the rosary and St.Dominic

[Didacus]

Ran accross someone who said the rosary and St.Dominic had much common ground, saying that the Virgin Mary had appeared to St.Dominic and gave him 15 promises related to the rosary.

This is the first time I've heard of this and don't know what to make of it really. Is there any truth to this?

The 15 promises make sense, but is this part of Catholic doctrine?
Has there ever been 'promises' cited related to the praying the Rosary?

Thank you,

Didace

[Laudate_Dominum]

I believe the promises of the Rosary are matters of private revelation and not doctrine.

Anyway, I here post on behalf of Adeodatus, our illustrious Church Scholar at large.

Laudate,

I wrote a pamphlet on the history and development of the Rosary some years ago. I'm attaching it below. It doesn't say much about the Franciscan, Carmelite rosaries, but many different kinds of rosaries evolved in the middle ages. It really is a matter of personal reference. I prefer the standard Rosary, because it's the one I grew up with and its the so-called 'Rosary of St Dominic'. You'll see in the history below that I believe the Rosary is the fusion of 3 elements of piety.



THE ROSARY
‘OUR SACRED HERITAGE’


The Rosary is a devotional exercise which combines elements of three older kinds of meditations to create a new, more engrossing prayer. It fuses the imitation of (1) monastic chanting of the Psalter with (2) the desire to praise Our Lady and (3) meditations on the life of Christ. Its effect on Catholic piety is far-reaching, and it remains a powerful and popular devotion of the Christian faithful. Pious legend relates that the Rosary was given in a vision to St Dominic by Our Lady. Certainly, the Rosary as it exists today is known as ‘the Rosary of St Dominic’. Rosary-like devotions, associated with other saints including St Francis, never became as popular, although many have survived. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Rosary was shaped and popularised by the Dominicans. It is particularly apt for Dominicans because it focuses on the central themes of the gospel: the incarnation, death and resurrection of Our Lord, and Mary’s pre-eminent role in all this as the disciple par excellence.

(1) Reciting the psalms has always been a Christian devotion, and the early monks began to sing the entire psalter at least weekly. At Tallaght the Irish monks recited all 150 psalms daily in three groupings called na tri coicat (the three fifties). For the sake of the more or less illiterate laity, the psalms were substituted by short antiphons which interpreted each psalm as a reference to Christ. As these were too difficult to remember, the Irish monks, around AD 750, substituted the 150 antiphons with a simple biblical prayer, the Our Father (Pater Noster). This paternoster form of the Psalter was called the ‘Little Psalter’.

People naturally had recourse to simple mechanisms of keeping track of these prayers, rather than relying on their fingers. As early as the third century Christians began using pebbles and knotted cords to count their prayers. Later they began to use pebbles, berries or discs of bone threaded on a string. The famous Lady Godiva of Coventry (d. 1041) left to a statue of Our Lady ‘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’. Such strings of beads were named after the prayer said on them and known as paternosters. Paternoster Row in London preserves the memory of where the craftsmen who made these cords congregated. The everyday term ‘beads’ is simply the Anglo-Saxon word bede (prayer) transferred to the instrument used in reciting prayer. The old phrase ‘to tell one’s beads,’ which refers to the Rosary, means ‘to count (or tally) one’s prayers’. By the thirteenth century these cords were called chaplets (wreaths of flowers) or coronas (crowns).

It was not until the mid-twelfth century that paternoster beads were used to count Hail Maries (Aves). St Aybert (d. 1140) used to genuflect or prostrate 150 times a day, while repeating at each gesture, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’. This form of the Ave, with only the biblical portion, is found in the Liturgies of St James and St Mark, which go back to the fourth or fifth century. In the sixth century, the Coptic form has the addition, ‘Because you have conceived Christ, the Son of God, redeemer of our souls’. The name ‘Jesus’ is said to have been added to the salutation by Pope Urban IV (1261-4). The second part of the prayer, prompted by the need to join petition to praise, may have been influenced by the Litany of Saints (from the seventh century), which has the invocation ‘Holy Mary, pray for us’. By the fifteenth century this petition became ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen’, possibly through the effects of the horrors of the Black Death.

