The devotion of the Holy Rosary is a marian devotion that goes back many centuries. The Psalms of David, of which there are 150, have been prayed by monks daily since at least the time of St. Anthony of the Desert in Egypt in the 3rd century B.C.
When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Order of the Preachers, members of which are called Dominicans, she presented to him the Rosary as a powerful means with which to defeat the Albigensian heresy that was rampant at his time in Europe, and which followed the monastic custom of praying the 150 psalms. The Rosary consists in praying 150 Hail Mary’s, with each decade separated by one Our Father and one Glory Be, and which is assigned a mystery from the lives of Jesus and Mary for meditation.
