{"id":80230,"date":"2026-02-04T00:50:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T05:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=80230"},"modified":"2026-03-19T21:58:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:58:48","slug":"80230-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/80230-2\/","title":{"rendered":"HISTORIC BACKGROUND OF THE SCRIPTURAL ROSARY"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the powerhouse booklet, <\/em>Scriptural Rosary<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

The story of how the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary originated, and how it has developed and changed over the centuries, is one of the most interesting but little-known chapters of the history of our Faith.<\/p>\n

A brief look at this curious story will show that the Scriptural Rosary<\/em> is actually very similar to the form of Rosary that was once in universal use during the late Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

It is an outgrowth [asserts the compiler] of the 150 Psalms of David.<\/p>\n

Most historians trace the origin of the Rosary as we know it today back to the so-called Dark Ages of ninth-century Ireland.<\/p>\n

In those days, as is still true today, the 150 Psalms of David were one of the most important forms of monastic prayer. Monks recited or chanted the Psalms day after day as a major source of inspiration.<\/p>\n

The lay people who lived near the monasteries could see the beauty of this devotion but very few knew how to read in those days, and because the 150 Psalms are too long to memorize, the lay people were unable to adapt this prayer this prayer form for their own use.<\/p>\n

As a substitute, they began reciting a fixed number of simpler prayers. These prayer forms eventually came to be known as \u201cpsalters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because these various prayer forms were held in such high regard, perhaps it was inevitable that they would eventually be combined.<\/p>\n

The Carthusians Combine Prayers and Mysteries<\/span><\/p>\n

The first step toward the combination of these different kinds of psalters came in about 1365 A.D., when Henry of Kalkar, the Visitor of the Carthusian Order, grouped the 150 Angelic Salutations into decades and placed an Our Father before each decade. This combined the Our Father and the Hail Mary for the first time.<\/p>\n

Next, in about 1409, another Carthusian, Dominic the Prussian, wrote a book which attached a psalter of fifty thoughts about the lives of Jesus and Mary to a Rosary of fifty Hail Marys. This was the first time that a special thought was ever provided for each Hail Mary bead.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the fifty Hail Mary thoughts of Dominic the Prussian were divided, as Henry of Kalkar had done, into groups of ten, with an Our Father in between. Many variations of this form were composed between about 1425 and 1470, but the changes were gradual, not sudden.<\/p>\n

HISTORIC BACKGROUND<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Dominicans Popularize the Special Hail Mary Thoughts<\/span><\/p>\n

By 1470, when the Dominican Alan of Rupe founded the first Rosary Confraternity\u2014and thereby launched the Dominican Order as the foremost missionaries of the Rosary\u2014he could refer to the Rosary with a special thought for each Hail Mary bead (which was the form he favored) as the \u201cnew\u201d Rosary. He referred to the form consisting of Hail Marys with no accompanying statements as the \u201cold\u201d Rosary.<\/p>\n

Through the efforts of Alan of Rupe and the early Dominicans, this prayer form\u2014150 Hail Marys with a special thought for each bead\u2014spread rapidly throughout Western Christendom.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that this form of Rosary\u2014the form which Alan of Rupe promoted so successfully as the Rosary of Saint Dominic\u2014is the model upon which the new Scriptural Rosary<\/em> is based; that is, a Rosary with a special thought for each of the 200 Hail Mary beads.<\/p>\n

[SD note: Through the years\u2014since the mid-1980s\u2014we have found this to be a real powerhouse: not just fifteen decades but also reading Scripture every day, a great way to begin the morning. With it we are saying: Not today, Satan.]<\/em><\/p>\n

[resources: the Scriptural Rosary<\/em><\/a><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the powerhouse booklet, Scriptural Rosary: The story of how the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary originated, and how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-80230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-inspiration","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}