In defense of Dominic as originator of the Rosary

an interesting article from eLumen, the newsletter of the Eastern Province:

Letter to the Editor

The following is a letter addressed to Mr. Raimondo Di Bona, OP, who reviewed the book The Rosary: The John Paul II Method, by Mr. Robert Feeney, OP. in July 2010, eLumen, Volume 6, # 7, p. 13. Mr. Feeney writes:

I came across eLumen ‐‐ July – 2010…. Thank you for recommending it. In it, you made comments regarding the tradition of St. Dominic as author of the Rosary. I enclose some excerpts from my books: The Rosary: The Little Summa (4th ed.). They are from the chapter – The Papal Tradition. I send these excerpts to throw some light on your comments. My high school teacher used to always say: “A word to the wise is sufficient.”

The Papal tradition of the Rosary is singled out in official documents written by Popes starting with Pope Urban and ending with Leo XIII in the early 20th century. These documents consist of facts about the Rosary that have gone through tests of research and verification. These Popes did not accept these facts without reasonable proofs. They had learned men assist them in the composition of these papal documents on the Rosary.

In the 17th century, because some Belgian Jesuits (Bollandists) had cast doubt on St. Dominic being the author of the Rosary, Pope Benedict XIII, in 1724, asked Cardinal Prospero Lambertino, a scholar and promoter of historical studies with a Vatican Congregation, to look into the matter. The cardinal thoroughly investigated the Bollandists’ research. After doing this, he affirmed the tradition of St. Dominic as the true author of the Rosary. He rejected the Bollandists’ research and claim that St. Dominic was not the author of the Rosary. Pope Benedict accepted his conclusions. The Cardinal published: “The Popes in their decrees, to which assent is to be given, rightly designated St. Dominic as author of the Rosary.

Cardinal Lambertini would become Pope Benedict XIV (1740‐58). During his papacy, he taught that faith should be given to papal documents in which St. Dominic is rightly called author of the Rosary. He alluded to the fact that even writers of his time did not credit St. Dominic with being the author of the Rosary. The same could be said of some writers today.