ROSAMOND, known as “ The Fair ” (d. c. 1176), mistress of Henry II., king of' England, is believed to have been the daughter of Walter de Clifford of the family of Fitz-Ponce. The evidence for the paternity is, however, only an entry of a statement made by the jurors of the manor of Corfham in a Hundred Roll of the second year of the reign of Edward I. (1274), great grandson of Henry II. Rosamond is said to have been Henry's mistress secretly for several years, but was openly acknowledged by him only when he imprisoned his wife Eleanor of Acquitaine as a punishment for her encouragement of her sons in the rebellion of 1173–74. She died in or about 1176, and was buried in the nunnery church of Godstow before the high altar. The body was removed by order of St Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, in 1191, and was, seemingly, reinterred in the chapter house. The story that she was poisoned by Queen Eleanor first appears in the French Chronicle of London in the 14th century. The romantic details of the labyrinth at Woodstock, and the clue which guided King Henry II. to her bower, were the inventions of story-writers of later times. There is no evidence for the belief that she was the mother of Henry's natural son William Longsword, earl of Salisbury.
ROSARIO, a city and river port of Argentina, in the province
of Santa Fé, on the W. bank of the Parana, 186 m. by rail N.W.
of Buenos Aires. Pop. (1904, estimate) 120,000. It is accessible
to ocean-going steamers of medium draught. The city
stands on the eastern margin of the great pampean plain,
65 to 75 ft. above the wide river-bed washed out by the Parané.
It extends back a considerable distance from the river, and
there are country residences and gardens of the better class
along the line of the Central Argentine railway and northward
toward San Lorenzo. The city is laid out with chessboard
regularity, and the streets are paved (in great part with cobblestones),
lighted with gas and electricity, traversed by tramway
lines, and provided with sewers and water mains. The Boulevard
El Santafecino is an attractive residence street with
double driveways separated by a strip of garden and bordered
by fine shade trees. The chief edifices of an official character
are the custom house, post office, municipal hall and law courts.
There is a large charity hospital, and the English and German
colonies maintain a well-equipped infirmary. The. largest
sugar refinery in Argentina is here, and there are flour-mills,
breweries and some smaller manufactures. The city is chiefly
commercial, being the shipping port for a large part of northern
Argentina, among its exports being wheat, flour, baled hay,
linseed, Indian corn, sugar, rum, cattle, hides, meats, wool,
quebracho extract, &c. The railway connexions are good,
including the Buenos Aires and Rosario and the Central Argentine
lines to the national capital, the Buenos Aires and Rosario
line northward to Tucuman, where it connects with the government
line to Salta, Iujuy and the Bolivian frontier, the Central
Argentine line westward to Cordoba, with connexion sat Villa
Maria for Mendoza and the Chilean frontier, and two narrow gauge
lines, one running to Santa Fé and the other to Cordoba.
The port of Rosario has hitherto consisted of a deep river
anchorage and wooden wharves on the lower bank for the
accommodation of steamers. Since 1902 work has been in
progress under a contract with a French company for the
construction of 12,697 ft. of quays, 23 m. of railway tracks
along the quays to connect with the several railways entering
the city, drawbridges, roadways, sheds, depots, elevator, offices,
electric plant, fixed and movable cranes, and other appliances,
&c., for the handling of produce and merchandise. The
trade of the port was officially valued at 21,276,672 Arg.
gold dollars imports, and 68,503,231 gold dollars exports in
1905.
Rosario was founded in 1730 by Francisco Godoy, but it grew so slowly that it was still a small village up to the middle of the 19th century. In 1854 General Justo José de Urquiza, then at the head of the Argentine Confederation, made it the port of the ten inland provinces then at war with Buenos Aires, and in 1857 imposed differential duties on the cargoes of vessels first breaking bulk at the southern port. This gave Rosario a start, and its trade and population have grown since then with great rapidity.
