and Jesus. Fourteen of these 15 images correspond to our traditional mysteries. The final one, the Last Judgment, would be replaced by the Coronation of Mary within a hundred years. Despite a few more tweaks—the addition of the Credo and Glorias in the seventeenth century—this prayer format is the one that gained papal approval in 1569 as the rosary.
Calling this way of praying a “rosary,” as Jacob Sprenger insisted, rather than a “psalter,” opened a rich lode of symbolism. The rose was a key Marian symbol because Mary was the ultimate Woman, the Mystical Rose to whom all symbols of love and beauty belonged. Borrowing from the Song of Songs, medieval Bible commentators’ favorite book, Mary was the Enclosed Garden open only to God. Mary the Bride met Christ the Lover in the sealed rose garden. There Christ the hunted Unicorn met his spotless Virgin. Red roses are his wounds and the rose tree his cross. Aves are white roses for weaving into Marian crowns. By imitating Mary, a Christian soul could likewise become a rose garden for encountering God. As Dominic of Prussia said, “We live as though we were in Mary’s rose garden, all of us who occupy ourselves with roses.”
Beyond its poetic overtones, the final format of the rosary was also didactic. Medieval people were already accustomed to think of religious concepts in numbered sets, for example: the Five Wounds of Christ or the Seven Deadly Sins. They were also used to Bible stories and saints’ lives presented in sequential episodes in art, sermons, mystery plays, and pious songs. The easily memorized 15-decade rosary comfortably fit these patterns, creating a mini-epic of salvation history. The illiterate ninety-five percent of the population could use rosaries to meditate, using cues from simple woodcuts. But even literate people were intensely visual, accustomed to “read” images for information. Because images have no language barrier, everyone could appreciate the wave of new religious art inspired by the rosary, from cheap broadsheets to masterpieces. The two classes were not unrelated. Albrecht Durer’s Feast of the Rose Garlands, painted for the Venetian rosary confraternity in 1509, shows the enthroned Virgin and Child bestowing wreaths of roses on Pope, Emperor, and their courtiers. It borrows its composition from a 1481 woodcut used by the rosary confraternity of Colmar, Germany.
The strict or “Observant” branches of major religious orders, most notably the Dominicans, adopted the rosary as a means of re-evangelization. Their preaching and writing drew enthusiastic responses. Following its establishment by Jacob Sprenger in 1475, the rosary confraternity had spread to Italy, France, the Low Countries, and Portugal by 1500. One million people, more than half of them women, belonged by the time the Reformation erupted in 1517. Protestant criticism of the rosary as “vain repetitions” only made it more attractive to Catholics until it became a badge of the Faith.3
The rosary’s popularity received another boost when it was given credit for Christians’ victory over the Ottoman Turks at the sea-battle of Lepanto in 1571. Not only had the rosary confraternity at Rome prayed furiously for success, the battle fell on the first Sunday of October when members traditionally honored Our Lady of the Rosary. Pope St. Pius V’s gratitude for the unexpected victory led to this date becoming a universal feast day and the month of October officially becoming the month of the Holy Rosary.
The rosary kept its appeal across time. It was an important feature in evangelization efforts by St. Louis de Montfort (d. 1716) in Brittany. Then Jesuit promotion of May as Mary’s month and the custom of May Crowning also enhanced devotion to the rosary. Further stimulus came from the Marian apparitions at Lourdes in 1858, where Mary Immaculate fingered her own beads to accompany St. Bernadette’s recital of the rosary. Praying the rosary for world peace is an enduring legacy of Our Lady of Fatima’s apparitions in 1917. Fatima also introduced a short prayer beginning “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins…,” one of the “trimmings” that many people add to end each decade of their rosaries.
