The Rosary is a treasured prayer for a lot of Catholics. As with any tradition that dates back more than 1,000 years its historical development is difficult to verify. But there are a few facts about which several sources seems to agree.
Certainly, the idea of using beads to count prayers is not unique to Christianity. In fact, it is probably older than Christianity. I love this thought from Dynamic Catholic: “While praying with beads certainly wasn’t an original idea, it’s a powerful reminder that everything before the coming of Jesus was preparing for that moment and that God yearns to transform everything into something holy, even something as ordinary as a small rope with some beads on it.” (found here, para 14)
The development of the rosary as we know it probably grew out of Medieval times. The monks recited all 150 psalms every day, and the laity wanted to mimic the practice. But most members of the laity couldn’t afford to buy a copy of the book of psalms, nor could they read it anyway, if they did. So they started saying 150 Our Fathers each day, and eventually started counting them on beads.
Then the monks started adding St. Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:28) at the end of each psalm . It was meant to signify the fulfillment of the promise of the psalms, the incarnation, which directly followed Gabriel speaking those words. Eventually, that caught on with the people, too, so they began saying that 150 times. Later they broke them into groups of 10 with Our Fathers in between.
Around 1050, they added Elizabeth’s greeting, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” (Luke 1:42) Pope Urban IV added the name of Jesus to the end in 1261.
At some point the monks added a new tradition to their recitation of the psalms. At the end of each psalm the recited a short phrase recalling some event in the lives of Jesus and Mary. Again, the laity wanted to mimic the prayer, but recalling 150 phrases was a bit much. So they shortened the list to 15, one for each decade. So by the end of the 15th century the basic structure was in place: Our Fathers dividing decades of Hail Marys with meditations on the life of Christ or Mary.
In 1555, St. Peter Canisius published the Hail Mary with the addition of “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,” then the Catechism of the Council of Trent in 1566 included the whole prayer. The official version of the Hail Mary was approved in 1568.
Sometime in the 16th century the meditations were organized into the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries, and the Glory Be was added at the end of every decade. In 1569, Pope Saint Pius V officially approved the rosary.
May 13, 1917, Mary appeared at Fatima, Portugal, to 3 shepherd children. She promised to return on the 13th of each month for the next 6 months. On July 13, 1917, she gave the children a new prayer and instructed them to tell everyone to add it to the end of each decade of the rosary: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of they mercy.”
The rosary had its next big addition in 2002. Pope Saint John Paul II published an Apostolic Letter on October 16, 2002 naming the coming year the Year of the Rosary, calling on Catholics to renew their devotion to this form of meditative prayer, and introducing the Luminous Mysteries. In the letter, John Paul II said, “to bring out fully the Christological depth of the Rosary it would be suitable to make an addition to the traditional pattern which… could broaden it to include the mysteries of Christ’s public ministry between his Baptism and His passion.” (found here, para 14)
Thank you Lord for leading us to the comfort of meditative prayer. Thank you for inspiring us with Mary, the perfect example of a life devoted to Your will. She considered herself “the handmaid of the Lord,” and put full faith in You. Help us learn to approach that level of trust in You.