(2) Devotion to Mary goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. The earliest forms of the Ave were designed as salutations: to praise Our Lady for the honour God had bestowed upon her. The Akathistos (literally ‘not-sitting’, i.e. standing) is a long hymn sung in Our Lady’s honour which is part of the Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox divine office and dates from 626. It has twenty-four stanzas, half of which are composed of 13 lines beginning with ‘Hail’. As its name implies, it is sung while standing.

The first stanza narrates the mission of Gabriel to Mary; and his astonishment at the condescension of the Almighty is so great that he bursts forth into: ‘Hail, for through thee joy shall shine forth!/Hail, for through thee the curse shall cease!/Hail, recalling of fallen Adam!/Hail, redemption of Eve’s tears!’ The second stanza gives the questioning of Mary; the third continues it and gives the answer of Gabriel; the fourth narrates the Incarnation; the fifth the visit to Elizabeth, with a series of ‘Hails’ conceived as being translations into words of the joyful leapings of the Baptist; the sixth, Joseph’s trouble of mind; the seventh, the coming of the shepherds, who begin their greetings very appropriately: ‘Hail, Mother of the Lamb and Shepherd!/Hail, Sheepfold of rational sheep!’ In the ninth stanza the Magi, startled, cry out in joy: ‘Hail, Mother of the unwestering Star!/Hail, Splendour of the mystic Day!’ The eleventh recounts the Flight into Egypt with allusions to the Exodus: ‘Hail, Sea that didst overwhelm the wise Pharaoh!/Hail, Rock that gavest life to the thirsty!’ with other references to the cloud, the pillar of fire, the manna, etc. The twelfth and thirteenth deal with Simeon; and the rest are more general in character.

A Latin Akathistos was produced around 1050, which inspired a whole genre of rhythmic Marian greeting hymns. Marian litanies also developed at this time, inspired in part by the Litany of Saints. The most famous, the Litany of Loreto (twelfth century), which is still in use, is heavily influenced by the Akathistos.

(3) The idea of meditating on the life of Christ seems to come from two monks in Yorkshire. Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167) describes a method of meditation similar to the modern Rosary. For example, when reflecting on the Annunciation one should enter Mary’s chamber together with the angel and salute the sweetest Lady with him, frequently repeating his Ave Maria. One should enter into Mary’s feelings on hearing the greeting, follow her when she visits Elizabeth and when she gives birth to Jesus at Bethlehem; at the Passion one should unite one’s own tears to those of the sorrowful Mother. Another Yorkshireman, Stephen of Salley (d. 1252), popularised a devotion made up of 15 meditations grouped into three sections of five meditations each, divided into joyful, sorrowful and glorious. The meditations are simple, and each ends with an Ave. Mary is seen almost entirely in her role as mother of Christ.

St Dominic and the first brethren of the Order of Preachers were accustomed to recite Aves on their knees, a practice going back to the eleventh century. They genuflected with each Ave, just as the angel Gabriel did in ancient depictions of the Annunciation. By 1266 the Dominican lay brothers were praying 150 Our Fathers and Hail Marys, like David’s Psalter. This became known as the Marian Psalter. Blessed Romée of Livia, a companion of St Dominic’s, and prior of Lyons in 1223 and later provincial of Provence, was said to have died clutching the knotted cord on which he counted his Aves. This is the Rosary in embryonic form. Before 1235, the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ’, a lay group associated with St Dominic which later became the Third Order, were praying the Marian Psalter daily.

