The Holy Rosary

I. IN THE WESTERN CHURCH

"The Rosary", says the Roman Breviary, "is a certain form of prayer

wherein we say fifteen decades or tens of Hail Marys with an Our

Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we

recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our

Redemption." The same lesson for the Feast of the Holy Rosary

informs us that when the Albigensian heresy was devastating the

country of Toulouse, St. Dominic earnestly besought the help of Our

Lady and was instructed by her, so tradition asserts, to preach the

Rosary among the people as an antidote to heresy and sin. From

that time forward this manner of prayer was "most wonderfully

published abroad and developed [promulgari augerique coepit] by

St. Dominic whom different Supreme Pontiffs have in various past

ages of their apostolic letters declared to be the institutor and author

of the same devotion." That many popes have so spoken is

undoubtedly true, and amongst the rest we have a series of

encyclicals, beginning in 1883, issued by Pope Leo XIII, which, while

commending this devotion to the faithful in the most earnest terms,

assumes the institution of the Rosary by St. Dominic to be a fact

historically established. Of the remarkable fruits of this devotion and

of the extraordinary favours which have been granted to the world,

as is piously believed, through this means, something will be said

under the headings FEAST OF THE ROSARY and CONFRATERNITIES OF

THE ROSARY. We will confine ourselves here to the controverted

question of its history, a matter which both in the middle of the

eighteenth century and again in recent years has attracted much

attention.

Let us begin with certain facts which will not be contested. It is

tolerably obvious that whenever any prayer has to be repeated a

large number of times recourse is likely to be had to some

mechanical apparatus less troublesome than counting upon the

fingers. In almost all countries, then, we meet with something in the

nature of prayer-counters or rosary beads. Even in ancient Nineveh

a sculpture has been found thus described by Lavard in his

"Monuments" (I, plate 7): "Two winged females standing before the

sacred tree in the attitude of prayer; they lift the extended right hand

and hold in the left a garland or rosary." However this may be, it is

certain that among the Mohammedans the Tasbih or bead-string,

consisting of 33, 66, or 99 beads, and used for counting devotionally

the names of Allah, has been in use for many centuries. Marco Polo,

visiting the King of Malabar in the thirteenth century, found to his

surprise that that monarch employed a rosary of 104 (? 108)

precious stones to count his prayers. St. Francis Xavier and his

companions were equally astonished to see that rosaries were

universally familiar to the Buddhists of Japan. Among the monks of

the Greek Church we hear of the kombologion, or komboschoinion,

a cord with a hundred knots used to count genuflexions and signs of

the cross. Similarly, beside the mummy of a Christian ascetic,

Thaias, of the fourth century, recently disinterred at Antinöe in Egypt,

was found a sort of cribbage-board with holes, which has generally

been thought to be an apparatus for counting prayers, of which

Palladius and other ancient authorities have left us an account. A

certain Paul the Hermit, in the fourth century, had imposed upon

himself the task of repeating three hundred prayers, according to a

set form, every day. To do this, he gathered up three hundred

pebbles and threw one away as each prayer was finished

(Palladius, Hist. Laus., xx; Butler, II, 63). It is probable that other

ascetics who also numbered their prayers by hundreds adopted

some similar expedient. (Cf. "Vita S. Godrici", cviii.) Indeed when

we find a papal privilege addressed to the monks of St. Apollinaris

in Classe requiring them, in gratitude for the pope's benefactions, to

say Kyrie eleison three hundred times twice a day (see the privilege

of Hadrian I, A. D. 782, in Jaffe-Löwenfeld, n. 2437), one would infer

that some counting apparatus must almost necessarily have been

used for the purpose.

But there were other prayers to be counted more nearly connected

with the Rosary than Kyrie eleisons. At an early date among the

monastic orders the practice had established itself not only of

offering Masses, but of saying vocal prayers as a suffrage for their

deceased brethren. For this purpose the private recitation of the

150 psalms, or of 50 psalms, the third part, was constantly enjoined.

Already in A. D. 800 we learn from the compact between St. Gall

and Reichenau ("Mon. Germ. Hist.: Confrat.", Piper, 140) that for

each deceased brother all the priests should say one Mass and also

fifty psalms. A charter in Kemble (Cod. Dipl., I, 290) prescribes that

each monk is to sing two fifties (twa fiftig) for the souls of certain

benefactors, while each priest is to sing two Masses and each

deacon to read two Passions. But as time went on, and the

conversi, or lay brothers, most of them quite illiterate, became

distinct from the choir monks, it was felt that they also should be

required to substitute some simple form of prayer in place of the

psalms to which their more educated brethren were bound by rule.

