Prayers We All Should Know: The Rosary

As Catholics, we are blessed to share a rich and vibrant prayer heritage that has accumulated over literally thousands of years. One staple of our Catholic tradition is a treasured collection of prayers that most of us were taught from a very young age – the Rosary.

Yet even the most devout Catholics who say the rosary regularly may not fully understand its origins, historical significance or how this treasured prayer has evolved over time.

Origin of the Prayer

The idea of keeping track of a series of repetitive prayers using counting devices is not unique to Christianity. Counting prayers by using groups of stones or knotted ropes dates back thousands of years, with prayer beads themselves beginning to be used by eastern religions in about the 3^rd century BC. Perhaps not surprisingly then, prayer chaplets similar to our modern rosary are thought to have originated in the early eastern Christian church. In the western church, a popular early monastic practice was reciting all 150 Psalms of David, which the monks would say in groupings of either 50, 100 or 150 psalms at a time. By the Middle Ages, lay Christians wanted to mimic this devotion, but most did not have access to the Psalms (this was before the invention of the printing press) and couldn’t have read them even if they did (since literacy rates were so low at the time). As a result, many began substituting a prayer that they did know by heart – saying groups of 50, 100 or 150 Our Fathers – in place of the Psalms. To keep track of how many prayers they had said, they used knotted ropes, which eventually evolved into prayer beads.

So how did we get from those early prayer beads to the rosary we have today? Historians – both from within and outside of the church – disagree on this question and trace the origin of the rosary back to either divine inspiration or a gradual evolution.

Church tradition traces the rosary to St. Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221), the founder of the Dominican order who worked tirelessly to defeat the Albigenses heresy. He didn’t have much success fighting the heresy early on. Legend says that in the year 1214, a vision of the Blessed Mother inspired Saint Dominic to use the rosary (also known as Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary) in his work against the heresy, which became remarkably successful after his promotion of the prayer. Interestingly, the claim of a vision was never publically made by either the saint or anyone else in his order, which gives rise to the modern controversy about the rosary’s origins.

The traditional connection between Saint Dominic and the rosary was popularized by Blessed Alan de la Roche (1428-1475). As he fought against the heresies, schisms and tepid faith of his own time, Blessed Alan had visions of Jesus advocating the recitation of the rosary and a vision in which Mary appeared to St. Dominic and gave him the rosary, saying that with it, Dominic would win souls. This vision and story was repeated in the later spiritual classic: “God Alone: The Collected Writings of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort.” While some modern scholars have questioned St. Dominic’s role in the introduction of the rosary, there is no doubt that the rosary is at the heart of the Dominican Order and that Dominicans have been instrumental in spreading the devotion throughout their history. Over a dozen popes have emphasized this well documented connection between the rosary and the Dominican order over the years and have said that it does no harm to believe that the rosary was divinely inspired.

In contrast, modernists believe that the rosary was not a result of a vision but that it evolved slowly over the centuries. Their claim is that as Marian devotion spread in the Middle Ages, the Our Fathers were gradually replaced with Hail Marys and a single Our Father was added at the beginning of each decade to mirror the earlier monastic Psalm recitations. The practice of meditating on the life of Christ as one recites the prayers is credited to Dominic of Prussia, who called it “The Life of Jesus Rosary.”

Regardless of how it came to be, the rosary itself became an official devotion of the Catholic Church when Pope Pius V (a Dominican) established it in 1569 with the papal bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices.

How to Say the Rosary

Today’s rosary consists of six core prayers. After making the sign of the cross, one begins by saying the Apostles’ Creed (the basic summary of our faith) on the Crucifix. Then you move through the first series of beads by saying one Our Father, three Hail Marys, and one Glory Be. For each of the next five decades, you recite the mystery, and then meditate on it as you say one Our Father and 10 Hail Marys, followed by a Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer. At the conclusion of the last decade, one says the Hail Holy Queen. The mysteries of the rosary that one meditates on while moving through the prayers are the Joyful, which trace Jesus’ early life from the Annunciation through the Finding in the Temple; the Sorrowful, which follow Jesus’ passion; and the Glorious, which follow His Resurrection through the Coronation. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the Luminous mysteries, which walk us through Jesus’ public life through his teachings and miracles. (Complete prayers, mysteries and when to say them can be found on my blog at www.countertheculture.wordpress.com.)

Historical Significance

Throughout its long history, much good has been attributed to the recitation of the rosary, from dramatic cures and conversions of individuals to defeats of heresies within the church, to the preservation of a home and its eight Jesuit missionary occupants eight blocks from where the A-bomb was detonated in Hiroshima, Japan. Yet none is perhaps more dramatic – or timely – than what occurred at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. At that time, the Ottoman Empire was at the height of its power, encompassing the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, the Caucuses and more. The Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were under its virtual control and the one outpost that stood between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian West was the tiny island of Malta. The Ottoman Empire saw its natural harbors as the perfect jumping off point for attacks on Italy and the conquest of Rome. In 1565, a tiny force of about 700 Christian knights held the island against an Ottoman army of 40,000. In an outraged response, the Muslim leader formed an army of 300,000 men and rolled over the eastern frontier of the Holy Roman Empire in a bloody wave. In response, Pope St. Pius V created the Holy League, a coalition of forces from Venice, the Papacy, Spain, Genoa, Savoy, the Hapsburgs and the Knights Hospitaller. The Pope requested that all of Europe pray the rosary for the outnumbered Christian forces. The forces met in a five-hour naval battle in the waters off Southwestern Greece on October 7, 1571. The Holy League’s decisive victory prevented the Ottoman Empire from advancing farther into Europe and ended Turkish supremacy in the Mediterranean. Pope Pius V commemorated October 7 as the feast of Our Lady of Victory.

With its impressive history of miracles large and small, its significance in Catholic culture, its many spiritual graces and its ease of saying, the Rosary is a prayer that deserves its treasured place in our hearts and on our lips.