Stations of the Cross

[rwoehmke]

No, the Rosary has always had just its original three Mysteries.

To say that the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries had gaps in the meditations on the Gospels is to imply and make the error that the Rosary was not sufficiently Christocentric and that the three Mysteries are not sufficienltly based on the Gospel.

The bigger problem is that you and Pope John Paul II both believe that Mary made a mistake when she gave the Rosary to St. Dominic. Mary erred because the Rosary was incomplete. The conclusion is that heaven didn’t know what it was doing and it was up to Pope John Paul II to fix the mistake God and Mary made when they gave us the Rosary with only three Mysteries.

I am not so sure that Dominic got a Rosary with those specific mysteries, fifteen, not three as you say. I was under the impression that at one point it was 150 pater nosters. Maybe there is more than one tradition, small t, as to where the Rosary came from. I am sorry that it all upsets you so. No one is forcing you to say those luminous mysteries, so you are free to ignore them. Not a few people do.

 

[saint_rafael]

I am not so sure that Dominic got a Rosary with those specific mysteries, fifteen, not three as you say. I was under the impression that at one point it was 150 pater nosters. Maybe there is more than one tradition, small t, as to where the Rosary came from. I am sorry that it all upsets you so. No one is forcing you to say those luminous mysteries, so you are free to ignore them. Not a few people do.

The Rosary has always been three Mysteries. There are fifteen decades and not fifteen Mysteries in the Rosary. There are fifteen decades in the Rosary because each Mystery has five decades. The Psalter has 150 Ave Marias and not 150 pater nosters. Each Mystery has 50 Ave marias and when the traditional Rosary is said with the three Mysteries, it is called the Marian Psalter of 150

The Rosary has had one long tradition since the Marian apparition to St. Dominic, from the 13th century to 2002, when Pope John Paul II changed the Rosary on his own whim discarding tradtion, the Marian Psalter and its perfect symbolism of the Trinity.

I and many other Traditional Catholics refuse to use this novelty and we are content with heaven’s version of the traditional Rosary and what the Church was always happy to promote. I suggest more Catholics go back to the traditional practice and even try the full Rosary in one day.

 

[LilyM]

The Rosary has always been three Mysteries. There are fifteen decades and not fifteen Mysteries in the Rosary. There are fifteen decades in the Rosary because each Mystery has five decades. The Psalter has 150 Ave Marias and not 150 pater nosters. Each Mystery has 50 Ave marias and when the traditional Rosary is said with the three Mysteries, it is called the Marian Psalter of 150

The Rosary has had one long tradition since the Marian apparition to St. Dominic, from the 13th century to 2002, when Pope John Paul II changed the Rosary on his own whim discarding tradtion, the Marian Psalter and its perfect symbolism of the Trinity.

I and many other Traditional Catholics refuse to use this novelty and we are content with heaven’s version of the traditional Rosary and what the Church was always happy to promote. I suggest more Catholics go back to the traditional practice and even try the full Rosary in one day.

No - the ‘laymans psalter’ started out as 150 Pater Nosters - accompanied by use of the beads, which themselves were called ‘paternosters’ to indicate that paternosters were said on 'em! In fact Rosaries were called that for some time after the substitution of Hail Marys for the Our Fathers.

 

[LilyM]

The Rosary has always been three Mysteries. There are fifteen decades and not fifteen Mysteries in the Rosary. There are fifteen decades in the Rosary because each Mystery has five decades. The Psalter has 150 Ave Marias and not 150 pater nosters. Each Mystery has 50 Ave marias and when the traditional Rosary is said with the three Mysteries, it is called the Marian Psalter of 150

The Rosary has had one long tradition since the Marian apparition to St. Dominic, from the 13th century to 2002, when Pope John Paul II changed the Rosary on his own whim discarding tradtion, the Marian Psalter and its perfect symbolism of the Trinity.

I and many other Traditional Catholics refuse to use this novelty and we are content with heaven’s version of the traditional Rosary and what the Church was always happy to promote. I suggest more Catholics go back to the traditional practice and even try the full Rosary in one day.