Thus we read in the "Ancient Customs of Cluny", collected by

Udalrio in 1096, that when the death of any brother at a distance

was announced, every priest was to offer Mass, and every

non-priest was either to say fifty psalms or to repeat fifty times the

Paternoster ("quicunque sacerdos est cantet missam pro eo, et qui

non est sacerdos quinquaginta psalmos aut toties orationem

dominicam", P. L., CXLIX, 776). Similarly among the Knights

Templar, whose rule dates from about 1128, the knights who could

not attend choir were required to say the Lord's Prayer 57 times in

all and on the death of any of the brethren they had to say the Pater

Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

To count these accurately there is every reason to believe that

already in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a practice had come in

of using pebbles, berries, or discs of bone threaded on a string. It is

in any case certain that the Countess Godiva of Coventry (c. 1075)

left by will to the statue of Our Lady in a certain monastery "the

circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order

that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers

exactly" (Malmesbury, "Gesta Pont.", Rolls Series 311). Another

example seems to occur in the case of St. Rosalia (A. D. 1160), in

whose tomb similar strings of beads were discovered. Even more

important is the fact that such strings of beads were known

throughout the Middle Ages -- and in some Continental tongues are

known to this day -- as "Paternosters". The evidence for this is

overwhelming and comes from every part of Europe. Already in the

thirteenth century the manufacturers of these articles, who were

know as "paternosterers", almost everywhere formed a recognized

craft guild of considerable importance. The Livre des métiers" of

Stephen Boyleau, for example, supplies full information regarding

the four guilds of patenôtriers in Paris in the year 1268, while

Paternoster Row in London still preserves the memory of the street

in which their English craft-fellows congregated. Now the obvious

inference is that an appliance which was persistently called a

"Paternoster", or in Latin fila de paternoster, numeralia de

paternoster, and so on, had, at least originally, been designed for

counting Our Fathers. This inference, drawn out and illustrated with

much learning by Father T. Esser, O.P., in 1897, becomes a

practical certainty when we remember that it was only in the middle

of the twelfth century that the Hail Mary came at all generally into use

as a formula of devotion. It is morally impossible that Lady Godiva's

circlet of jewels could have been intended to count Ave Marias.

Hence there can be no doubt that the strings of prayerbeads were

called "paternosters" because for a long time they were principally

employed to number repetitions of the Lord's Prayer.

When, however, the Hail Mary came into use, it appears that from

the first the consciousness that it was in its own nature a salutation

rather than a prayer induced a fashion of repeating it many times in

succession, accompanied by genuflexions or some other external

act of reverence. Just as happens nowadays in the firing of salutes,

or in the applause given to a public performer, or in the rounds of

cheers evoked among school-boys by an arrival or departure, so

also then the honour paid by such salutations was measured by

numbers and continuance. Further, since the recitation of the

Psalms divided into fifties was, as innumerable documents attest,

the favourite form of devotion for religious and learned persons, so

those who were simple or much occupied loved, by the repetition of

fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty were salutations of Our Lady,

to feel that they were imitating the practice of God's more exalted

servants. In any case it is certain that in the course of the twelfth

century and before the birth of St. Dominic, the practice of reciting

50 or 150 Ave Marias had become generally familiar. The most

conclusive evidence of this is furnished by the Mary-legends", or

stories of Our Lady, which obtained wide circulation at this epoch.

The story of Eulalia, in particular, according to which a client of the

Blessed Virgin who had been wont to say a hundred and fifty Aves

was bidden by her to say only fifty, but more slowly, has been shown

by Mussafia (Marien-legenden, Pts I, ii) to be unquestionably of early

date. Not less conclusive is the account given of St. Albert (d. 1140)

