HISTORY OF THE ROSARY
At the age of 33, Dominic exercised the priestly ministry in the southern region of France. It was in this region that St Dominic came in contact with the Albigensian heresy. The heresy was an offshoot of Manicheanism.  Manes taught that all matter of evil and that man is a combination of two opposing principles; a spiritual being created by God; thrust into a material body created by an evil being.
St Dominic traveled from village to village teaching the truths of the Faith. The Albigensians jeered,insulted, and pelted him with stones as he traveled along their roads. He prayed to God in churches at night and hardly ever slept. His contemporaries  described him as a "Strong athlete" capable of great physical endurance. He was always good to talk to when you were in trouble, always affectionate, and quickly made you feel at home.
It was during this time that the tradition of the Rosary comes to us St Dominic at first obtained but scanty success; and that one day, complaining of thisin pious prayer to our Blessed Lady, she deigned to reply to him, saying "wonder not that you have obtained so little fruit by your labors, you have spent them on barren soil, not yet watered with the dew of divine grace. When God willed to renew the face of the earth. He began by sending down on it the fertilizing rain of the Angelic Salutation" The Rosary.
Pope Leo XIII affirmed over and over the Dominican origin of the Rosary and in a letter to the Bishop of Carcassone (1889), he accepts the tradition of Prouilie as the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St Dominic, revealing the devotion. The tradition that Mary first revealed the Rosary devotion to St Dominic is supported by 13 popes.
St Dominic went into the villages of the heretics, gathered the people, and preached to them the mysteries of salvation - the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life. As the Holy Virgin has taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries and after each short instruction he had ten Hail Mary's recited. St Dominic found great success in the new devotion, bringing about the conversion of the Albigensians.
tThe battle of Muret was fought in 1213 between the Catholic forces, led by Simon de Monfort and the Albegensians forces, led by Raymond of Toulouse. The catholic forces were in the habit of praying the Rosary, at the suggestion of St Dominic. The catholic forces won the battle of Muret, looked upon the victory as miraculous, and counted it as the fruit of the prayer. The English Dominican historian , Nicholas Trivet wrote "St Dominic warred by prayer, DeMonfort by arms. The first chapel in honor of the Rosary was built, out of gratitude, by Simon de Monfort in the town of Muret."
On Oct 7, 1571, members of the Confraternity of the Rosary in Rome, processed praying the Rosary for a blessing on the Christian fleet fighting the Turks at Leperito. Pope Pius XI stated that the Rosary of Mary is, as it were, the principle and foundation on which every Order of St. Dominic rests for making perfect the life of its members and obtaining the salvation of others. The Catholic Church looks to the Dominicans as officals promoters of both the Rosary and the Rosary Confraternity.
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