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Rosarium Virginis Mariae
The Rosary in History: from the beginning to the
consolidation of its actual structure
It is virtually impossible to chart the exact steps that led to the
modern structure of the Rosary. One can follow the birth and growth of
the basic inspirations that, from their interaction, brought about the
synthesis of meaning and method of prayer.
First of all, continuous prayer is often condensed in a brief
formula. Everyone is familiar with the monastic recommendation to
repeat: "O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help
me" (Ps 69,2; Cassian, Conference 10,10) or the
exhortation: "Breathe Christ always" (St Athanasius, Life
of St Anthony, 91,3) which eventually led to hesychasm.
The repetition led to numbered prayer because repetitions and
undefined pauses create anxiety, while a set number brings closure and
completion.
Marian psalters replace the Biblical Psalter
The numbered prayer raised the question of the meaning of the number:
What number do the many recited formulas refer to? The reply was: they
refer to the Psalter. Another intuition flowed from this, the
substitution of the psalms by a definite number of brief formulas. The
practice became established for the growing number of persons who could
not read the psalms. At that point the Psalter was replaced by 150
formulas or a set number of Our Father's and Hail Mary's that replaced
the canonical hours. There was in popular Latin a saying that "he
who cannot psalter can father: he who cannot recite the psalms, should
say a set number of Our Father's" (cf. Meersseman, Ordo fraternitatis
III, pp. 1444-45).
As the method of counting prayers came into use, prayer began to
focus on the "mysteries" of Christ. Already present in the
Church Fathers, for some the devotion to the humanity of Christ derived
from the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, that was increasingly
accompanied by more affective and Marian hymns and prayers. From this
threefold context—the mysteries of Christ,
the Marian dimension, moving allusions—two
developments are important: Marian psalters and meditations on the life
of Christ.
The Marian psalters began in the 12th century in Cistercian
communities with the addition of a Marian antiphon to each psalm. From
this derives the tendency to edit the antiphons and to compose Marian
psalters like that attributed to St Anselm of Aosta (died 1213) that has
150 rhythmic antiphons derived from a verse of each of the psalms.
The meditations of the Rosary are anticipated in the Meditations
on the Joys of the Blessed Virgin of the Cistercian Stephen of
Sallay (died 1252) who worked out an exercise of prayer for 15 Marian
"joys" divided into 3 sections. If the number 15 and the joys
connect the writing to the Rosary, the complexity and length are
different.
Summaries of the mysteries of Our Lady or Our Lord
More important for the spirit of the Rosary were the
"Meditations on the Life of Christ" that from the beginning of
1300 were attributed to St Bonaventure, now known to be the work of John
of Caulas and printed in a critical edition as volume 153 of the Body
of Christian Writers of the Middle Ages. The
meditations on the public life of Christ begin with his Baptism and end
with the Last Supper (chapters 16-73) and they are attentive to the
presence of Mary. Before leaving for his public ministry, Jesus asks her
blessing receiving the reply. "Go, with the blessing of the Father
and mine" (p. 173, 9-10). At the supper in Bethany (ch. 72), even
though "Scripture does not mention it" (p. 240, 2-3), Christ
reveals the imminence of the Passion and appears to her after the
Resurrection (ch. 82) greeting her with the "Hail, Holy
Mother" (p. 301, 28-29). More determining for the Rosary
was the Life of Jesus Christ compiled from the four Gospels and
orthodox authors or Life of Christ of Ludolph of Saxony (died
1377) published in Strasbourg in 1474 and reprinted soon after in 88
Latin editions. The author was first a Dominican and then a Carthusian,
who drafted a comprehensive outline (from the generation of the Word to
the final coming), with quotations from the Fathers and medieval
authors, with a prayer concluding each chapter. He contributed to
integrating the use of set mysteries of Christ in personal prayer.
