Question: Mary giving first rosary out of her own hair, giving to either Saint Dominic or blessed Alan De la Roche has?

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Question: does anyone know about Mary making the first rosary out of her own hair, giving to either Saint Dominic or blessed Alan DeLaroach as a gift? I heard it somewhere I’m sure but Wikipedia or Google does not have info
 
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Mary giving the rosary to one of those people personally is a pious legend. It is more likely that the Rosary was created as a way for often-uneducated lay people to have a simple prayer they could say that was similar to the recitation of the Psalms by educated monks in monasteries who also had more time to pray the much longer prayers.

And I have never heard anything that claimed Mary made the first rosary out of her own hair. That would just be even more pious legend on top of pious legend.
 
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IIRC, St. Louis de Montfort mentions that in his book The Secret of the Rosary.
 
It is my understanding that at least some Dominicans (I have heard “all”, but don’t wish to push a point) do not put stock in St. Dominic having the vision which is ascribed to him receiving the Rosary.

Given that the monks would recite all 150 Psalms, and the great majority of people were not literate (and likely did not have the time each day to recite the Psalms), it seems far more likely.

Given that St Dominic died in 1221 and the first printed version of the Hail Mary appears to be from Girolamo Savanarola’s “Esposizione sopra l’Ave Maria” , it seems strange that it would take that long for it to appear in writing - a bit over 250 years later.

As the most beloved private devotion, it really does not matter whether one believes Mary gave it to Dominic, or it developed out of a desire to emulate the prayer life of monks. What matters is that one prays it intentionally (as in, not spinning through it, but meditatively).

And no, to those who worry and fret if they cannot finish the rosary (distracted, interrupted, fell asleep), that is not wrong, it does not matter; what matters is praying, and praying well and often.
 
Margaret_Ann said:
IIRC, St. Louis de Montfort mentions that in his book The Secret of the Rosary.
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I did a search in the work on archive.org (available here) for “hair”. This came up (concerning Alan de la Roche), and while it does mention rosaries and hair, they aren’t the same thing:

“As a token of her [Mary’s] chaste love for him she placed a ring upon his finger and a necklace made of her own hair about his neck and gave him a Rosary.”

Even assuming Montfort’s information is correct, he doesn’t say the Rosary came from her hair. It says that a necklace came from her hair, and she also gave him a Rosary (not the first Rosary, a Rosary).
 
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otjm said:
It is my understanding that at least some Dominicans (I have heard “all”, but don’t wish to push a point) do not put stock in St. Dominic having the vision which is ascribed to him receiving the Rosary.
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It’s about on the same level as St. Simon Stock receiving the Carmelite brown scapular.
Pious legend; it’s a nice story, one can believe it if one wants, but if the truth is actually something else, it does not detract from the devotion.
 
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