Thus all the elements of the modern Rosary were in place in St Dominic’s time, and came together around his lifetime. Indeed, the earliest forms of the modern Rosary are associated with his companions and associates. Considering the targets of St Dominic’s preaching, his emphasis on the Incarnation, and his well-known devotion to the Blessed Virgin, it does appear that the embryonic Rosary is somehow connected with St Dominic himself, or his earliest companions. The Marian Psalter declined in the period following, and was revived by two Dominicans, Blessed Alain de la Roche, who established the ‘Confraternity of the Psalter of the Glorious Virgin Mary’ at Douai in 1470 to promote this devotion, and Jakob Sprenger, who founded the ‘Confraternity of the Rosary’ at Cologne in 1475. Both of them sincerely believed that they were merely re-establishing an old tradition of prayer, and references to St Dominic and the Marian Psalter pre-date both of them.

In the 1480s Dominicans had begun preaching the Rosary, and the devotion spread rapidly, aided by the widespread diffusion of ‘picture Rosaries’—prints of the fifteen mysteries to aid meditation, which ordinary people displayed in their homes. The friars recited the Rosary in choir, side-against-side, splitting the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be in two halves. The Glory Be had been added as it was the normal ending to the psalms chanted in choir. A rosary book written by a Dominican in 1483, Our Dear Lady’s Psalter, contains 15 mysteries all of which, except the last two, correspond to the mysteries as they stand today. The Coronation of Our Lady was combined with the Assumption, and the last mystery was the Last Judgement. A vestige of this survives in Dominican rosaries, where the last mystery is commonly prayed as ‘The Coronation of Our Lady and the Glory of all the Saints’.

In 1569 the Dominican pope, St Pius V, officially approved the Rosary which had been completed with the addition of the second half of the Hail Mary (‘Holy Mary…’) and the Glory Be. The same pope instituted the Feast of the Holy Rosary in 1573, in thanksgiving for the Christian victory at Lepanto. Subsequent popes have richly indulgenced the Rosary devotion. The Rosary customarily concludes with the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen), which dates from the eleventh century and is probably the best-known Latin Marian hymn.

Each chaplet was called a ‘rosarium’ (a rose-garden), by the association of the rose with the Blessed Virgin, e.g. in her title Rosa Mystica (Mystical Rose). The rose was attributed with healing properties and associated with immortality, great beauty and fragrance, and quite naturally became a symbol of Mary. Our Lady was called the rosa pudoris (rose of modesty) and rosa e spinis (rose among thorns). The source of these images was the Old Testament Song of Songs, where the bride praises her beloved as the ‘rose of Sharon’ and he admires her as ‘a lily among thorns’. Mary herself was also called a rose-garden (rosarium), and ‘the name of the rose [she brings forth] is Christ’. A rose with five petals symbolised Christ’s five wounds, and a red rose (bleeding rose), his Passion. Indeed, some poems mention the ‘rose-tree of the cross’. A white rose symbolised Mary’s purity. In the thirteenth century, Aves themselves came to be seen as roses. The rose is Christ, and Christ is the Word, so the words of the Ave Maria (spoken to commemorate the Incarnation of the Word) are a ‘rose’. It has five phrases and five petals representing the name MARIA. Aves prayed by Christians were roses woven into a wreath (chaplet) by Our Lady to crown either herself or the Christian.The imagery of the rose and rose-garden became symbolic of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion and of Mary’s purity:

‘[Christ] followed the noble fragrance until he came to the beautiful rose… For the Son of the Most High saw this lovely, tender, fragrant rose blooming among the thorns of the sinful world and the sweet fragrance of her earnest desire wafted up to him unceasingly. He was caught up by her eager love and so enraptured that he leapt from his Father’s lap down to this rose among thorns and was so sorely pierced that his hands and feet bled’ (Our Lady Mary’s Rose Garden, c. 1430).

[Laudate_Dominum]

And here are the fifteen promises that you asked about:

1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces.

2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.

3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.

4. It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.

6. Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.

7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church.

8. Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise.

9. I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.

10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.

11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.

12. All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.

13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.

14. All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ.

15. Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.