Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/224

 ROSARY

186

ROSART

us: A hundred times a day he bent his knees, and fifty times he prostrated himself raising his body again by his fingers and toes, while he repeated at every genuflexion: 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb'. " This was the whole of the Hail Mary as then said, and the fact of all the words being set down rather implies that the formula had not vet become universally famiUar. Not less remarkable is the account of a similar devo- tional exercise occurring in the Corpus Christi MS. of the Ancren Riwle (q. v.). This text, declared by Kolbing to have been written in the middle of the twelfth centurv (Englische Studien, 1885, p. 116), can in anv case be hardly later than 1200. The passage in question gives directions how fifty Aves are to be said divided into sets of ten, with prostra- tions and other marks of reverence. (See The Month, July, 1903.) When we find such an exercise recom- mended to a httle group of anchoresses in a corner of England, twenty years before any Dominican foundation was made in this country, it seems diffi- cult to resist the conclusion that the custom of re- citing fiftv or a hundred and fifty Aves had grown familiar, "independently of, and earlier than, the preacliing of St. Dominic. On the other hand, the practice of meditating on certain definite mysteries, which has been rightly described as the very essence of the Rosars' devotion, seems to have only arisen long after the date of St. Dominic's death. It is difficult to prove a negative, but Father T. Esser, O.P., has shown (in the periodical "Der Katholik", of Mainz, Oct., Nov., Dec, 1897) that the introduc- tion of this meditation during the recitation of the A^■es was rightly attributed to a certain Carthusian, Dominic the Prussian. It is in any case certain that at the close of the fifteenth century the utmost pos- sible variety of methods of meditating prevailed, and that the fifteen mysteries now generally accepted were not uniformly adhered to even by the Domini- cans themselves. (See Schmitz, "Rosenkranzgebet", p. 74; Esser in "Der Katholik" for 1904-6.) To sum up, we have positive evidence that both the invention of the beads as a counting apparatus and also the practice of repeating a hundred and fifty Aves cannot be due to St. Dominic, because they are both notably older than his time. Further, we are assured that the meditating upon the mysteries was not introduced until two hundred years after his death. What then, we are compelled to ask, is there left of which St. Dominic may be called the author? These positive reasons for distrusting the current tradition might in a measure be ignored as archaeo- logical refinements, if there were any satisfactory evidence to show that St. Dominic had identified himself with the pre-existing Ro.sary and become its ap<jstie. But here we are met with absolute silence. Of the eight or nine early Lives of the saint, not one makes the faintest allusion to the Rosary. The witnesses who gave evidence in the cause of his canonization are equally reticent. In the great collection of documents accumulated by Fathers Balme and I^elaidier, O.P., in their "Cartulaire de St. Dominique" the question is studiously ignored. The early c<^)n8titutionH of the different provinces of the order have been examined, and many of them printed, but no one has found any reference to this devotion. We possess hundreds, even thousands, of manuscripts containing devotional treatises, sermons, chronidf*. Saints' lives, etc., written by the Friars Preachers between 1220 and 1450; but no single verifiable passage has yet been produced which speaks of the Rosary as instituted by St. Dominic or which even makes much of the devotion as one spfjciaily dear to his children. The charters and other deeds of the Dominican convents for men and women, as M. Jean Guiraud points out with

emphasis in his edition of the Cartulaire of La Prouille (I, cccxxviii), are equally silent. Neither do we find any suggestion of a connexion between St. Dominic and the Rosary in the paintings and sculptures of these two and a half centuries. Even the tomb of St. Dominic at Bologna and the number- less frescoes by Fra Angelico representing the brethren of his order ignore the Rosary completely.

Impressed by this conspiracy of silence, the Bol- landists, on trying to trace to its source the origin of the current tradition, found that all the clues con- verged upon one point, the preaching of the Domini- can Alan de Rupe about the years 1470-75. He it undoubtedly was who first suggested the idea that the devotion of "Our Lady's Psalter" (a hundred and fifty Hail INIarys) was instituted or revived by St. Dominic. 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 (see Quetif and Echard, "Scriptores O.P.", I, 849). His preaching, however, was attended with much success. The Rosary Confraternities, organized by him and his colleagues at Douai, Cologne, and else- where had great vogue, and led to the printing of many books, all more or less impregnated with the ideas of Alan. Indulgences were granted for the good work that was thus being done and the documents conceding these indulgences accepted and repeated, as was natural in that uncritical age, the historical data which had been inspired by Alan's writings and which were submitted according to the usual prac- tice by the promoters of the confraternities them- selves. " It was in this way that the tradition of Domini- can authorship grew up. The first Bulls speak of this authorship with some reserve: "Prout in historiis legitur" says Leo X in the earliest of all, "Pastoris ajterni" 1520; but many of the later popes were less guarded.

Two considerations strongly support the view of the Rosary tradition just expounded. The first is the gradual surrender of almost every notable piece of evidence that has at one time or another been relied upon to vindicate the supposed claims of St. Dominic. Touron and Alban Butler appealed to the Memoirs of a certain Luminosi de Aposa who pro- fessed to have heard St. Dominic preach at Bologna, but these Memoirs have long ago been proved to be a forgery. Danzas, Von Loe and others attached much importance to a fresco at Muret; but the fresco is not now in existence, and there is good reason for believing that the rosary once seen in that fresco was painted in at a later date ("The Month" Feb. 1901, p. 179). Mamachi, Esser, Walsh, and Von Loe quote some alleged contemporary verses about St. Dominic in connexion with a crown of roses; but the original manuscript has (lisai)p(>ared, and it is certain that the writers named have printed Domin- icus where Benoist, the only person who has seen the manuscript, read Doyninus. The famous will of Anthony Sers, which professed to leave a bequest to the Confraternity of the Rosary at Palencia in 1221, was put forward as a conclusive piece of testi- mony by Mamachi; but it is now admitted by Domin- ican authorities to be a forgery ("The Irish Ro- sary," Jan., 1901, p. 92). Similarly, a supposed ref- erence to the subject by Thomas k Kempis in the "Chronicle of Mount St. Agnes" is a pure blunder ("The Month", PVb., 1901, p. 187). With this may be noted the change in tone observable of late in authoritative works of reference. In the "Kirch- liches Handlexikon" of Munich and in the last edi- tion of Herder's " Konversationslexikon" no attempt is made to defend the tradition which connects St. Dominic personally with the origin of the Rosary. Another consideration which cannot be developed here is the multitude of conflicting legends concern-