At the beginning of the 13 th Century the Church was facing many challenges. Among them was the spread of a strange heresy known as Albigensianism. It was a strong force in southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy between the 11th and 13th centuries. It was a harsh religion that taught that only the spiritual is good and that everything material is bad. Therefore, the body in and of itself is evil, and every person’s soul is imprisoned in that evil body. The only way in which a person could experience salvation or liberation was to be freed from the imprisonment of their flesh, which was part of this evil material world.

In 1208, St Dominic de Guzman, a Spanish priest and later the founder of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), traveled to France preaching against the Albigensian heresy, but his efforts gained few conversions and even fewer followers. St Dominic was charismatic, highly educated, and a great preacher, so the failure of his efforts left him downcast and wondering what he was doing wrong. He decided that he needed to retreat into the wilderness to be alone with God and seek divine guidance. So, he went into a forest near Toulouse, France, to pray. After three days of prayer and fasting, three angels appeared in the sky along with a ball of fire. When they disappeared, the Virgin Mary spoke, telling St Dominic that he must preach her Psalter if he wished to succeed in converting the Albigensians to the Catholic faith. The Blessed Virgin appeared with three angels and said, “Dear Dominic, do you know which weapon the Blessed Trinity wants to use to reform the world?” St Dominic’s response was

The Marian Psalter is very much the precursor to the Rosary. The Marian Psalter was a prayer developed by the Cistercian monks, which involved praying 150 Hail Marys divided into groups of 10 by Our Fathers. Prayer beads were used to keep track of the Hail Marys. A central part of the monks' daily life was the chanting of the Psalms in the Bible during the course of each week. The Psalms were prayed in Latin, so it required a monk to be able to read and understand Latin. A practice originated here in Ireland of monks who were not priests and were not well educated enough to read and understand Latin to participate in the praying of the 150 psalms by praying 150 Our Fathers or Paternosters. Over time, the Hail Mary prayer gained more popularity under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the influence of St Bernard of Clairvaux, who had a deep and tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. So the 150 Hail Mary’s began to be used to represent each Psalm. This was sometimes called the poor man’s breviary. However, it was not a meditative or contemplative prayer at all. It was Mary who revealed to St. Dominic which mysteries should be preached to correspond to the Psalter prayers: episodes from the Sacred Scriptures of Christ’s life focusing on the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. With the fire of the Holy Spirit in his heart and the divine gift of the Holy Rosary in his hands, St Dominic went forth preaching and converting thousands of men and women back to the Catholic faith.