The rosary’s status ebbed for a time after Vatican II. It was criticized as hopelessly mechanical and old-fashioned. In the 1960s, a “scriptural rosary” of Bible verses said between the Hail Marys promoted to replace it ironically resembled Dominic of Prussia’s medieval vita Christi rosary. The novelty faded; the traditional rosary endured. One lasting innovation, however, was St. John Paul II’s proposal of the Luminous Mysteries in 2002. This fourth set of mysteries adds Christocentric content at the cost of eliminating the rosary’s ancient connection to the 150 psalms.
Over the centuries, wildly different materials have been used for rosary beads: from yellow amber like the Apostles have in The Death of Mary by Jos van Cleve (1515) to Early Modern wooden “prayer nuts” that open to reveal minute carvings of pious scenes; from industrial brass pull-chain for World War I soldiers to molded bread for St. Maximillian Kolbe at Auschwitz. As a last resort, the rosary can even be counted on one’s fingers. The sequence of prayers and the meditations they prompt are what make Our Lady’s garland. After more than five hundred years, millions of faithful Catholics still heed Jacob Sprenger’s call: “Hurry, hurry. . . run after the Virgin Mary with sweet smelling garlands.” Those heavenly roses will never fade but endure into eternity.
(Editor’s note: A different version of this article appeared in Our Sunday Visitor for October 7, 2001.)
Endnotes:
1 Herbert Thurston and Andrew J. Shipman, “The Rosary,” Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company: New York, 1907-12.
2 Even the original cult painting of Our Lady of Pompeii—deemed miraculous since 1876–shows this: Baby Jesus and the Blessed Virgin hand rosaries to St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena.
3 For instance, Irish Catholics famously clung to their rosaries during Penal Times and the rosary was a badge of defiance for Bl. Celferino Giménez, a martyr of the Spanish Civil War.
*An excellent history of the rosary’s origins is Stories of the Rose by Anne Winston-Allen (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
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When does folklore trump the word of God, one wonders? When we say something once God is attentive to our ear.
Matthew 6:7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Ecclesiastes 5:2-3 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.
Daniel 9:18-19 O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”
Regarding Christ’s warning of “empty phrases,” note that he is referring to the pagan practice of uttering a laundry list of names of deities, with the hope of one or some of them answering. The pagan prayers were acts of manipulation, not of familial expressions of love and adoration of the one true God. If you’ve never looked at the words of the Rosary, you should, as they are all drawn directly from Scripture, with the focus being on the worship of the Triune God and love for the Theotokos, chosen by God to be the Mother of our Savior. Put another way, if you think (and I’m sure if you do) that the Rosary consists of “empty phrases,” then you are dismissing Scripture, which would be slightly ironic considering the nature of your posts.
Also, regarding repetition or using few words, Jesus himself, in the Garden before the betrayal by Judas, prayer the same prayer three times (Mt 26:44). Paul exhorted his readers to “prayer constantly” (1 Thess 5:17). And when John the Revelator sees the throne room of heaven, this is what he describes: “And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'” (Rev 4:8). In other words, repetitious prayer in worship of the true God is not only NOT forbidden, it is the heavenly model.
Dear Carl:
Good to have your perspective and scriptural references!
The focus is not to harm ones faith, but to bring it to a higher level. We as sinners, are not worthy to come to the throne of grace, yet Jesus loves us so much that He laid down His life so that we could commune with His heavenly Father. This privilege is accorded the believer through Gods mercy. Let us avail ourselves for it honours Him.
When we face an urgent matter, understandably, we press our case. He remembers that we are only flesh and treats us with His divine respect and patience. What an awesome God we serve!
We do not know how we should pray, yet the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with graonings to deep for words. He understands the cry of the heart and gives us comfort. Prayers are our duty. We gain understanding of God through prayer, meditating on His word, the reading of insightful books, being still and knowing that He is God.
If we can help one another to have a richer prayer life we are better servants to one another.
God bless you in your divinely appointed work,
Brian
Matthew 6:6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Ephesians 6:18 Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,
Aren’t there a couple passages in the Gospels where Christ seems to encourage persistence in petitions? As for the Rosary, I find it calming and the repetition of the Jesus narratives reassuring and a necessary reminder of what we believe as Catholics.
