by Barbara Schoeneberger

Created on: January 18, 2010   Last Updated: January 19, 2010

The Rosary, from the Latin "rosarium" meaning "rose garden" or "garland of roses" is one of the most popular non-liturgical devotions in the Catholic Church today.  To understand the meaning of the Rosary to Catholics, a little history is in order. 

For at least a millennium before St. Dominic, who is credited with starting the Rosary devotion, Muslims, Buddhists and other non-Christian as well as Christians followed a tradition of counting repetitive prayers on beads or knots, or placing stones in a bowl or pocket to track the number.

Within Judeo-Christian tradition, the practice of reciting the 150 psalms daily transferred from the Old Testament devout Jews to the monks and monasteries of the Catholic Church.  The average person in Europe, however, did not know how to read or write until Guttenberg's printing press made learning much more widely possible.  As a result, the clergy, who were the best educated for centuries, encouraged the practice of reciting 150 "Our Fathers", using a string of beads to count them in fifties.  These beads became known as the "PaterNoster" beads.  As time went on, a parallel psalter of 150 "Hail Marys" became known as the Marian Psalter.  Today most people are educated well enough to pray the official liturgies of the Church, but the Rosary has remained a core devotion among the faithful.

Unfortunately due to the many religious wars and plagues of the middle ages and early renaissance, a great deal of documentation regarding St. Dominic and the rosary which would have been preserved by monasteries and convents was lost to us through their destruction.  We do know the following:

1.  The Hail Mary at the time of St. Dominic consisted only of the first part we recite today from the Gospel of St. Luke 1:28, 42.  The word "Jesus" was not added until the 14th century, and the remainder of the prayer came later.

2.  The "Our Father" and the "Glory be" also came later.

3.  The Mysteries of the Rosary were fixed about 250 years after St. Dominic, and were added to by Pope John Paul II in the 2002-2003 Year of the Rosary. [1]

4.  A 15th century Dominican named Alan de Rupe, O.P. revived the Rosary devotion 250 years after the time of St. Dominic. He preached the Marian Psalter of 150 Hail Marys and 150 mysteries and divided them into three groups of fifties according to the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries. It was not until the reign of Pope Pius V in 1569 that

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