Sorry, three mysteries, each prayed for 50 Aves? Which three mysteries were they?

 

[patrick457]

The Rosary is not 1,500 years old, it is only less than 800 years old.

The Rosary was given to St. Dominic directly by Our Lady to combat the Albigensian heresy in the 13th century. It has been largely unchanged since that time with only the Fatima prayers being added at the request of Our Lady of Fatima.

While Blessed Alan de Rupe OP claimed that St. Dominic is the progenitor of the Rosary, there are three problems with it:

-The practice of saying 150 sets of Prayers and saying them using a device to keep count of the numbers predate St. Dominic.

In the 4th century the Desert Fathers started to use pebbles or ropes with knots to keep count of the repetitions of the Jesus Prayer, said to be under the influence of St. Anthony (who was said to have founded the practice as he was said to either throw a pebble into the ground or take a rope and make a knot on it to keep track of his prayer; the Devil attempted to mislead him by untying his knots. Our Lady then appeared and said that St. Anthony should tie the knots in the shape of a Cross, during which the Devil would find that he could not untie it).

Prayers with beads like the rosary may have begun as a practice by the laity to imitate the monastic Divine Office, wherein the monks prayed the 150 Psalms daily. As many of the laity and even lay monastics could not read, they substituted 150 repetitions of the Our Father for the Psalms, sometimes using a cord with knots on it to keep an accurate count.

The use of beads as a memory aid in prayer, at least in France and England, was attested as early as the 8th Century by St. Bede the Venerable (d. 733). A century earlier, St. Eligius (c.588-660; aka St. Eloy, a goldsmith-turned-bishop) wrote of making a chair adorned with 150 gold and silver nails to aid in the recitation of the “Psalter of Blessed Mary”, which substituted one Hail Mary for each of the Psalms.

Lady Godiva (1040-1080; famous for her legendary [in the sense of mythical] naked ride in the streets of Coventry) refers in her will to “[A] circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly”.

A rule for anchorites (the Ancrene Wisse) in mid-12th century England gave directions on how fifty Hail Marys are to be said divided into sets of ten, with prostrations and other marks of reverence. About the same time, a biographer that St. Aibert (1060-1140) recited 150 Hail Marys daily, 100 with genuflexions and 50 with prostrations. King St. Louis IX of France (1214-1270) apparently did a rather similar practice to St. Aibert: “Without counting his other prayers the holy King knelt down every evening fifty times and each time he stood upright then knelt again and repeated slowly an Ave Maria.”

As time went on during the Middle Ages, people devised variations on the Paternoster: many added Hail Marys or Glory Bes in their prayers, or recited 150 Hail Marys as a “Psalter of St. Mary”; Religious communities are recorded as praying “chaplets” of various sorts from at least the 13th century onward. Eventually, each decade came to be preceded by an Our Father, which further mirrored the structure of the monastic Office.

Paternosters in the Medieval period was a popular item and was carried by many people regardless of their religiosity or no; it became some sort of a fashion statement that many portraits of Medieval men and women usually show them holding a Paternoster in their hand, wearing it around their neck or tucked in their belt.

Albrecht Durer’s mother; you can see a smallish Paternoster in her hand.
Albrecht Durer’s Father.
Margaret of Austria (the ten-year-old daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I)
Philipp von Rhein zum Mohren

http://paternoster-row.org/images/rosarylegend.gif

An woodcut depicting the story of some robbers who attempt to mug a passing monk reciting Hail Marys on the road and see a vision of roses coming from the Monk’s mouth (which are the Hail Marys he is praying) and Our Lady appearing (to the robbers; the monk could not see Her) and making a crown out of the roses.

Trade guilds of Paternoster makers were even founded in many places in Europe and were dubbed Paternosterers.

http://paternoster-row.org/01-loops/paternostermaker.jpg

A Paternosterer making some beads (note the tassels on some of the beads; using a Cross/Crucifix for the ‘tail’ of the Rosary did not become widespread practice until the 15th/16th century (and even then some rosaries still had variations).