God alone knows the heart of all. It is impossible for one to discern the heart of another, yet to encourage a brother or sister in Christ to a fuller prayer life honours God.
Striving with God, thanking Him, telling Him our spiritual and earthly aspirations, not to mention our woes brings blessings. Acting as intercessors for loved ones, praying for those in authority and other matters that God puts upon our hearts makes us overcomes and true prayer warriors.
Jesus had a very fulsome prayer life. Specifics would be His focus and we never do wrong to try and emulate our blessed Lord. Satan hates it when we pray and when we grow into spiritual maturity our prayers have force and a distinct purpose.
1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
1 Chronicles 28:9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
Thank your for your thoughts. God’s richest blessings.
The Rosary pre-dates Christianity,set the stage for Christianization of the men, and women. The origin is from God via the Angel Gabriel to Mary and months later from Elizabeth who herself had had the Angelic visitation followed by a revelation,cf Luke 1:28;42.
The history of Christian Spirituality would thence be a direct spiritual encounters – prayers of Mary to which Christian Prayer are a responsive celebration rather than a “human innovation”. To date Marian Intersessions and Apparitions remain a reality – a daily reality of angelic dimensions more than a historical fact
Thank you for your context. We both argue for a richer prayer life and through it all, God knows our heart. The essence of the matter is Gods truth.
Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Proverbs 23:19 Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way.
Christ prayed repetitively.
Matthew 26:44 (KJV): “And he left them and went away again and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
Saint Paul taught repetitive prayer, i.e., the praying of the psalms.
Ephesians 5:18-19 (KJV): “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit
“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”
Also fascinating: the Franciscan Crown Rosary of seven decades with two sets, the joys of Mary and the sorrows of Mary. I’d love to know more about that rosary’s history, and other variants through the ages.
“The familiar story that Our Lady herself gave the rosary to St. Dominic in the thirteenth century was thoroughly debunked more than a hundred years ago”. Another pious béquille torn away from the hobbled faithful. What next? The ferocious man eater wolf of Gubbio miraculously made a house pet by St Francis of Assisi?
That aside [with marked discretion], and with instant scholarship courtesy of the Wikipedia scholars, German theologian Andreas Heinz discovered 1997 a vita Christi Rosary that dated to 1300, suggesting the origin of the current rosary extends back at least to that time (Winston-Allen, Anne. Stories of the Rose University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Heinz, Andreas. Die Entstehung des Leben-Jesu-Rosenkranzes, in Der Rosenkranz: Andacht, Geschichte, Kunst, editors, Fredy Bühler and Urs-Beat Frei. Bern: Verlag Benteli/Museum Bruder Klaus Sachseln, 2003).
Saint Dominic died 1221 well into the 13th century.
Dated to 1300 doesn’t extend to 1221. The Wikipedia authors may only suggest the origins of the Rosary extend well beyond 1300. Ms Miesel does mention the source quoted above Anne Winston-Allen. A good bit of Bollandist style debunking by the essayist.
The devil does not want you to pray the Rosary. The devil will contrive way to get you not to pray.
The old story about there being two equal things in your body tells which one will win. The one you feed. Feed yourself with the Rosary and watch goodness arise.
The beauty of the Rosary is the simplicity of it to go automatic. Enemies of the Rosary want to push the image that Catholics are simply, grudgingly, repeating words. We Catholics are supposed to be Spiritually deep in contemplation of our Lord’s Passion, Our Lord’s joy in birth, and Our Lord’s Glory, while we physically pray to God, the Rosary on automatic. Once you train yourself to multitask the Spiritual activities of your mind, into seeking communion and ecstasy with our Lord, as your lips physically recite your prayers to God, automatically through the Rosary, your Spiritual encounter with God is elevated to a far higher level of Spiritual awareness. When you throw in singing, as I do with the ‘Chaplet of Divine Mercy’, this even elevates your Spiritual awareness with our Lord to an even higher level.