The prayer formulas evolved. At the start, the most common was the
Our Father, so much that the name Paternoster was given to the
string of beads that was used to count the prayers (and in London to the
street where they were made). Then for many reasons, including the
translation of the Greek prayer to Our Lady, the Akáthistos, into
Latin towards the ninth century, the Hail Mary began to prevail as
St Peter Damian (1072) records as does a Synod of Paris held around
1200, that added the Hail Mary to the Our Father and the
Creed as a daily prayer to be taught to the people (PL 145, 564: Mansi
22,681). Thus a Rosary came to be formed of 50 Hail Mary's or
a Psalter of 150 Hail Mary's which already in the 13th century
were recited by many persons and devout groups such as the Beguines of
Ghent.
Knotted cord or beads for counting
As for the string of beads for counting them, in antiquity Palladius
told how a certain Paul recited 300 formulas of prayer every day
gathering "little stones that he kept in his breast and threw one
away with each prayer" (Lausican History 20,1). Then he
began to use a cord with knots that some thought came from Spain where
it became popular through the influence of the knotted Muslim cord
called the subha or tashbi that is used to count the 99
names of God and to support the dikr, the memory of the Name. No
one can prove such a derivation but it is helpful to think that it may
be true. Among the Christians of the East, a similar cord in the shape
of a crown that was called the kombológion or komboskoínon (kómbos
in Greek means knot) was popular.
Mysteries in picture form
Finally, the theatre had an influence on liturgical animation and
then on the representation of the mysteries outside the liturgy, and
established the imaginative dimension of the meditation and with the
visual reference to the mystery of the Rosary: it explains the pictures
or the images as they appeared in book form.
Three moments in the life of the Rosary
The convergence of all these factors requires a method of prayer that
simplified and harmonized them. This took place in three decisive but
unrelated moments.
Creation of 15 decades
The first was the division of the Psalter into 150 Hail Mary's spread
over 15 decades, each one preceded by an Our Father (at the time
there was no second part of the Hail Mary nor mysteries to
meditate on). To the Carthusian Henry Egher of Kalcar (died 1408) is
attributed its being suggested by Our Lady. The division was a happy one
because it maintained the 150 of the Psalter but broke up the length by
dividing them into groups of ten, most practical division because it is
based on the fingers.
Short phrases referring to the mysteries
The second arrangement was that of the Carthusian Dominic of Prussia
(died 1460) who added to the Hail Mary's in a Rosary composed of
50 Hail Mary's 50 different short phrases summing up the mystery
to the name Jesus. They were inspired by Ludolph's booklet that summed
up Ludolph of Saxony's "Life of Christ". This rosary was the
mirror and perfectly balanced tool for the age, perhaps an absolutely
perfect tool for prayer. The Rosary did not replace the liturgy or
Scripture; it joined the numerical prayer with meditation of the
mysteries of Christ's life; it gave space to what could arouse devotion
by causing wonder (14 phrases dealt with the Infancy, 23 with the
Passion, only 7 with the Life of Glory).
Phrases that refer to the mysteries of the public life
It was open to the rest of the life of Christ with 6 phrases on the
public life and ministry: Jesus, "whom John baptized in the Jordan,
indicating him with his finger as the lamb of God; who fasted in the
desert for forty days and who was tempted three times by Satan; who,
having gathered together his disciples, preached the kingdom of heaven
to the world; who restored sight to the blind, healed the lepers, cured
the paralytic, freed those oppressed by the devil; whose feet Mary
Magdalen washed with her tears, dried with her hair, kissed and anointed
with perfume; who raised Lazarus who was dead already four days and
other dead persons".
