Our Lady of the Rosary refers to an alleged apparition that appeared to a
Spanish preacher, Domingo de Guzman, later to become Saint Dominic. The
holy man travelled to southern France to oppose the Albegesian
heresy which by 1208 A.D. was spreading rapidly. In the year 1208,
while he was allegedly praying in a chapel in Prouille, France, the
apparition of the Blessed Virgin came to him. She gave him the Rosary and
urged him to preach the Rosary to all devout Christians as a remedy
against heresy and sin. Domingo de Guzman founded an order of preaching
friars who set out to quash the Albegesian heresy and establish
monasteries all over the world. It was the beginning of the Dominican
Friars, or the Dominicans.
The legend is dubious, coming from one Alan de la Roche, some 250 years
later. A number of writers doubt the report and even some Dominicans
discard the testimony of de la Roche. According to Fr. Thurston in an
article in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "Alan was a very earnest and devout
man, but, as the highest authorities admit, he was full of delusions, and
based his revelations on the imaginary testimony of writers that never
existed", specifically "Thomas de Templo" and "Joannes de Monte."
Since there is evidence that counting devices of beads existed long before
St. Dominic and since the lives of St.. Dominic make no mention of the
apparition nor did the witnesses at his canonization, the legend is greatly
lacking in substance.
In the majority of apparitions, the entity appears to innocents multiple
times and appears more concerned about world peace than religious
expression. It is only a papal support throughout the centuries that
speaks of St. Dominic as the author of the Rosary, and suggests that there
was a more divine influence of its creation. (Pope Alexander VI, 1495;
Pope Leo X, 1520, as well as others.)
The apparition is mentioned here only because of its recognition by the
church, and because tradition suggests that the Rosary came directly from
the Blessed Virgin Mary to Domingo de Guzman (St. Dominic). But for those
pilgrims who may wish to follow a journey that incorporates locales of
significant appearances by Mary, it appears that Prouille, France can
likely be bypassed.
Additional Notes:
The Rosary replaced a popular devotion that consisted of reciting the 150
Psalms of the Bible, fifty at a time. Instead of the Psalms, 150 Our
Fathers were recited, and over the course of the middle ages, the Lord's
Prayer was replaced by Hail Mary. In the 4th Century, prayer rope was
used to count repetitions of the Jesus Prayer. About 1075, lady Godiva
referred in her will to a "circlet of precious stones" which she had
threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them sequentially, she might
count her prayers accurately. In 1160, St. Rosalia was buried with a
string of prayer beads, fifty years before St. Dominic allegedly authored
them through the divine apparition. It should, however, be noted that by
1917, the apparition at Fatima was said to have asked that the Fatima
Prayer be added to the Rosary, and that the Rosary is to be said to stop
the Great War (World War One), suggesting that divine entities, do indeed
have a concern for religious expression.
