The History of the
Holy Rosary
by Saint Louis Marie De Montfort
Since the Rosary is composed, principally
and in substance, of the prayer of Christ and the Angelic Salutation, that is,
the Our Father and the Hail Mary, it was without doubt the first prayer and the
principal devotion of the faithful and has been in use all through the
centuries, from the time of the apostles and disciples down to the present.
It was only in the year 1214, however, that the Church received the Rosary in
its present form and according to the method we use today. It was given to the
Church by St. Dominic, who had received it from the Blessed Virgin as a means of
converting the Albigensians and other sinners. Saint Dominic, seeing that
the gravity of people's sins was hindering the conversion of the Albigensians,
withdrew into a forest near Toulouse, where he prayed continuously for three
days and three nights. During this time he did nothing but weep and do harsh
penances in order to appease the anger of God. He used his discipline so much
that his body was lacerated, and finally he fell into a coma. At this
point our Lady appeared to him, accompanied by three angels, and she said, "Dear
Dominic, do you know which weapon the Blessed Trinity wants to use to reform the
world?" "Oh, my Lady," answered Saint Dominic,
"you know far better than I do, because next to your Son Jesus Christ you
have always been the chief instrument of our salvation." Then our
Lady replied, "I want you to know that, in this kind of warfare, the
principal weapon has always been the Angelic Psalter, which is the
foundation-stone of the New Testament. Therefore, if you want to reach these
hardened souls and win them over to God, preach my Psalter." So
he arose, comforted, and burning with zeal for the conversion of the people in
that district, he made straight for the cathedral. At once unseen angels rang
the bells to gather the people together, and Saint Dominic began to preach.
At the very beginning of his sermon, an appalling storm broke out, the earth
shook, the sun was darkened, and there was so much thunder and lightning that
all were very much afraid. Even greater was their fear when, looking at a
picture of our Lady exposed in a prominent place, they saw her raise her arms to
heaven three times to call down God's vengeance upon them if they failed to be
converted, to amend their lives, and seek the protection of the holy Mother of
God. God wished, by means of these supernatural phenomena, to spread the
new devotion of the holy Rosary and to make it more widely known. At last,
at the prayer of Saint Dominic, the storm came to an end, and he went on
preaching. So fervently and compellingly did he explain the importance and value
of the Rosary that almost all the people of Toulouse embraced it and renounced
their false beliefs. In a very short time a great improvement was seen in the
town; people began leading Christian lives and gave up their former bad habits.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, instructed by
the Blessed Virgin as well as by his own experience, Saint Dominic preached the
Rosary for the rest of his life. He preached it by his example as well as by his
sermons, in cities and in country places, to people of high station and low,
before scholars and the uneducated, to Catholics and to heretics.
The Rosary, which he said every day, was his preparation for every sermon and
his little tryst with our Lady immediately after preaching.
One day he had to preach at Notre Dame in Paris, and it happened to be the feast
of St. John the Evangelist. He was in a little chapel behind the high altar
prayerfully preparing his sermon by saying the Rosary, as he always did, when
our Lady appeared to him and said: "Dominic, even though what you
have planned to say may be very good, I am bringing you a much better
sermon." Saint Dominic took in his hands the book our Lady proffered,
read the sermon carefully and, when he had understood it and meditated on it, he
gave thanks to her. When the time came, he went up into the pulpit and, in
spite of the feast day, made no mention of Saint John other than to say that he
had been found worthy to be the guardian of the Queen of Heaven. The
congregation was made up of theologians and other eminent people, who were used
to hearing unusual and polished discourses; but Saint Dominic told them that it
was not his desire to give them a learned discourse, wise in the eyes of the
world, but that he would speak in the simplicity of the Holy Spirit and with his
forcefulness. So he began preaching the Rosary and explained the Hail Mary
word by word as he would to a group of children, and used the very simple
illustrations which were in the book given him by our Lady.
Blessed Alan, according to Carthagena, mentioned several other occasions when
our Lord and our Lady appeared to Saint Dominic to urge him and inspire him to
preach the Rosary more and more in order to wipe out sin and convert sinners and
heretics. In another passage Carthagena says, "Blessed Alan said our Lady
revealed to him that, after she had appeared to Saint Dominic, her blessed Son
appeared to him and said, 'Dominic, I rejoice to see that you are not relying on
your own wisdom and that, rather than seek the empty praise of men, you are
working with great humility for the salvation of souls. "'But many priests
want to preach thunderously against the worst kinds of sin at the very outset,
failing to realize that before a sick person is given bitter medicine, he needs
to be prepared by being put into the right frame of mind to really benefit by
it. "'That is why, before doing anything else, priests should try to kindle
a love of prayer in people's hearts and especially a love of my Angelic Psalter.