Contribution of Alan de la Roche
The definitive contribution was that of the Breton Dominican Alan de
la Roche (died 1475), who established the Rosary as a pastoral tool. To
this end he established the first confraternity between 1464 and 1468,
approved by the Dominican Order on 16 May 1470. These were older
confraternities that Alan revived by giving them the prayer of the
Marian psalter and reinvigorating them with his preaching and giving
them new life. All this kept alive in time a prayer that perhaps by
itself might have died with the death of its creators. Alan knew of and
recommended many Rosaries or psalters, with Our Father's and Hail
Mary's, only Christological or only Marian, with phrases added or
without. He preferred the 15 decades starting with 15 Our Fathers that
according to popular belief, honoured in a year the wounds of the
Passion of the Lord which would have been 5475 in number, namely, 365
times 15. Alan insisted on the term Psalter: every day the members were
to pray 150 prayers and he avoided as much as possible the term Rosary
because it had a worldly connotation. Among the many proposals Alan made
is our present Rosary, a "prayer directly addressed to Christ. So
the first fifty are prayed to honour Christ, Incarnate Word. The second,
Christ who suffered the Passion. The third, in honour of Christ who
rose, ascended into heaven, who sent the Paraclete, who sits at the
right hand of the Father, who will come to judge" (Apologia,
114,20). Finally, Alan gave a theoretical foundation to the Psalter
of the Virgin Mary discovering it in the prayer of the monks, the
Fathers, the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary herself, who entrusted
it especially to St Dominic. The last is a blatant historical creation,
but one has to recognize Alan's ability to impress such an
interpretation on iconography and beyond it.
Catholic Reformation and beyond
How do we account for the Rosary moving from its fluid form still
present in Alan to the fixed form that we know? It was a process that
was both spontaneous and driven by a few converging initiatives. Alan
gave preference to the 3 sets and the 15 decades. The confraternities
also fostered a unifying intention and the need to set out the mysteries
following a single pattern; to formalize the initial varied experience;
the object of promoting indulgences, and later, the atmosphere of the
Catholic Reformation that required clear formulas of prayer.
The mysteries are practically the same as the woodcuts published by
Francesco Domenech in 1488 in the Spanish cultural area. In 1521 at
Venice, Alberto Castellani published the Rosary of the glorious Virgin
Mary maintaining the 150 phrases, but connected the meditation to the Our
Father and calling it a mystery and so favouring the
present format. Note that in the publication the Rosary is considered to
be a visible prayer with 165 images, one for each Our Father and
Hail Mary.
The contribution of St Pius V was principally in the Bull Consueverunt
(17 September 1569), where one reads that "the Rosary or Psalter of
the Blessed Virgin" is a "method of prayer" through which
we "venerate Mary with the Angelic salutation repeated 150 times
according to the number of David's psalms, and before every set of ten
Hail Mary's we say the prayer of Our Lord with meditations that
illustrate the entire life of the same Lord Jesus Christ". For a
correct interpretation one should note that there is no list of
mysteries; no mention of the phrases to be added to the Hail Mary, but
it does mention the Psalter; the meditation seems linked to the Our
Father (according to the formula of Alberto Castellani)
and is extended to the "whole" life of Christ.
From Alan on, including the Magisterium, one should note that by
meditation one should increasingly understand mental prayer—from
the practice of repeating the words while meditating—and
less the oral repetition, according to the line from Scripture:
"the mouth of the just will meditate wisdom" (Ps 36[37],30).
Moreover the Papal documents up to but excluding Leo XIII, describe the
Rosary mostly in terms of granting the indulgences. Finally the
reference to the Psalter became less frequent and after the death of
Alan the Confraternity of Cologne reduced the obligation of the 150
prayers from daily to weekly and authorized the breakdown into sets of
fifty.
The composition of the Rosary has remained fixed up to the present
time with the survival of the phrases attached to the Jesus in
the Hail Mary in German-speaking regions. The rest belongs to
additions that did not last—like the Mystical
Rosary of the Excellent Gifts and Graces that God gave to the
Blessed Mary Magdalene of the Carthusian Lanspergius (died 1539)—or
to variations that did not affect the structure of the Rosary or its
development in pastoral use. Paul VI in Marialis Cultus, n. 51
foresaw "exercises of piety ... which take their inspiration from
the Rosary", but do not change its structure. The Apostolic Letter Rosarium
Virginis Mariae offers again, recasting them, some
elements of method (for example, the phrases and other items) and of
content (the mysteries of light). This is already history, but we can
perceive it as something current today.
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