by his contemporary biographer, who tells us: "A hundred times a

day he bent his knees, and fifty times he prostrated himself raising

his body again by his fingers and toes, while he repeated at every

genuflexion: 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed

art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb'." This

was the whole of the Hail Mary as then said, and the fact of all the

words being set down rather implies that the formula had not yet

become universally familiar. Not less remarkable is the account of a

similar devotional exercise occurring in the Corpus Christi MS. of

the Ancren Riwle (q.v.). This text, declared by Kölbing to have been

written in the middle of the twelfth century (Englische Studien, 1885,

P. 116), can in any case be hardly later than 1200. The passage in

question gives directions how fifty Aves are to be said divided into

sets of ten, with prostrations and other marks of reverence. (See

The Month, July, 1903.) When we find such an exercise

recommended to a little group of anchorites in a corner of England,

twenty years before any Dominican foundation was made in this

country, it seems difficult to resist the conclusion that the custom of

reciting fifty or a hundred and fifty Aves had grown familiar,

independently of, and earlier than, the preaching of St. Dominic. On

the other hand, the practice of meditating on certain definite

mysteries, which has been rightly described as the very essence of

the Rosary devotion, seems to have only arisen long after the date

of St. Dominic's death. It is difficult to prove a negative, but Father T.

Esser, O.P., has shown (in the periodical "Der Katholik", of Mainz,

Oct., Nov., Dec., 1897) that the introduction of this meditation during

the recitation of the Aves was rightly attributed to a certain

Carthusian, Dominic the Prussian. It is in any case certain that at the

close of the fifteenth century the utmost possible variety of methods

of meditating prevailed, and that the fifteen mysteries now generally

accepted were not uniformly adhered to even by the Dominicans

themselves. (See Schmitz, "Rosenkranzgebet", p. 74; Esser in "Der

Katholik for 1904-6.) To sum up, we have positive evidence that

both the invention of the beads as a counting apparatus and also the

practice of repeating a hundred and fifty Aves cannot be due to St.

Dominic, because they are both notably older than his time. Further,

we are assured that the meditating upon the mysteries was not

introduced until two hundred years after his death. What then, we are

compelled to ask, is there left of which St. Dominic may be called

the author?

These positive reasons for distrusting the current tradition might in a

measure be ignored as archaeological refinements, if there were

any satisfactory evidence to show that St. Dominic had identified

himself with the pre-existing Rosary and become its apostle. But

here we are met with absolute silence. Of the eight or nine early

Lives of the saint, not one makes the faintest allusion to the Rosary.

The witnesses who gave evidence in the cause of his canonization

are equally reticent. In the great collection of documents

accumulated by Fathers Balme and Lelaidier, O.P., in their

"Cartulaire de St. Dominique" the question is studiously ignored.

The early constitutions of the different provinces of the order have

been examined, and many of them printed, but no one has found any

reference to this devotion. We possess hundreds, even thousands,

of manuscripts containing devotional treatises, sermons, chronicles,

Saints' lives, etc., written by the Friars Preachers between 1220 and

1450; but no single verifiable passage has yet been produced which

speaks of the Rosary as instituted by St. Dominic or which even

makes much of the devotion as one specially dear to his children.

The charters and other deeds of the Dominican convents for men

and women, as M. Jean Guiraud points out with emphasis in his

edition of the Cartulaire of La Prouille (I, cccxxviii), are equally silent.

Neither do we find any suggestion of a connection between St.

Dominic and the Rosary in the paintings and sculptures of these two

and a half centuries. Even the tomb of St. Dominic at Bologna and

the numberless frescoes by Fra Angelico representing the brethren

of his order ignore the Rosary completely.

Impressed by this conspiracy of silence, the Bollandists, on trying to

trace to its source the origin of the current tradition, found that all the

clues converged upon one point, the preaching of the Dominican

Alan de Rupe about the years 1470-75. He it undoubtedly was who

first suggested the idea that the devotion of "Our Lady's Psalter" (a

hundred and fifty Hail Marys) was instituted or revived by St.

Dominic. Alan was a very earnest and devout man, but, as the

highest authorities admit, he was full of delusions, and based his

revelations on the imaginary testimony of writers that never existed

(see Quétif and Echard, "Scriptores O.P.", 1, 849). His preaching,

however, was attended with much success. The Rosary

Confraternities, organized by him and his colleagues at Douai,

Cologne, and elsewhere had great vogue, and led to the printing of

many books, all more or less impregnated with the ideas of Alan.

Indulgences were granted for the good work that was thus being

done and the documents conceding these indulgences accepted

and repeated, as was natural in that uncritical age, the historical

data which had been inspired by Alan's writings and which were

submitted according to the usual practice by the promoters of the

confraternities themselves. It was in this way that the tradition of

Dominican authorship grew up. The first Bulls speak of this

authorship with some reserve: "Prout in historiis legitur" says Leo X

in the earliest of all. "Pastoris aeterni" 1520; but many of the later

popes were less guarded.

