The history of the rosary

Mary’s gift to Saint Dominic

An old and beloved tradition tells that the Mother of God gave the rosary to Saint Dominic (d. 1221) and asked him to spread it. Through the centuries the Church has treasured this image: that the rosary is Mary’s gift, not merely a human invention. The account is handed down above all from the Dominican Alanus de Rupe (d. 1475), who in the fifteenth century preached the rosary and founded the confraternities that carried the devotion across Europe. As a datable event the apparition lies beyond what history can record; it is a legend — and a legend carries its own truth: here, that Mary leads us to this prayer.

The Marian Psalter

The rosary itself took shape slowly, in the devotion of the Middle Ages. Monks prayed the 150 Psalms each day; those who could not read prayed 150 simple prayers instead — first the Our Father, then more and more the Hail Mary. So the “Marian Psalter” arose: 150 Hail Marys after the pattern of the 150 Psalms, gathered into decades and, in time, joined to meditations on the life of Christ. That is the heart of what we now call the rosary.

Lepanto and the feast

In 1571, with the Church under threat, Pope Pius V — himself a Dominican — called Christendom to pray the rosary. On the 7th of October the fleet of the Holy League met the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, and the tide turned; Christians gave thanks for the intercession of Mary, whom they had invoked with the rosary. Pius V instituted a feast of thanksgiving, Our Lady of Victory; Gregory XIII renamed it Our Lady of the Rosary in 1573, and Pius X fixed it on the 7th of October, where the Church keeps it still.

The Rosary Popes

No pope commended the rosary more warmly than Leo XIII. Beginning in 1883, he wrote a whole series of letters urging it upon the faithful, and through them he gave October to the rosary — which is why, to this day, the Church prays it especially through the weeks of autumn.

A prayer that lives on

The rosary did not stay behind in a distant age. In 2002 Pope John Paul II, in his letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae,” added the five Luminous Mysteries — the public life of Jesus, from his baptism to the Last Supper — so that the whole Gospel might be prayed. So the Church prays it still: the same beads, the same gaze on Christ through the eyes of his mother.

Pray it today — the mysteries of the day are ready.