Confraternity of the Rosary

The Confraternity of the Holy Rosary is a Roman Catholic Archconfraternity or spiritual association, under the care and guidance of the Dominicans, the members of which strive to pray the entire Holy Rosary weekly.

History

The history of the rosary confraternity stretches back over 500 years, and its origins are shrouded in obscurity. It may be that no Rosary Confraternity existed before the last quarter of the fifteenth century, which saw such associations erected through the preaching of the Rosary by Bl. Alan de Rupe aka Alan de la Roche (†1475). One of the first was erected at Cologne in 1474 by Fr. James Sprenger.People from all parts of the world desired to be enrolled in it. A casual English example occurs in the Plumpton Correspondence (Camden Society, p. 50), where a priest in London writes in 1486 to his patron in Yorkshire: "I send a paper of the Rosary of our Ladye of Coleyn and I have registered your name with both my Ladis names, as the paper expresses, and ye be acopled as brether and sisters." Even at that time the entry of the name of each associate on the register was an indispensable condition of membership, and so it remains to this day. It is known that there were Dominican guilds or fraternities, but they may not have been connected with the Rosary, itself being ancient, and the origins of which shrouded in the mists of time. Traditionally it is...
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