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

The Knights Templar, whose rule dates from about 1128, the knights who could not attend choir were required to say the Lord’s Prayer 57 times in all and on the death of any of the brethren they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

When, the Hail Mary came into use, it appears that from the first the consciousness that it was in its own nature a salutation rather than a prayer induced a fashion of repeating it many times in succession, accompanied by genuflexions or some other external act of reverence (As the form of the prayer at the time was: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb (Jesus)”; the final part was only added during the 15th century).

2. There is no contemporary mention about St. Dominic’s supposed receiving the Rosary.

(quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia article Rosary)

Of the eight or nine early Lives of the saint, not one makes the faintest allusion to the Rosary. The witnesses who gave evidence in the cause of his canonization are equally reticent.

In the great collection of documents accumulated by Fathers Balme and Lelaidier, O.P., in their “Cartulaire de St. Dominique” the question is studiously ignored. The early constitutions of the different provinces of the order have been examined, and many of them printed, but no one has found any reference to this devotion.

We possess hundreds, even thousands, of manuscripts containing devotional treatises, sermons, chronicles, Saints’ lives, etc., written by the Friars Preachers between 1220 and 1450; but no single verifiable passage has yet been produced which speaks of the Rosary as instituted by St. Dominic or which even makes much of the devotion as one specially dear to his children.

The charters and other deeds of the Dominican convents for men and women, as M. Jean Guiraud points out with emphasis in his edition of the Cartulaire of La Prouille (I, cccxxviii), are equally silent. Neither do we find any suggestion of a connection between St. Dominic and the Rosary in the paintings and sculptures of these two and a half centuries.

3. Many elements in our present Rosary developed in time after the death of St. Dominic.

Take for example the practice of meditating on specific moments in Our Lord’s and Our Lady’s life. The man whom we can trace to have introduced the practice is Dominic of Prussia O. Cart. (1382, Poland-1461, Trier). His first teacher was his own parish priest (incidentally a pious Dominican); later he was a student at the University of Krakow. Falling into bad habits he led a vagabond life until he was 25, when he reformed through the influence of Adolf of Essen, prior of the Carthusian monastery of St. Alban, near Trier. Dominic then became a Carthusian in 1409.

His monastic life was one of severe penance and religious fervour. The spiritual favours he received were numerous, and many visions are ascribed to him. Among the positions he filled were those of master of novices at Mainz and vicar of the monastery of St. Alban, where he died.

We have mentioned the popular devotion ‘Psalter of St. Mary’ comprising of reciting 150 Hail Marys. Dominic, inspired by a vision of a tree which had fifty leaves, attempted to introduce the practice of meditating on moments on Our Lord’s and Our Lady’s lives (though it is not specified which). To keep track of the episode being meditated on, Dominic adjusted each Hail Mary to include the episode. Thus, for example: “And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, whose birth was announced by the angel…”. This practice held on in many places even after the Rosary as we have it today became widespread.

Rosary from the Hours (the Use of Sarum), taken from a 1515 edition of the Hortulus Animae

In the above version from the year 1515, a moment in Christ’s life is meditated upon during each Hail Mary (as opposed to ten).

A critic of Dominic, Alanus de Rupe OP (1428-1475, aka Alanus de la Roche) thought he had shortchanged the gospel by not giving the full psalter number of 150 episodes, but the practical difficulty of dealing even with fifty events led to a shortening and categorizing of episodes.

Alanus published nothing during his lifetime, but immediately after his death the brethren of his province were commanded to collect his writings for publication. These were edited at different times and have occasioned much controversy among scholars.

It was actually Alanus who was the first to claim that the Rosary was given to St. Dominic de Guzman (perhaps in opposition to Dominic). Dominicans picked up this notion with enthusiasm and made it the reigning view for centuries.

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

Alanus then formed a Confraternity of the Psalter of the Glorious Virgin Mary at Douai around 1470. It soon had many chapters and imitators, making the rosary immensely popular on a broad front of the Western church.

