St. Anne

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Anne (Hebrew,Hannah, grace; also spelledAnn, Anne, Anna) is the traditional name of the mother of theBlessed Virgin Mary.

All our information concerning the names and lives of Sts.Joachim and Anne, theparents ofMary, is derived fromapocryphal literature, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and theProtoevangelium of James. Though the earliest form of the latter, on which directly or indirectly the other two seem to be based, goes back to about A.D. 150, we can hardly accept as beyonddoubt its various statements on its sole authority. In the Orient the Protoevangelium had great authority and portions of it were read on thefeasts ofMary by the Greeks,Syrians,Copts, andArabians. In the Occident, however, it was rejected by theFathers of the Church until its contents were incorporated byJacobus de Voragine in his "Golden Legend" in the thirteenth century. From that time on the story of St. Anne spread over the West and was amply developed, until St. Anne became one of the most popularsaints also of theLatin Church.

The Protoevangelium gives the following account: InNazareth there lived arich andpious couple, Joachim and Hannah. They were childless. When on afeast day Joachim presented himself to offer sacrifice in the temple, he was repulsed by a certainRuben, under the pretext that men without offspring were unworthy to be admitted. Whereupon Joachim, bowed down with grief, did not return home, but went into the mountains to make his plaint toGod in solitude. Also Hannah, having learned the reason of the prolonged absence of her husband, cried to the Lord to take away from her the curse of sterility, promising to dedicate her child to the service ofGod. Theirprayers were heard; anangel came to Hannah and said: "Hannah, the Lord has looked upon thy tears; thou shalt conceive and give birth and the fruit of thy womb shall beblessed by all the world". Theangel made the same promise to Joachim, who returned to his wife. Hannah gave birth to a daughter whom she called Miriam (Mary). Since this story is apparently a reproduction of thebiblical account of the conception ofSamuel, whose mother was also called Hannah, even the name of the mother ofMary seems to bedoubtful.

The renownedFather John of Eck ofIngolstadt, in asermon on St. Anne (published atParis in 1579), pretends toknow even the names of theparents St. Anne. He calls them Stollanus and Emerentia. He says that St. Anne was born after Stollanus and Emerentia had been childless for twenty years; thatSt. Joachim died soon after the presentation of Mary in the temple; that St. Anne then marriedCleophas, by whom she became the mother ofMary Cleophae (the wife of Alphaeus and mother of theApostles James the Lesser, Simon andJudas, and of Joseph the Just); after the death of Cleophas she is said to have married Salomas, to whom she bore Maria Salomae (the wife of Zebedaeus and mother of the Apostles John and James the Greater). The same spurious legend is found in the writings ofGerson (Opp. III, 59) and of many others. There arose in the sixteenth century an animated controversy over the marriages of St. Anne, in whichBaronius andBellarmine defended her monogamy. The GreekMenaea (25 July) call theparents of St. Anne Mathan and Maria, and relate that Salome and Elizabeth, the mother ofSt. John the Baptist, were daughters of two sisters of St. Anne. According to Ephiphanius it was maintained even in the fourth century by some enthusiasts that St. Anne conceived without the action of man. Thiserror was revived in the West in the fifteenth century. (Anna concepit per osculum Joachimi.) In 1677 theHoly See condemned theerror of Imperiali who taught that St. Anne in the conception and birth ofMary remainedvirgin (Benedict XIV, De Festis, II, 9). In the Orient the cult of St. Anne can be traced to the fourth century.Justinian I (d. 565) had a church dedicated to her. The canon of the Greek Office of St. Anne was composed bySt. Theophanes (d. 817), but older parts of the Office are ascribed to Anatolius of Byzantium (d. 458). Herfeast is celebrated in the East on the 25th day of July, which may be the day of the dedication of her first church at Constantinople or the anniversary of the arrival of her supposedrelics in Constantinople (710). It is found in the oldestliturgical document of theGreek Church, the Calendar of Constantinople (first half of the eighth century). The Greeks keep a collective feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne on the 9th of September. In theLatin Church St. Anne was notvenerated, except, perhaps, in the south ofFrance, before the thirteenth century. Her picture,painted in the eighth century, which was found lately in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua inRome, owes its origin to Byzantine influence. Her feast, under the influence of the "Golden Legend", is first found (26 July) in the thirteenth century, e.g. atDouai (in 1291), where a foot of St. Anne wasvenerated (feast of translation, 16 September). It was introduced inEngland byUrban VI, 21 November, 1378, from which time it spread all over theWestern Church. It was extended to the universalLatin Church in 1584.

The supposedrelics of St. Anne were brought from the Holy Land to Constantinople in 710 and were still kept there in thechurch of St. Sophia in 1333. Thetradition of the church of Apt in southernFrance pretends that the body of St. Anne was brought to Apt by St. Lazarus, the friend ofChrist, was hidden by St. Auspicius (d. 398), and found again during the reign ofCharlemagne (feast, Monday after theoctave ofEaster); theserelics were brought to a magnificentchapel in 1664 (feast, 4 May). The head of St. Anne was kept atMainz up to 1510, when it wasstolen and brought to Düren in Rheinland. St. Anne is thepatroness of Brittany. Hermiraculous picture (feast, 7 March) isvenerated at Notre Dame d'Auray,Diocese of Vannes. Also inCanada, where she is the principal patron of theprovince of Quebec, the shrine ofSt. Anne de Beaupré is well known. St. Anne is patroness ofwomen in labour; she is represented holding theBlessed Virgin Mary in her lap, who again carries on her arm the childJesus. She is also patroness of miners, Christ being compared to gold, Mary to silver.

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