The Rosary
A string of beads for praying Our Fathers and Hail Marys while meditating on the mysteries of Christ's life with Mary.
What the Rosary means
The Rosary is both a prayer and the string of beads used to count it. Each decade has a large bead for the Our Father and ten small beads for the Hail Mary, and the beads converge on the crucifix, where the prayer begins and ends. The name comes from the Latin rosarium, a rose garden or garland of roses.
The Catechism calls the Rosary an "epitome of the whole Gospel" (CCC 971) and names it, with lectio divina, as a way of meditating on the mysteries of Christ (CCC 2708). The traditional form had fifteen decades on the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries. In his 2002 letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, St. John Paul II added five Luminous Mysteries from Christ's public ministry: his Baptism in the Jordan, the wedding at Cana, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the institution of the Eucharist.
HistoryCounting prayers is older than the Rosary itself. The Catholic Encyclopedia mentions a fourth-century hermit who counted his daily prayers with pebbles, and medieval strings of beads called paternosters used for the Lord's Prayer. A popular tradition credits St. Dominic with the Rosary; the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia found no early evidence for it and traced the story to the preaching of Alan de Rupe around 1470.