5 years later, in 1475 a Rosary Guild was founded in Cologne, Germany after the city was miraculously saved from the Burgundian Troops. The credit for the miracle was given to the Dominican Prior of the city, Jacob Springer who encouraged the prayer of the Psalter of Our Lady. Thus the Confraternity of the Rosary was set into place with the celebration of a Pontifical Mass held at the Dominican Church of St. Andreas in Cologne.

Unlike many other religious guilds, rosary guilds cost nothing to join and did not require expensive annual dues. Women as well as men were admitted. The prayers were simple, and could be said at home or while working. You did not have to be able to read, nor did you have to purchase and use a special book, as many other devotions required. Thus, this facilitated the spread of Rosary Guilds throughout Europe and made the Rosary popular.

In 1521, Alberto da Castello, a Dominican, began to simplify the rosary and is credited with 15 evangelical passages for meditation. This included a short prayer at the end of each Hail Mary. Eventually, by mid-century, a Rosary called the ‘Three Fifities’, is beginning to take shape. The longer Rosary, using 150 Ave beads, is divided into groups of 10 separated by 15 larger Paternoster beads. It is now attached to form a circle, called ‘the garden’. A pendant, hanging from one of the large beads has 3 small and 1 large bead and ends in a cross and is considered the ‘pathway or gateway to the garden’.

The fifteen Mysteries were officially established by Pope Pius V in 1569 and the Rosary as we know it today was finally standardized by the Council of Trent in 1573, just two years after the Battle of Lepanto (which I think doesn’t need any more explanation here).

Now for a trip to memory lane:

http://paternoster-row.org/images/constantina.gif

A looped (modern) Paternoster, with Gauds (Our Father beads) and tassel (which symbolizes ‘wiping away the tears of sin or sorrow’.). During the Medieval period, the most common number of beads is 50 (with or without gauds or additional beads), but there are also strings of 10, 15, 20, 33, 63, 72 and of course 150. Paintings or historical drawings may show strange numbers of beads such as 39 or 16, and it is often hard to tell whether these represent different devotions, or whether it is merely the whim of the artist, who may not have been too concerned about the exact number and just wanted to tell the viewers that ‘this is a Paternoster/Rosary’.

http://paternoster-row.org/images/throne.gif

An image of Our Lady, surrounded by devotees. You can see all of them wielding Paternosters.

http://paternoster-row.org/01-loops/judgement.gif

The Last Judgment; you can see some of the people at left holding Paternosters with an Angel above them holding a garland of roses (an allusion to the rosary)

http://paternoster-row.org/02-linear/croy-close.jpg

A straight or ‘linear’ Paternoster (the hand is Philippe de Croy’s, a Burgundian noble painted by Rogier van der Weyden around 1460), which are commonly seen in portraits of men (as they can be conveniently hung from a belt), with two exceptions.



Mary Queen of Scots’ (1578 - 1620) Rosary.

During the 17th Century, Rosary beads are very much in the form that we use today, except that the custom of putting 3 Hail Mary beads in the ‘tail’ is not widespread, and an extra Cross (known as Credo Cross) is added to the Rosary as the practice of reciting the Apostles’ Creed is introduced into the Rosary.

An 18th Century (1720) wooden Rosary. One could see the 3 Hail Mary beads, a Credo Cross and a medal where the Crucifix on our modern Rosaries would be.

[A 19th Century Rosary. The Credo Cross is still noticeably present.

The rest is of course, history; now let’s go back to the main discussion. ](http://www.rosaryworkshop.com/MU-MCB-1822-filigree-a.jpg)

 

[saint_rafael]

Sorry, three mysteries, each prayed for 50 Aves? Which three mysteries were they?

The Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries used to be prayed together and was considered the full Rosary or traditional way of praying the Rosary. It was only in the last couple of decades that the Church allowed the praying of one mystery to be considered sufficient for saying the Rosary.

 

[saint_rafael]

While there were different prayer beads floating around throughout different times, I still insist that the Rosary with the three Mysteries was given to St. Dominic by Our Lady.

It is part of the Tradition of the Church that St. Dominic was directly given the Rosary.
It was a hiastorical reality not questioned by Catholics for centuries.

