A short history of the rosary
The rosary was not invented in a single moment. It grew slowly over many centuries into the prayer people know today.
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The early centuries
Early Christians prayed the 150 Psalms. Many people could not read, so they prayed 150 Our Fathers instead, keeping count with pebbles, knotted cords, or strings of beads. Such strings were called paternosters, from the Latin for “Our Father.”
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The 13th century, by tradition
Tradition says the Virgin Mary gave the rosary to St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order. Historians have found no record of this from his own lifetime, and the story is told in detail only some 250 years later. Most scholars think the prayer grew gradually instead.
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The late Middle Ages
The Hail Mary, built from the angel Gabriel’s greeting and Elizabeth’s words to Mary (Luke 1:28 and 1:42), became a favorite prayer. Saying 150 Hail Marys, a “Psalter of Our Lady,” grew popular, and the closing petition (“Holy Mary, Mother of God…”) took its final shape over the 15th and 16th centuries. Short meditations on the lives of Jesus and Mary began to be joined to the prayers.
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The 1400s
Blessed Alan de la Roche (1428–1475), a Dominican preacher, founded confraternities of the Rosary and spread the devotion across northern Europe. The prayers were grouped into decades, and the Psalter came to be called the rosary.
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1569
Pope St. Pius V, himself a Dominican, settled the form of the rosary, with its fifteen mysteries, in the bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices.
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1571 to 1716
On 7 October 1571 a Christian fleet defeated the Ottoman navy at Lepanto. Pius V had asked the faithful to pray the rosary, and the victory was attributed to Mary’s intercession. A yearly feast on 7 October, soon known as Our Lady of the Rosary, was kept in thanksgiving, and in 1716 Pope Clement XI extended it to the whole Church.
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1883
Pope Leo XIII dedicated the month of October to the rosary and, over the following years, wrote many documents encouraging the prayer.
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1917
Three children at Fátima, Portugal, reported visions in which they were asked to pray the rosary daily. The short prayer many people add after each decade, the Fatima Prayer, comes from these reports.
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2002
Pope St. John Paul II added five Luminous Mysteries, the mysteries of light, in his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae. With them the rosary has twenty mysteries in four sets.
A note on the sources
Historians and tradition disagree about the earliest steps, and older accounts differ by a year or two on some dates. If a detail matters to you, check it against a source you trust.