The rosary, or “wreath of roses,” first appeared in fifteenth-century Europe.
But the practice of reciting prayers with a string of beads or knots goes back about five hundred years before the dawn of Christianity.
The word bead comes from the Anglo-Saxon word bidden, meaning “to ask.”
The principle for both Christians and Muslims is that the more you ask or repeat a prayer the more effective it is, and so the rosary is an aid in keeping count.