It is only in our modern world, that every tradition and every miracle is questioned by modern man with his technology, science, and his enlightened rationalism.

I don’t care what the modern Catholic think or how many articles these so called Catholic experts put out, I will go to the grave believing in the tradition of the Church and the truth that the Rosary came from Mary.

 

[cothrige]

While there were different prayer beads floating around throughout different times, I still insist that the Rosary with the three Mysteries was given to St. Dominic by Our Lady.

Isn’t this a bit off? As I have always understood things, there is the Mystery of the Annunciation, the Mystery of the Visitation, the Mystery of the Nativity, the Mystery of the Presentation of our Lord, and the Mystery of the Finding of our Lord in the Temple. These together comprise five Joyful Mysteries, not one Joyful Mystery. Altogether, a traditional Rosary consists of five Joyful Mysteries, five Sorrowful Mysteries, and five Glorious Mysteries, being altogether fifteen Mysteries, and not three. At least this is my understanding.

 

[rwoehmke]

saint rafael, I am mighty curious as to the source of your unshakable knowledge of Catholic Tradition. What institution or texts have you gleaned this knowledge from? I took a peek at your profile and you are 25 years old which means you aren’t a 90 year old, pre-Vatican II curmudgeon who would have learned all of this in a early 20 th century Catholic School. Perhaps you could cite some of your sources.

 

[LilyM]

Isn’t this a bit off? As I have always understood things, there is the Mystery of the Annunciation, the Mystery of the Visitation, the Mystery of the Nativity, the Mystery of the Presentation of our Lord, and the Mystery of the Finding of our Lord in the Temple. These together comprise five Joyful Mysteries, not one Joyful Mystery. Altogether, a traditional Rosary consists of five Joyful Mysteries, five Sorrowful Mysteries, and five Glorious Mysteries, being altogether fifteen Mysteries, and not three. At least this is my understanding.

You’re absolutely correct. I wanted to clarify what SR meant before correcting it myself.

Each decade is in fact a SEPARATE mystery, a separate individual episode of Christ’s or Mary’s life, and it’s GROUPS of five of these mysteries that as groups are labelled ‘Joyful’, ‘Sorrowful’ or ‘Glorious’.

For example when you announce the decade of the Annunciation what you say (or should say) is ‘the FIRST Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation’, the Visitation being ‘the SECOND Joyful Mystery’.

By the way, the Rosary has always and still does consist of all the 15 Mysteries (20 if you’re one who wants to include the Luminous, which aren’t obligatory of course). No-one would ever say that five decades, let alone one decade, equals a complete Rosary, although there are indulgences attached to saying five decades it doesn’t mean they equal a whole or complete Rosary.

 

[patrick457]

As for St. Dominic, I don’t think it would be quite a stretch to imagine that he also may have known or have been devoted to the ‘Paternosters’ or the ‘Psalter of St. Mary’ (after all, it is a popular prayer).

But to say that the Rosary (both the beads and the prayer) has come down virtually unchanged through the centuries and would be quite hard to imagine. After all, it is a living thing, bound to change, evolve and develop variants, not something that is frozen in time. Yet it is still the Rosary.

As for the Luminous Mysteries, while it does (note IMHO) quite disrupt the 150 Psalms-15 Mysteries-150 Hail Marys connection, it is not a mandated addition, but merely a suggestion as pointed above, so one could still choose to say the ‘traditional’ Rosary or the new one. It’s your call.

Come to think of it, even the Fatima Prayer is (technically) optional, though saying it is widespread (and of course, spiritually beneficial) since Our Lady gave it herself and requested its use at Fatima.

 

[patrick457]

Actually it has nothing to do with the Shroud. The Shroud is clearly His burial shroud, having an image of His WHOLE body, which isn’t the same thing as the veil Veronica used when she wiped His face.

Now there is a separate facecloth, otherwise known as the sudarium or mandylion (it’s said to be held in one of the Cathedrals of Spain), which ONLY has an image of His face. Whether that is the same thing as Veronica’s veil or just the normal facecloth which was always placed over the face of a corpse prior to burial, isn’t known.

It’s different from Veronica’s Veil as the Sudarium of Oviedo only bears bloodstains and does not have an image of a Face; more likely it was used to cover Jesus’ face as He was taken down from the Cross and before He was wrapped in the Sindon (note that the Mandylion is distinct from it), since Jewish Law requires that the face of someone who died a violent death be covered in order that people not witness this horrible sight.

 

[cothrige]

Come to think of it, even the Fatima Prayer is (technically) optional, though saying it is widespread (and of course, spiritually beneficial) since Our Lady gave it herself and requested its use at Fatima.

I have to say I just don’t like this prayer and have never used it at all. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I think it kind of throws off the balance of the Rosary. It really does seem kind of tacked onto it for my taste, and seems ill-fitting. Another reason is that Fatima doesn’t really reach out to me, and while it may be valid it just isn’t any part of my personal spiritual life. But, most importantly I actually don’t like the prayer itself. It just makes no sense, and doesn’t impress me as being heaven sent in any way. How can you pray that Christ “lead all souls to heaven” and then “especially those in most need of thy mercy”? How can one be “especially” led to heaven? And if such is somehow possible, then why not especially everybody? Also, who isn’t in most need of his mercy? I really do think it is a confusing prayer. The cause of its massive popularity is of course entirely lost on me.

 

[Lhhs]

Has anyone heard of a Papal decree changing the Stations of the Cross because six of them were considered anti-semitic?

No, haven’t heard this

 

[patrick457]

I have to say I just don’t like this prayer and have never used it at all. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I think it kind of throws off the balance of the Rosary. It really does seem kind of tacked onto it for my taste, and seems ill-fitting. Another reason is that Fatima doesn’t really reach out to me, and while it may be valid it just isn’t any part of my personal spiritual life. But, most importantly I actually don’t like the prayer itself. It just makes no sense, and doesn’t impress me as being heaven sent in any way. How can you pray that Christ “lead all souls to heaven” and then “especially those in most need of thy mercy”? How can one be “especially” led to heaven? And if such is somehow possible, then why not especially everybody? Also, who isn’t in most need of his mercy? I really do think it is a confusing prayer. The cause of its massive popularity is of course entirely lost on me.

The words ‘of thy mercy’ was not originally part of the Prayer and seems to be added in the English version. Here is the Fatima Prayer in the original Portuguese:

"Ó meu Jesus, perdoai-nos, e livrai nos do fogo do inferno, levai as almas todas para o Céu, e socorrei as que mais precisarem."

“O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fires of Hell; draw all souls to Heaven, especially those who need it the most.”

I think the prayer asks the Lord to grant salvation to ‘all souls’, especially those who are in need of leading to Heaven most, i.e. hardened sinners and the like.

 

[patrick457]

This novelty has never existed in the history of the Church. No Pope or hierachy has used a different form until our ecumeniacs decided to have it in our modern times.

Until the later half of the Medieval period (somewhere before the 15th century), the common practice by pilgrims is to go through the present Via Dolorosa backwards; i.e. starting at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Golgotha) and finishing at Pilate’s house. By the early part of the 16th century, however, the more reasonable way of traversing the route, by beginning at Pilate’s house and ending at Golgotha, had come to be regarded as more correct, and it became a special exercise of devotion complete in itself.

William Wey, an English pilgrim who visited the Holy Land in 1458 and again in 1462, describes the manner of following the footsteps of Christ in His sorrowful journey. He gives fourteen Stations, but the Stations are rather different from ours; only five of these correspond with our present, and of the others, seven are only remotely connected with our Via Crucis.

When Romanet Boffin visited Jerusalem in 1515 for the purpose of obtaining correct details for his set of Stations at Romans, two friars there told him that there ought to be thirty-one in all, but in the manuals of devotion subsequently issued for the use of those visiting these Stations they are given variously as nineteen, twenty-five, and thirty-seven, so it seems that even in the same place the number was not determined very definitely.

