HISTORY OF THE ROSARY

There are differing views on the history of the Rosary. The exact origin of the Rosary as a prayer is less than clear and subject to debate among scholars. The use of knotted prayer ropes in Christianity goes back to the Desert Fathers in the 3rd and early 4th centuries. These counting devices were used for prayers such as the Jesus prayer in Christian monasticism. The period after the First Council of Ephesus in 431 witnessed gradual growth in the use of Marian prayers during the Middle Ages.

According to some Catholic traditions, the Rosary was given to Saint Dominic in a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary and it was then promoted by Blessed Allan de la Roche. However, not all Catholics agree with that tradition. Some historians see a more gradual development for the Rosary, in that the repetition of Marian prayers which form the basis of the Rosary needed counting devices, which resulted in the modern form of the Rosary prayed on beads.

The practice of meditation during the praying of the Hail Marys was attributed to Dominic of Prussia (author of Liber experientiae 1458), a 15th-century Carthusian monk, who called it the "Life of Jesus Rosary" (vita ChristiRosarium). However, in 1977, a theologian from Trier named Andreas Heinz discovered a vita Christi Rosary that dated to 1300, suggesting the origin of the current rosary extends back at least to that time.^[1] [2] The Christian victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 was attributed to the praying of the Rosary by masses of Europeans based on the request of Pope Pius V and eventually resulted in the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. In 1569, the papal bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices established the devotion to the rosary in the Catholic Church. In 2002 Pope John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries - based on a compilation by St George Preca the first Maltese Saint, - as an option in an Apostolic Letter on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae.