Marian Devotion, the Rosary, and the Scapular

To trace the Rosary devotion to its chronological source proves to be almost impossible; at the most one can attain to marking the emergence of the link between the repeated recitation of the Ave Maria—the most common prayer to the Virgin among Christians since the fourteenth century—and the contemplation of the mysteries of the life of Jesus.

From the end of the eleventh century a Marian devotion characterized by numerous Aves with rhythmic prostrations was already known and practiced in honor of the Virgin, first in honor of her joys, then in honor of her sorrows. In the twelfth century the practice of the frequent repetition of the Ave Maria, linked to the celebration of the joys of Mary, only included the first part of the present angelical salutation. This custom was in place in monasteries of the northwest and environs when St. Dominic began his apostolate among the Cathars. What was essential was to greet the Virgin Mary with all one’s heart, either in reciting or in singing the words of the Ave Maria, sometimes glossed with very different strophes or refrains offered by the composers of numerous "salutations to Our Lady." As to the symbolism of the rose, dear to the Middle Ages, as the Dominican Joret summarizes,

The gospel of the Annunciation (Lk 1:26-38) is found at the origin of this form of Marian devotion which multiplies and repeats salutations and invocations, a form by which the faith was expressed and nourished in the course of centuries. According to this popular medieval Mariology, whose beauty and fervor we have trouble imagining today, it was a matter of offering the joy of the Annunciation as a new echo to the Mother of God in repeating to Mary the words of the Angel Gabriel. It is this experience which Pope John Paul II wished to propose anew at the beginning of the third millennium:

The Psalters of the Virgin Mary likewise began to appear from the twelfth century in certain Cistercian communities where St. Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153) had greatly contributed to the development of Marian mysticism. This usage expanded in the monasteries where the brothers who were not priests, and unlettered monks, were bound to recite 150 Pater Nosters according to the number of Psalms. The lay people were not slow to imitate the prayer of these monks of the contemplative orders, in substituting for the Psalms the Pater and/or the Ave which they memorized more easily. The medieval contemplative religious orders, then, played a capital role in the elaboration of the Rosary, to which the mendicant orders gave the definitive and missionary form.

In the epoch of St. Dominic, and undoubtedly in harmony with the Cistercian tradition, the custom spread of uniting the repetition of the name of Jesus with the angelic salutation (80). The author of a remarkable thesis on the sources of the Rosary, Father Mahé, is of the opinion that the original role of St. Dominic himself was less that of being at the beginning of the Rosary considered as the praying form of devotion, than of adapting this already existing form of piety as a form of preaching according to his specific charism (81). The Dominican M.T. Poupon proposed a good synthesis of this point of view:

If it is important to go back to the flow of the history of the Rosary upstream from the epoch of St. Dominic, it is no less enriching to consider the centuries subsequent to the founder of the Order of Preachers.

According to certain historical accounts, a Carthusian monk of Cologne from the fourteenth century named Henry of Kalkar (+1408) was the first to set forth the precise number of Paters and Aves. The archives of the Charterhouse attest that the Virgin Mary manifested herself to Henry of Kalkar to reveal to him, among other things, how he could compose a more perfect "Psalter": a Pater, ten Aves, up to the total of 15 Paters and of 150 Aves. According to the accounts of the historians it was Henry of Kalkar, then, who inaugurated the subdivision into 15 decades, inserting the Pater between each decade. This association of the Lord’s Prayer with the angelic salutation in Catholic prayer was commented on by Louis Bouyer in these terms:

The fifteenth century unquestionably opened a new and decisive phase in the evolution of this Marian prayer. In the heart of the Charterhouse of St. Alban, situated near Trêves, during the priorship of Adolf of Essen, Henry of Kalkar’s "Psalter of Mary" flourished well along with the "Rosary." In this epoch the word "rosary" designated a series of 50 Aves. Adolf of Essen (+1439) prayed 50 Hail Marys each day meditating at the same time on the life of Jesus. As spiritual father he communicated his method to others and invited them to contemplate Holy Scripture with the Heart of Mary. Adolf of Essen wanted to teach this art of praying to a young student of the Charterhouse named Dominic of Prussia (+1460), but this young Carthusian proved to be incapable of concentrating on the meditation (84). This is why he had the idea of dividing the life of Jesus into 50 phrases (clausulae) and of joining to each clausula an Ave Maria. These clausulae, composed of a few words associated with the name of Jesus, spread rapidly. And later Dominic published a series of 150 clausulae for the entire Marian psalter. This "Rosary" was not yet composed of "decades," but of a group of 50 Ave Marias, where the name of Jesus received a new coloration each time while evoking a word or a different event from the Gospel. Popes Paul VI (85) and John Paul II recalled this usage, practiced since Dominic of Prussia in certain regions, to highlight the name of Christ, while adding an evocative clausula on the mystery which one is meditating on (86):

Bl. Alan de la Roche (+1475), a Dominican of Breton origin who was associated with the Carthusians, certainly knew Henry of Kalkar’s "Psalter of Mary," as well as the "rosary" of Dominic of Prussia which had begun to spread. The historians are unanimous in underscoring his determinative role not only in the evolution of the Rosary, but above all in its diffusion. It was he who presented St. Dominic as the first protagonist of the Rosary. Bl. Alan de la Roche is the author of several writings which served as a common source for numerous subsequent works on the Rosary.  It was thus that the Rosier Mystique de la Très Sainte Vierge (1685) of the Dominican Antoninus Thomas, or yet again The Admirable Secret of the Most Holy Rosary of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, not published during his life but described by Pope John Paul II as "an excellent work on the Rosary" (RVM 8), make numerous borrowings from Alan de la Roche. After his death, the first Confraternity of the Rosary was erected in Cologne (1475) by James Sprenger, prior of the Dominican Priory. The list of the traditional "mysteries" was established thanks to printers at the end of the fifteenth century. The appellation "Rosary" really begins to prevail from the time of Pope Leo X (1520). As to the expression "mysteries of the Rosary," this appears for the first time, it seems, under the pen of Alberto of Castello in his celebrated work Il Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria (Venice, 1521). The sixteenth century will not finish without a decisive intervention on the part of the Papal Magisterium, which would define the form of the prayer of the Rosary in an epoch of troubles for the Church and for the world.

From the Magisterial Reception of the Rosary (1569) to the Introduction of the Luminous Mysteries (2002)

On September 15, 1569, with the Bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices the Dominican Pope St. Pius V (+1572) officially consecrated the Rosary by imposing an imprint which it has kept up to our days. This foundational text defined the Rosary in these terms:

The preceding year, in the revision of the breviary, the same Pius V had already introduced into the official prayer of the Church the formula of the Ave Maria, including the second part (which dates from the fifteenth century): Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.  The bull of 1569 rendered this formula for the Hail Mary fixed and uniform which was widely spread in relation with the Rosary devotion. From the time of this bull of St. Pius V, a strong Dominican primacy was established on the creation and direction of the Rosary Confraternities (88), for St. Dominic was then unanimously considered as the Father of the Rosary. A little more than a century later, St. Louis-Marie de Montfort himself entered the Third Order of the Dominicans on November 10, 1710, and solicited from the Master General of the Order of Preachers permission not only to preach the holy Rosary wherever he would be called, but also to found confraternities. Father de Montfort insisted much on the importance of meditating on the mysteries, and invited his hearers to ask always for one of the virtues which shine most in each mystery meditated upon (89). The recitation of the Creed, of the Our Father followed by the three Hail Marys, along with the formula of offering and statement of the fruits of each mystery are of Montfortian origin. In the perspective of St. Louis-Marie "the holy Rosary is a sacred composition of vocal and mental prayer to honor and imitate the mysteries and the virtues of the life, of the death and Passion and of the glory of Jesus Christ and of Mary" (SR 9).