A book entitled “Jerusalem sicut Christi tempore floruit”, written by one Adrichomius and published in 1584, gives twelve Stations which correspond exactly with the first twelve of ours, and this fact is thought by some to point conclusively to the origin of the particular selection afterwards authorized by the Church, especially as this book had a wide circulation and was translated into several European languages. At any rate, during the 16th Century, a number of devotional manuals, giving prayers for use when making the Stations, were published in the Low Countries, and some of our fourteen appear in them for the first time.

Apparently these fourteen did not have their origins in the Holy Land (as the Holy Land was under control of the Turks and it would have been dangerous to make any veneration in some Holy sites; a writer named Zuallardo, while providing prayers for the shrines within the Holy Sepulchre, provides none for the Stations themselves, saying that, “it is not permitted to make any halt, nor to pay veneration to [these places] with uncovered head, nor to make any other demonstration”), but to the ‘imitation’ Ways of the Cross in Europe, which was built as ‘replicas’ due to the cost and danger of visiting the Holy Land; having a replica of a Holy Place in the comforts of your own country seeming to be common practice back then, and that we owe the propagation of the devotion, as well as the number and selection of our Stations, much more to the pious ingenuity of certain 16th-century devotional writers than to the actual practice of pilgrims to the holy places.

In fact, originally it was believed that Jesus fell not just three, but seven times (the Seven Falls) and thus, in some early versions these Seven Falls were commemorated. These were eventually reduced to three, with the explanation that the other four happened as Jesus met Mary, Simon, Veronica and the Women. A few writers regarded that the meeting with the Women and Simon being made to carry the Cross happened simultaneously, but most thought of it as separate.

Veronica was not originally present in some early lists, and when she does get mentioned, it was placed as having happened just before reaching Golgotha, instead of earlier in the journey as in our present arrangement.

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes a variation (11 Stations all in all) ordered in 1799 (68 years after Pope Clement XII fixed the number of Stations to 14 and attached indulgences to them) for use in the diocese of Vienne, France:

1. The Agony in the Garden
2. The betrayal by Judas
3. The Scourging
4. The Crowning with Thorns
5. Jesus is condemned to death
6. Jesus meets Simon of Cyrene
7. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
8. Jesus tastes the gall
9. Jesus is nailed to the cross
10. Jesus dies on the Cross
11. Jesus’ body is taken down from the Cross.

While it may have been coincidental, it would seem that the present list would have had some precedent after all.

 

[PrayforMallory]

saint rafael, I am mighty curious as to the source of your unshakable knowledge of Catholic Tradition. What institution or texts have you gleaned this knowledge from? I took a peek at your profile and you are 25 years old which means you aren’t a 90 year old, pre-Vatican II curmudgeon who would have learned all of this in a early 20 th century Catholic School. Perhaps you could cite some of your sources.

What does him being 25 have to do with it?

You people need a serious reality check.

He’s 25 and he goes to Church. Just because the young are traditional doesn’t mean you get to lord over us.

You should pray for us because we are under 30 and in Church. Can’t say that for hardly any of my peers.

 

[PrayforMallory]

As for St. Dominic, I don’t think it would be quite a stretch to imagine that he also may have known or have been devoted to the ‘Paternosters’ or the ‘Psalter of St. Mary’ (after all, it is a popular prayer).

But to say that the Rosary (both the beads and the prayer) has come down virtually unchanged through the centuries and would be quite hard to imagine. After all, it is a living thing, bound to change, evolve and develop variants, not something that is frozen in time. Yet it is still the Rosary.

As for the Luminous Mysteries, while it does (note IMHO) quite disrupt the 150 Psalms-15 Mysteries-150 Hail Marys connection, it is not a mandated addition, but merely a suggestion as pointed above, so one could still choose to say the ‘traditional’ Rosary or the new one. It’s your call.

Come to think of it, even the Fatima Prayer is (technically) optional, though saying it is widespread (and of course, spiritually beneficial) since Our Lady gave it herself and requested its use at Fatima.

It doesn’t matter if it changed. What matters is that whether or not it was done to please people outside the Church.