Priest & Mystic
Saint Dominic, also known as Dominic de Guzmán was a Castilian Catholic priest and mystic. In the year 1215, St. Dominic founded the Dominican order. Built on the monastic pillars of prayer and penance they were given faculties to preach throughout the territory of Toulouse.
He is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists, and he and his order are traditionally credited with spreading and popularizing the rosary.
In the 11th through the 13th century there was a heretical doctrine developed and spread throughout Europe called Albigensianism. Albigensiansim taught that only the spiritual is good, and even further that everything material is bad. Therefore outlining the false idea that a person’s soul (which is good) is imprisoned in the body (which is bad.) Through Albigensiansim, the only way a person could experience salvation was to be freed by the imprisonment of their flesh. Saint Dominic was on the front lines fighting the falsehoods of this doctrine, traveling through France but this effort seemed void. In 1208, Dominic went into the forest to pray, asking God to provide what he needed in order to overcome the fast spreading errors of Albigensianism. It was here that ancient history tells us that after three days of prayer and fasting, three angels appeared, then He heard Our Lady speak. Instructing him to preach her Psalter (this is the Rosary) in order to succeed in his struggles of overcoming Albigensianism.
The Marian Psalter (The Rosary) is a prayer which involves praying 150 Hail Mary’s divided into groups of 10, separated by Our Fathers. It is no mere coincidence that this coincides with the 150 Psalms. In later centuries the Rosary became a way for illiterate men and women (or at least those who could not read Latin) to participate in the Liturgy of the Hours. Please note. This is before the addition of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary by John Paul II in the year 2002
Saint Dominic was the first to preach and teach the Rosary (the original 15 decades) as a form of meditative prayer and his order is traditionally credited with spreading and popularizing the rosary.