The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotions and the Reinvention of Catholicism (review)

Numerous authors have conducted devotional and scholarly studies on the rosary, but in The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotions and the Reinvention of Catholicism, Nathan D. Mitchell, professor of theology in the University of Notre Dame, has produced an innovative and significant addition to the literature. In this exhaustively researched and detailed analysis of this popular devotion, Mitchell has successfully argued that despite the variance of time, culture, and devotional popularity, not only has the rosary continually been used but also, beginning from its medieval roots, has served as the thread to capture the imagination of Catholics. Mitchell successfully argues that the rosary has not only survived but flourished, because it was able to absorb the reform, religious identity, and devotionalism that characterized early-modern Catholicism.

In six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, Mitchell shows that, contrary to popular belief, Catholicism after Trent was not monolithic, but rather adapted to changing times and needs. As time and situation change, he shows how the rosary was reframed to allow it to become in many ways a badge of identification for Catholics. The rosary was found to be adaptable to individuals or to groups and thus ideal as a vehicle to maintain the faith through dangerous and at times perilous periods of Catholic history.

The heart of Mitchell’s work describes how the rosary was reframed in varied ways, allowing it not only to be relevant but, more important, highly useful to Catholics in their daily practice of the faith. Artistically, Mitchell uses the work of Caravaggio, especially his master work Madonna del Rosario (1607), to show how the rosary became a symbol for the poor through the artist’s depiction of Mary as an advocate for those on the margins of society. In describing the reframing of ritual and religious identity, Mitchell effectively argues that the rosary in some ways became “the Mass” for those for whom religious practice was proscribed. He uses the Church in England as an example of how Catholics, forced to be a church without a church building and a sacramental community without sacraments, used the rosary as a badge of distinctive religious identity and a method to foster the social structure of their faith community. For some Catholics in seventeenth-century England, the rosary, Mitchell suggests, became a “Eucharistic site” (p. 165). Even in the late-twentieth century the rosary continued to have an uncanny ability to bring together the sublime and prosaic. In short, it was the rosary’s adaptability, to be prayed individually or in common, to be constructed of materials such as precious stones or simply knots of cord, that allowed it to continue to serve as a powerful witness of Catholic identity.

Mitchell’s monograph is an innovative and highly engaging study that convincingly argues how the rosary, especially its ability to adapt, was in many ways the binding thread or common denominator to which Catholics turned to achieve continuity in their practice of the faith. This book, through its exhaustive research and detailed analysis, is for the scholarly community; it is not a monograph aimed toward those who simply desire more information concerning the history or devotion associated with the rosary. Mitchell has certainly given scholars a text that adds significantly to the literature by blazing a new, intricate, and highly enlightening path that sees the value of the rosary is a completely new way.