When the Protestants have to sit there and constantly contemplate new, long, unique prayers, they have to focus their minds on this composition of words. While the Catholic praying the Rosary on automatic, can send their minds into deep, Spiritual, ecstasy and communion with our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Apparitions, the Blessed Mother is continually requesting us to pray the rosary often. Jesus tells St. Faustina to pray His, highly repetitive, ‘Chaplet of Divine Mercy’, which He taught her, constantly, no matter what she is doing.
Just pray the rosary, and watch what happens. It is a miraculous devotion, and God-given.
Interesting article which explained why we have the Rosary. Much I did not know especially the German word Rosenkrantz.
Add the end of each decade, after the Fatima prayer, I add, “Grant that we would escape all that is coming upon the world, and to stand before the Son of Man,” Luke 21:36.
You can take me out and stone me now.
Wouldn’t it be something if you inquired of Christians with regard to what the Greatest Commandment is, and they didn’t know?! (I tried that with Catholic relatives and a Protestant minister. Not very good results, people.)
Prayer is a form of communion with God, and should be reflective. It is meant to be a meeting with God in an isolated environment. (Lk. 5.16) Enter into your private chamber when you pray. And don’t stand up in the temple and pray, right? (Didn’t we read that somewhere? Did our spiritual leader explain that to us?)
As one woman pointed out in a letter to a Christian newspaper in Oregon, there are two parts to prayer. You speak to God, and then you listen. Babbling on without listening to God is not the highest form of prayer.
So then, while Christ’s teaching concerning prayer, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, is placed in the background, we see the same imbalance of emphasis with the Bread and the Cup of wine. The Eucharist is sooo emphasized. The Cup of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood is placed in the background. That is really a shoddy form of Christianity, on par with the fact that so many Christians refuse to live on every word of God, and to preach the Gospel that (Lev. 26.3-6) God will provide a better life to illegal immigrants, were they to seek to know God (Jer. 31.34), and to serve God on His terms.
Buddhists term our mind, which flits incessantly from random thought to random thought, “the monkey mind.”
I find this phenomenon is particularly evident — and troublesome — during prayer.
The Rosary is as good a remedy as I’ve found.
Its “automatic” nature seems to occupy my monkey mind by giving it something to do for every second of prayer. So the monkey has less opportunity to be distracted.
In John Paul II’s book, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, there is a chapter titled “Praying: How and Why.” There he quotes Paul (cf. Rom 8.26): “The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.”
He then concludes later that “Man achieves ‘the fullness of prayer’ not when he expresses himself, but when ‘he lets God be most fully present in prayer.'”
Very good and comprehensive article. I recently put together an expanded, illustrated version of the Carthusian rosary and had it printed. I also use an electronic form of this on my phone as do friends of mine. If it wasn’t so risky and Carl O would let me, I would be glad to give my email address and send it to anyone who would like to see it.
Christ prayed repetitively.
Matthew 26:44 (KJV): “And he left them and went away again and prayed the third time, saying the same words.
Saint Paul taught repetitive prayer, i.e., the praying of the psalms.
Ephesians 5:18-19 (KJV): “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit
“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”
Christ taught repetitive prayer:
Luke 11:1, et seq. (KJV): And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.
2And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
3Give us day by day our daily bread.
4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
I find that there is a difference between babbling on in prayer, and meeting with God in private prayer. The object of prayer is to speak to our heavenly Father, and to listen and watch for His response. Seeing how fast you can recite the rosary isn’t the best method of having communion == of meeting with — our heavenly Father.
What was the subject of the repetitive prayer in Mt 26? It was about the cup. What cup? The cup of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood. (Lk 22.2O) Every early English translation of the Bible follows Jerome’s translation of that verse, and uses the less accurate translation of the Greek, that is, “new testament.” Most modern Bibles have corrected that mistranslation.