If only they would all start saying it and would really persevere, God in his
mercy could hardly refuse to give them his grace. So I want you to preach my
Rosary."'
All things, even the holiest, are subject
to change, especially when they are dependent on man's free will. It is hardly
to be wondered at, then, that the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary only retained
its first fervor for a century after it was instituted by Saint Dominic. After
this it was like a thing buried and forgotten. Doubtless, too, the wicked
scheming and jealousy of the devil were largely responsible for getting people
to neglect the Rosary, and thus block the flow of God's grace which it had drawn
upon the world.
Thus, in 1349 God punished the whole of Europe with the most terrible plague
that had ever been known. Starting in the east, it spread throughout Italy,
Germany, France, Poland and Hungary, bringing desolation wherever it went, for
out of a hundred men hardly one lived to tell the tale. Big cities, towns,
villages and monasteries were almost completely deserted during the three years
that the epidemic lasted. This scourge of God was quickly followed by two
others, the heresy of the Flagellants and a tragic schism in 1376. Later
on, when these trials were over, thanks to the mercy of God, our Lady told
Blessed Alan to revive the former Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. Blessed Alan
was one of the Dominican Fathers at the monastery at Dinan, in Brittany. He was
an eminent theologian and a famous preacher. Our Lady chose him because, since
the Confraternity had originally been started in that province, it was fitting
that a Dominican from the same province should have the honor of re-establishing
it.
Blessed Alan began this great work in 1460, after a special warning from our
Lord. This is how he received that urgent message, as he himself tells it:
One day when he was offering Mass, our Lord, who wished to spur him on to preach
the holy Rosary, spoke to him in the Sacred Host. "How can you
crucify me again so soon?" Jesus said. "What did
you say, Lord?" asked Blessed Alan, horrified. "You
crucified me once before by your sins," answered Jesus, "and
I would willingly be crucified again rather than have my Father offended by the
sins you used to commit. You are crucifying me again now because you have all
the learning and understanding that you need to preach my Mother's Rosary, and
you are not doing it. If you only did that, you could teach many souls the right
path and lead them away from sin. But you are not doing it, and so you yourself
are guilty of the sins that they commit." This terrible reproach made
Blessed Alan solemnly resolve to preach the Rosary unceasingly. Our Lady
also said to him one day to inspire him to preach the Rosary more and more, "You
were a great sinner in your youth, but I obtained the grace of your conversion
from my Son. Had such a thing been possible, I would have liked to have gone
through all kinds of suffering to save you, because converted sinners are a
glory to me. And I would have done that also to make you worthy of preaching my
Rosary far and wide." Saint Dominic appeared to Blessed Alan as well
and told him of the great results of his ministry: he had preached the Rosary
unceasingly, his sermons had borne great fruit and many people had been
converted during his missions. He said to Blessed Alan, "See
what wonderful results I have had through preaching the Rosary. You and all who
love our Lady ought to do the same so that, by means of this holy practice of
the Rosary, you may draw all people to the real science of the virtues."
Briefly, then, this is the history of how Saint Dominic established the holy
Rosary and of how Blessed Alan de la Roche restored it.
From the time Saint Dominic established the
devotion to the holy Rosary up to the time when Blessed Alan de la Roche
re-established it in 1460, it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and
Mary. This is because it has the same number of Hail Marys as there are psalms
in the Book of the Psalms of David. Since simple and uneducated people are not
able to say the Psalms of David, the Rosary is held to be just as fruitful for
them as David's Psalter is for others.
Ever since Blessed Alan de la Roche re-established this
devotion, the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, gave it the name
of the Rosary, which means "crown of roses." That is to say that every
time people say the Rosary devoutly they place on the heads of Jesus and Mary
153 white roses and sixteen red roses. Being heavenly flowers, these roses will
never fade or lose their beauty.
Our Lady has approved and confirmed this name of the Rosary; she has revealed to
several people that each time they say a Hail Mary they are giving her a
beautiful rose, and that each complete Rosary makes her a crown of roses.
So the complete Rosary is a large crown of roses and each chaplet of five
decades is a little wreath of flowers or a little crown of heavenly roses which
we place on the heads of Jesus and Mary. The rose is the queen of flowers, and
so the Rosary is the rose of devotions and the most important one.