1400 - 1500 AD
The thoughts or meditations on the 150 Hail Mary beads
took the form of woodcuts (graphic pictures). This exhausted
the practice easily because of the volume of pictures. Picture
rosaries were shortened to one picture/thought for each Our
Father as it is today.
1700s
St. Louis de Montfort wrote the most common set of
meditations for the rosary used today.
Early 1900s
A movement was begun attempting to
return to a form of the medieval rosary
- one thought for each Hail Mary.