ROSARY (Lat. rosarium), a popular devotion of the Roman
Catholic Church, consisting of 15 Paternosters and Glorias and
150 Aves, recited on beads. It is divided into three parts, each
containing five decades, a decade comprising 1 Pater, 10 Aves
and a Gloria, in addition to a subject for meditation selected
from the “ mysteries” of the life of Christ and of the Blessed
Virgin. The Christian practice of repeating prayers is traceable
to early times: Sozomen mentions (H.E. v. 29) the hermit Paul
of the 4th century who threw away a pebble as he recited each
of his 300 daily prayers; and a canon of the English synod of
Cealcythe in 816 (Mansi xiv. 360) directed septum beltidum
Paternoster to be said for a deceased bishop. In many orders
the lay brothers daily said a large number of Paternosters
instead of reading the breviary; it was natural that the Paternoster
should be the prayer most often repeated. The Ave
Maria is first mentione d as a form of prayer in the second half
of the 11th century, but it was not until the 16th century that
it became general in its present form. It is not known precisely
when the mechanical device of the rosary was first used. William
of Malmesbury (De gest. pant. Angl. iv. 4) says that Godiva, who
founded a religious house at Coventry in 1040, left a string of
jewels, on which she had told her prayers, that it might be hung
on the statue of the Blessed Virgin. Thomas of Chantimpré,
who wrote about the middle of the 13th century, first mentions
the word “ rosary ” (De apibus, ii. 13), using it apparently
in a mystical sense as Mary's rose-garden. There is no contemporary
confirmation of the story that the rosary was given
to St Dominic through revelation of the Blessed Virgin and
was employed during the crusade against the Albigenses,
although the story was later accepted by Leo X., Pius V.,
Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., Alexander VII., Innocent XI. and
Clement XI. According to Benedict XIV. (De Fest. 160), the
belief rests on the tradition of the Dominican order. Whatever
may have been the origin of the rosary, the Dominicans did
much to propagate the devotion. The practice of meditating
on the mysteries doubtless began with a Dominican, Alanus
de Rupe (born 1428), and another Dominican, Jacob Sprenger
(d. 1495), grand-inquisitor in Germany, founded the first confraternity
of the rosary at Cologne in 147 5. This society spread
rapidly, and was specially privileged by Sixtus IV., Innocent
VIII. and Leo. X. After the battle of Lepanto (1st Sunday in
October 1571), which was won while the members of the
confraternity at Rome were making supplication for Christian
success, Pius V. ordered an annual commemoration of “ St
Mary of Victory,” and Gregory XIII., by bull of the 1st of April
1583, set aside the 1st Sunday in October as the feast of the
Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be observed in such
churches as maintained an altar in honour of the rosary. Clement
XI., by bull of the 3rd of October 1716, directed the observance
of the feast by all Christendom. The devotion has been
particularly fostered by the Jesuits, St Ignatius Loyola having
expressly ordered its use. It has been repeatedly indulgences
by various popes. Leo XIII. issued eight encyclicals on the
devotion; he urged its recitation throughout October, and
directed (1883) the insertion of the title regina sacratissimi
rosarii in the Litany. There are several varieties of the rosary
more or less in use by Roman Catholics: the Passionists, or
rosary of the five wounds, approved by Leo XII. in 1823;
the Crown of Our Lord, attributed to Michael of Florence, a
Camaldolese monk (c. 1516), and consisting of 33 Paters,
5 Aves and a Credo; St Bridget's, 7 Paters and 63 Aves, in
honour of the joys and sorrows of the Blessed Virgin and the
63 years of her life. The Living Rosary, in which 15 persons
unite to say the rosary every month, was approved by Gregory
XVI. (1832) and placed in charge of the Dominican order by
Pius IX. (1877).
Similar expedients to assist the memory in repetitions of prayers occur among Buddhists and Mahommedans: in the former case the prayers are said on a string of some hundred beads, called the tibet-pren-ba or the ten-wa; in the latter case,
