History of the Rosary
We cannot pinpoint how or when the rosary began as a popular devotion. The old tradition that it was personally delivered to St. Dominic by the Blessed Mother herself is now seriously questioned. On the other hand, the Dominicans certainly helped to standardize and popularize it throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Pope Pius V, a Dominican, instituted the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (now celebrated on October 7); he credited the efficacy of the rosary with the defeat of the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571.
Around the year 1000, ordinary people began to recite 150 Our Fathers, divided into three sets of 50 and counted on strings of beads called paternosters. This became known as “the poor man’s Psalter” because they were copying the monks and nuns who recited the 150 psalms each day. As Marian devotion increased in the 12th century, the Carthusians and Cistercians helped develop and popularize a rosary of Hail Marys.
Historically, the rosary emerged from the instinct of ordinary Christians that they, too, were called to the practice of regular prayer and to sanctify their time and work throughout the day. They knew the monks and nuns were doing so with their recitation of the Divine Office of the Church. But the peasant people didn’t have the time to pause for choral reading. Their instinct was to insist on praying themselves. The rosary arose from the good sense of ordinary people that Baptism calls all to holiness of life, and this demands the regular practice of prayer.
The Rosary Today
What is the best way to say the rosary? The tradition is to meditate on the mystery of each decade rather than to focus on the words of each prayer. So, with the first Joyful mystery, the Annunciation, one can think about God’s great initiative here, about Mary’s openness to doing God’s will, and so on. Or, more contemplatively, one can imagine and enter into the setting as the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary, listen in to the exchange between them, and so on. The purpose of all such contemplation is to take the mystery into daily life to encourage Christian discipleship. As St. Pope John Paul II wisely commented, we have in the rosary “a treasure to be rediscovered.”