Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"The fifteen promises of the Rosary and Blessed Alan de la Roca"

Scope of Dominican preaching (Europe) (15th century)

La devoción de las 15 promises of the Rosary and the figure of Blessed Alano de la Roca (Alano de la Rupe) are born of the Dominican fervor of the late Middle Ages. The tradition presents Alano as the friar that, in the second half of the 15th century, «reaviva» el Rosario —el antiguo Salterium of Mary- and put it back into circulation in a context of religious renewal. To him it is attributed to having received and spread the fifteen promises of the Virgin for those who pray the Rosary with devotion: thanks and protection, perseverance, help in the hour of death, release from purgatory and special favor for those who spread this prayer.

We have to be honest. It's documented that the fifteen promises circulate as devotional text associated with Blessed Alano within the rosarian tradition, and that the Rosary is a historically consolidated Dominican Marian devotion. It belongs instead to the Pious tradition que la Virgen se le apareciera y le dictara exactamente esas quince promesas, que él fuera el único «restaurador» del Rosario, o que la lista actual proceda literalmente de una revelación privada. Y no consta no doctrinal approval of the Church that turns these promises into compulsory teaching: they function as devotional motivation, not as dogma. Some versions connect Alano with 1349 and the black plague, but that chronology appears in reports of dissemination and the firmly documented drop.

In addition to this devotion, the practice of Three Avemarias, belonging to the same spiritual universe of trust in Marian intercession and perseverance in the repetition of the Hail Mary; but its concrete historical relationship with Alano or with a determined private revelation no consta in a safe documentary way, not a sanctuary or diocese associated with certainty.

Here the link with the Rosary is total and central: the promises refer precisely to those who pray it with faith, and in the Dominican spirituality tardomedieval the Rosary appears as a meditative prayer aimed at contemplating Christ with Mary. Beyond the historical debate, the beautiful thing is the call that beats in all this: perseverance and filial trust in the intercession of the Virgin.