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Rh ROSAMOND, known as “ The Fair ” (d. c. 1176), mistress of Henry II., king of' England, is believed to have been the daughter of Walter de Clifford of the family of Fitz-Ponce. The evidence for the paternity is, however, only an entry of a statement made by the jurors of the manor of Corfham in a Hundred Roll of the second year of the reign of Edward I. (1274), great grandson of Henry II. Rosamond is said to have been Henry's mistress secretly for several years, but was openly acknowledged by him only when he imprisoned his wife Eleanor of Acquitaine as a punishment for her encouragement of her sons in the rebellion of 1173–74. She died in or about 1176, and was buried in the nunnery church of Godstow before the high altar. The body was removed by order of St Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, in 1191, and was, seemingly, reinterred in the chapter house. The story that she was poisoned by Queen Eleanor first appears in the French Chronicle of London in the 14th century. The romantic details of the labyrinth at Woodstock, and the clue which guided King Henry II. to her bower, were the inventions of story-writers of later times. There is no evidence for the belief that she was the mother of Henry's natural son William Longsword, earl of Salisbury.

ROSARIO, a city and river port of Argentina, in the province of Santa Fé, on the W. bank of the Parana, 186 m. by rail N.W. of Buenos Aires. Pop. (1904, estimate) 120,000. It is accessible to ocean-going steamers of medium draught. The city stands on the eastern margin of the great pampean plain, 65 to 75 ft. above the wide river-bed washed out by the Parané. It extends back a considerable distance from the river, and there are country residences and gardens of the better class along the line of the Central Argentine railway and northward toward San Lorenzo. The city is laid out with chessboard regularity, and the streets are paved (in great part with cobblestones), lighted with gas and electricity, traversed by tramway lines, and provided with sewers and water mains. The Boulevard El Santafecino is an attractive residence street with double driveways separated by a strip of garden and bordered by fine shade trees. The chief edifices of an official character are the custom house, post office, municipal hall and law courts. There is a large charity hospital, and the English and German colonies maintain a well-equipped infirmary. The. largest sugar refinery in Argentina is here, and there are flour-mills, breweries and some smaller manufactures. The city is chiefly commercial, being the shipping port for a large part of northern Argentina, among its exports being wheat, flour, baled hay, linseed, Indian corn, sugar, rum, cattle, hides, meats, wool, quebracho extract, &c. The railway connexions are good, including the Buenos Aires and Rosario and the Central Argentine lines to the national capital, the Buenos Aires and Rosario line northward to Tucuman, where it connects with the government line to Salta, Iujuy and the Bolivian frontier, the Central Argentine line westward to Cordoba, with connexion sat Villa Maria for Mendoza and the Chilean frontier, and two narrow gauge lines, one running to Santa Fé and the other to Cordoba. The port of Rosario has hitherto consisted of a deep river anchorage and wooden wharves on the lower bank for the accommodation of steamers. Since 1902 work has been in progress under a contract with a French company for the construction of 12,697 ft. of quays, 23 m. of railway tracks along the quays to connect with the several railways entering the city, drawbridges, roadways, sheds, depots, elevator, offices, electric plant, fixed and movable cranes, and other appliances, &c., for the handling of produce and merchandise. The trade of the port was officially valued at 21,276,672 Arg. gold dollars imports, and 68,503,231 gold dollars exports in 1905.

Rosario was founded in 1730 by Francisco Godoy, but it grew so slowly that it was still a small village up to the middle of the 19th century. In 1854 General Justo José de Urquiza, then at the head of the Argentine Confederation, made it the port of the ten inland provinces then at war with Buenos Aires, and in 1857 imposed differential duties on the cargoes of vessels first breaking bulk at the southern port. This gave Rosario a start, and its trade and population have grown since then with great rapidity.

ROSARY (Lat. rosarium), a popular devotion of the Roman Catholic Church, consisting of 15 Paternosters and Glorias and 150 Aves, recited on beads. It is divided into three parts, each containing five decades, a decade comprising 1 Pater, 10 Aves and a Gloria, in addition to a subject for meditation selected from the “ mysteries” of the life of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. The Christian practice of repeating prayers is traceable to early times: Sozomen mentions (H.E. v. 29) the hermit Paul of the 4th century who threw away a pebble as he recited each of his 300 daily prayers; and a canon of the English synod of Cealcythe in 816 (Mansi xiv. 360) directed septum beltidum Paternoster to be said for a deceased bishop. In many orders the lay brothers daily said a large number of Paternosters instead of reading the breviary; it was natural that the Paternoster should be the prayer most often repeated. The Ave Maria is first mentione d as a form of prayer in the second half of the 11th century, but it was not until the 16th century that it became general in its present form. It is not known precisely when the mechanical device of the rosary was first used. William of Malmesbury (De gest. pant. Angl. iv. 4) says that Godiva, who founded a religious house at Coventry in 1040, left a string of jewels, on which she had told her prayers, that it might be hung on the statue of the Blessed Virgin. Thomas of Chantimpré, who wrote about the middle of the 13th century, first mentions the word “ rosary ” (De apibus, ii. 13), using it apparently in a mystical sense as Mary's rose-garden. There is no contemporary confirmation of the story that the rosary was given to St Dominic through revelation of the Blessed Virgin and was employed during the crusade against the Albigenses, although the story was later accepted by Leo X., Pius V., Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., Alexander VII., Innocent XI. and Clement XI. According to Benedict XIV. (De Fest. 160), the belief rests on the tradition of the Dominican order. Whatever may have been the origin of the rosary, the Dominicans did much to propagate the devotion. The practice of meditating on the mysteries doubtless began with a Dominican, Alanus de Rupe (born 1428), and another Dominican, Jacob Sprenger (d. 1495), grand-inquisitor in Germany, founded the first confraternity of the rosary at Cologne in 147 5. This society spread rapidly, and was specially privileged by Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII. and Leo. X. After the battle of Lepanto (1st Sunday in October 1571), which was won while the members of the confraternity at Rome were making supplication for Christian success, Pius V. ordered an annual commemoration of “ St Mary of Victory,” and Gregory XIII., by bull of the 1st of April 1583, set aside the 1st Sunday in October as the feast of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be observed in such churches as maintained an altar in honour of the rosary. Clement XI., by bull of the 3rd of October 1716, directed the observance of the feast by all Christendom. The devotion has been particularly fostered by the Jesuits, St Ignatius Loyola having expressly ordered its use. It has been repeatedly indulgences by various popes. Leo XIII. issued eight encyclicals on the devotion; he urged its recitation throughout October, and directed (1883) the insertion of the title regina sacratissimi rosarii in the Litany. There are several varieties of the rosary more or less in use by Roman Catholics: the Passionists, or rosary of the five wounds, approved by Leo XII. in 1823; the Crown of Our Lord, attributed to Michael of Florence, a Camaldolese monk (c. 1516), and consisting of 33 Paters, 5 Aves and a Credo; St Bridget's, 7 Paters and 63 Aves, in honour of the joys and sorrows of the Blessed Virgin and the 63 years of her life. The Living Rosary, in which 15 persons unite to say the rosary every month, was approved by Gregory XVI. (1832) and placed in charge of the Dominican order by Pius IX. (1877).

Similar expedients to assist the memory in repetitions of prayers occur among Buddhists and Mahommedans: in the former case the prayers are said on a string of some hundred beads, called the tibet-pren-ba or the ten-wa; in the latter case,