History of the Rosary of Blessed Alanus, some 300 years later. During the middle ages, evidence suggests that both the Our Father and the Hail Mary were recited with prayer beads. In 13th century Paris, four trade guilds existed of prayer bead makers, who were referred to as "paternosterers", and the beads were referred to as "paternosters", suggesting a continued link between the Our Father ("Pater noster" in Latin) and the prayer beads. In the 12th century, the rule of the English anchorites, the "Ancrene Wisse", specified how groups of 50 Hail Marys were to be broken into five decades of ten Hail Marys
Prayer beads were presumably used to count repetitions of the Lord's Prayer. Later, Roman Catholics and eventually Anglicans prayed the rosary with strings of 59 beads. The term "rosary" comes from the Latin "rosarium" "rose garden" and is an important and traditional devotion of the Catholic Church, combining prayer and meditation in sequences (called "decades") of the Lord's Prayer, 10 Hail Marys, and a Gloria Patri as well as a number of other prayers (such as the Apostles' Creed and the Salve Regina) at the beginning and end. The prayers are accompanied by meditation on the Mysteries, events in the life and