Origins
Blessed Alan de la Roche and the Confraternities
15th century
Alan de la Roche (Alanus de Rupe, c. 1428–1475) was a Breton Dominican preacher and theologian who taught in Paris, Lille, Douai, Ghent and Rostock. He devoted his life to reviving 'Our Lady's Psalter' of 150 Hail Marys. He is traditionally called 'Blessed', although he was never formally beatified. His writings, printed after his death, were illustrated with woodcuts like this one from a German edition of 1492.
Around 1470 Alan founded at Douai a Confraternity of the Psalter of the Virgin, whose members promised to pray the Psalter regularly and to share in one another's prayers. In 1475 his fellow Dominican Jakob Sprenger established a Rosary Confraternity in Cologne. It spread with astonishing speed, soon counting many thousands of members, rich and poor alike. Membership cost nothing: its only obligation was prayer, offered for the living and the dead.
Rosary devotion soon took root far from Flanders and the Rhine. In 1506 Albrecht Dürer painted this Feast of the Rose Garlands in Venice for the German merchants' church of San Bartolomeo. The Virgin, the Christ Child and St. Dominic crown a kneeling pope, an emperor and the faithful with wreaths of roses: an image of the whole Church united in a single prayer. The painting is now in the National Gallery in Prague.