Rosary Prayer

On April 17, 2004 · 0 Comments

who, when, and how the rosary prayer started?

1. Traditionally, the rosary is said to have come directly from the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Dominic.

The rosary began as a practice by the laity to imitate the monastic Divine Office, during the course of which the monks daily prayed the 150 Psalms. The laity, many of whom could not read, substituted 50, or even 150, Ave Marias (Hail Marys) for the Psalms. This prayer, at least the first half of it so directly biblically, seems to date from as early as the 2nd century, as ancient graffiti at Christian sites has suggested. Sometimes a cord with knots on it was used to keep an accurate count of the Aves. From Wikipidia

2. One of the most misunderstood aspects of the catholic church is the rosary. Many Catholics are vague when they give answers about this form of prayer and meditation. Many Catholics think that St. Dominic had an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Marry and the rosary was invented. This simply is not the case.
Ever since the finalization of the cannon of scripture, popes, cardinals, bishops, monks, priests and deacons all had a form of praying that included scripture. The church took (and still takes) Jesus' command within scripture to "Pray constantly" very seriously. The practice of using scripture, song, and prayer together as one is as old as the Old Testament in scripture. The Israelites used what is documented within the book of Psalms as not only songs of worship but as forms of prayer. If you read Psalms, you will find that many different conditions exist with each chapter. We find songs of thanksgiving, songs of sorrow, songs of request, and even songs of repentance. In order to incorporate this into the daily life of the religious, a system was developed for praying all 150 psalms very early within the church. With this standard list of daily events, the religious would literally recite the entire book of Psalms every single day. It became so routine that most of the religious that were very dedicated to this schedule simply memorized the entire book of Psalms.
The main problem that existed was the majority of the laity (common people of the church) could not even read. The select few that actually could read were hampered by their daily lives which may have required them to labor for long hours outdoors. The common people wanted to pray as well, but with the shortage of bibles and the inability to comprehend or even read the text made it an even more complicated problem.

Eventually sometime around 800 AD, a practice started to develop among the laity of the church. Every day, a person who wanted to pray along with the entire church would get up before his work day began and collected 150 pebbles and put them inside a small pouch he kept on his belt. Every time he heard the bell at the local church ring to signify whatever prayer service during the day, the devoted laity would say the Lord's Prayer for every psalm. After they said one they would pull out a pebble and toss it on the ground. When they got to the end of their pebbles, they knew they were finished. Soon this became so popular that instead of pebbles, the laity would get a large rope and tie 150 knots in it and use this to count their prayers, and eventually this was shorted even more to a rope with 50 knots they simply said 3 times each day. This shortened version originated within Celtic cultures
The Rosary came to replace the popular devotional practice that consisted of reciting the 150 Psalms of the Bible in thirds or 50 at a time. Instead of the Psalms, 150 Our Fathers were recited. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Lord's Prayer was replaced with the Angelic Salutation, commonly called the Hail Mary. The prayers of the Rosary were set by the late 16th century. From the 16th to the early 20th century, there were no changes in the Rosary until the mid-20th century when the addition of the Fatima Prayer became popular. There were no other changes until 2002 when John Paul II instituted five optional new Luminous Mysteries, for a total of 20 decades for the complete Rosary.