It actually started much earlier than that..
Rosaries, or strings of prayer beads, originated in India, where yogins and yoginis were using what is still the standard Hindu mala (literally "rose" or "garland") before the 8th century BCE The traditional 108 identical beads of the malas, usually made from the seeds of sacred plants, helped Hindu mystics focus their minds while chanting mantras, the sacred syllables of power central to Indian spiritual and magical practice. Buddhist monks and nuns borrowed the mala early on, possibly during the life of the Buddha himself. Buddhist missionaries spread the mala throughout Asia, and, to this day, it remains a fixture of spiritual practice throughout the Far East.
Buddhism also brought the rosary westward. Buddhist missionaries reached Alexandria in Egypt, the intellectual center of the old Mediterranean world, by the 2nd century BCE, and established monasteries throughout central Asia and the eastern parts of what we now call the Middle East. As the newer religions of Christianity and Islam came into contact with Buddhism, they borrowed the rosary as well, though they changed its design to fit their own number symbolism. The Muslim rosary has ninety-nine beads, representing the ninety-nine names of God, and one larger bead representing the deity himself. The oldest Christian rosary has 150 beads, representing the 150 psalms, and is still used today by Benedictine monks. The most common rosary among Catholics nowadays, the fifty-bead Marian rosary, was created by St. Dominic in the early 13th century CE after experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary.
It really began people who wanted to chant the psalms like the monks, but because they did not know how to read were the ones who put the rosary together.