Two considerations strongly support the view of the Rosary tradition

just expounded. The first is the gradual surrender of almost every

notable piece that has at one time or another been relied upon to

vindicate the supposed claims of St. Dominic. Touron and Alban

Butler appealed to the Memoirs of a certain Luminosi de Aposa

who professed to have heard St. Dominic preach at Bologna, but

these Memoirs have long ago been proved to a forgery. Danzas,

Von Löe and others attached much importance to a fresco at Muret;

but the fresco is not now in existence, and there is good reason for

believing that the rosary once seen in that fresco was painted in at a

later date ("The Month" Feb. 1901, p. 179). Mamachi, Esser, Walsh,

and Von Löe and others quote some alleged contemporary verses

about Dominic in connection with a crown of roses; the original

manuscript has disappeared, and it is certain that the writers named

have printed Dominicus where Benoist, the only person who has

seen manuscript, read Dominus. The famous will of Anthony Sers,

which professed to leave a bequest to the Confraternity of the

Rosary at Palencia in 1221, was put forward as a conclusive piece

of testimony by Mamachi; but it is now admitted by Dominican

authorities to be a forgery ("The Irish Rosary, Jan., 1901, p. 92).

Similarly, a supposed reference to the subject by Thomas à Kempis

in the Chronicle of Mount St. Agnes" is a pure blunder ("The Month",

Feb., 1901, p. 187). With this may be noted the change in tone

observable of late in authoritative works of reference. In the

"Kirchliches Handlexikon" of Munich and in the last edition of

Herder's "Konversationslexikon" no attempt is made to defend the

tradition which connects St. Dominic personally with the origin of the

Rosary. Another consideration which cannot be developed is the

multitude of conflicting legends concerning the origin of this devotion

of Our Lady's Psalter which prevailed down to the end of the fifteenth

century, as well as the early diversity of practice in the manner of its

recitation. These facts agree ill with the supposition that it took its

rise in a definite revelation and was jealously watched over from the

beginning by one of the most learned and influential of the religious

orders. No doubt can exist that the immense diffusion of the Rosary

and its confraternities in modern times and the vast influence it has

exercised for good are mainly due to the labours and the prayers of

the sons of St. Dominic, but the historical evidence serves plainly to

show that their interest in the subject was only awakened in the last

years of the fifteenth century.

That the Rosary is pre-eminently the prayer of the people adapted

alike for the use of simple and learned is proved not only by the long

series of papal utterances by which it has been commended to the

faithful but by the daily experience of all who are familiar with it. The

objection so often made against its "vain repetitions" is felt by none

but those who have failed to realize how entirely the spirit of the

exercise lies in the meditation upon the fundamental mysteries of

our faith. To the initiated the words of the angelical salutation form

only a sort of half-conscious accompaniment, a bourdon which we

may liken to the "Holy, Holy, Holy" of the heavenly choirs and surely

not in itself meaningless. Neither can it be necessary to urge that the

freest criticism of the historical origin of the devotion, which involves

no point of doctrine, is compatible with a full appreciation of the

devotional treasures which this pious exercise brings within the

reach of all.

As regards the origin of the name, the word rosarius means a

garland or bouquet of roses, and it was not unfrequently used in a

figurative sense-- e.g. as the title of a book, to denote an anthology

or collection of extracts. An early legend which after travelling all

over Europe penetrated even to Abyssinia connected this name with

a story of Our Lady, who was seen to take rosebuds from the lips of

a young monk when he was reciting Hail Marys and to weave them

into a garland which she placed upon her head. A German metrical

version of this story is still extant dating from the thirteenth century.

The name "Our Lady's Psalter" can also be traced back to the same

period. Corona or chaplet suggests the same idea as rosarium.

The old English name found in Chaucer and elsewhere was a "pair

of beads", in which the word bead (q.v.) originally meant prayers.

II. IN THE GREEK CHURCH, CATHOLIC AND SCHISMATIC

The custom of reciting prayers upon a string with knots or beads

thereon at regular intervals has come down from the early days of

Christianity, and is still practised in the Eastern as well as in the

Western Church. It seems to have originated among the early

monks and hermits who used a piece of heavy cord with knots tied

at intervals upon which they recited their shorter prayers. This form

of rosary is still used among the monks in the various Greek