The historical development of the Rosary begins with the desert fathers and their need to find a system to ease their laborious and repetitive prayer life. It is generally agreed by scholars that a system for counting repetitive prayers began with the Hindus some nine centuries before Christ. Prayer counters such as rocks, sticks or notches in wood were employed to ensure that the proper number of prayers were recited. Over time, counters and psalms were united into a "three groups of fifty" format (Na tri coicat) so that "fifties" could be used for personal and/or penitential prayer. By the twelfth century it was common for all people to carry a "Paternoster cord" on their person for purposes of keeping straight the prayers recited on any group of fifty.

As the need for lay participation in the prayer life of the Church increased, the need for a Psalter of popular prayers (most people of the period were not sufficiently educated to pray the psalms in Latin) became urgent. Thus the Na tri coicat format was imposed first on recitations of Paternosters and later on Aves. Spurred by the association of Mary with roses and rose gardens, from both scriptural and traditional bases, the Marian Psalter of Aves became by the fourteenth century a standard form of repetitive prayer for the whole Church, laity and religious alike.

The fifteenth century provided the development period for the many facets of today's Rosary. During this period the Dominican influence with the Rosary grew and was fostered through both fact and legend. Although many apocryphal accounts exist to explain how St. Dominic and his followers became originators of Rosary devotion, it is evident that these accounts cannot stand up to the scrutiny of historical research. Although the Dominicans were not the sole originators of the Rosary, their influence in the growth, devotion and spread of this prayer cannot be denied. It would not be inaccurate to call them the principal promoters and defenders of the Rosary through history. Certainly the fifteenth century was a period for much Dominican influence in this meditation, bringing a series of prayers and mysteries into a coherent form of prayer.

The fifteenth century saw the Rosary begin its development into the familiar prayer form we know today. The Our Father came intact from the Gospel of Matthew. The Hail Mary developed from the scriptural greetings of Gabriel and Elizabeth to Mary in Luke's Gospel, plus a popular exhortation in use by the laity of that period. The Glory Be was used as a common doxology from the earliest of Christian times when praying the psalms. The Salve Regina, a later addition to the Rosary, states all relevant medieval themes about the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its affiliation with the Rosary came about through popular practice although its precise origin within the devotion is not known. The Apostles' Creed along with the Rosary pendant were also later developments, being added to the Rosary only in the early seventeenth century.

During this period the definition of the individual prayers, plus the development of a series of mysteries which united this loosely connected series of prayers, took place. The mysteries, the true essence of the Rosary, have their origin from Henry of Kalbar who added clausulae or "statements of faith" to each of the fifty Aves of the Marian Psalter. The development of the mysteries included the fixing of 150 statements of faith which were followed by the introduction of fifteen true mysteries, one for each Paternoster. Eventually the clausulae faded away and the fifteen mysteries remained. By the mid-sixteenth century, the mysteries we know today, Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious, were in place and used in Rosary recitation