According to apocrypha, as well as Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the Bible's canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from New Testament apocrypha, of which the Gospel of James (written perhaps around 150 AD) seems to be the earliest that mentions them.
The mother of Mary is mentioned but not named in the Quran.
Anne (Arabic: حنة, romanized: Ḥannah) is also revered in Islam, recognized as a highly spiritual woman and as the mother of Mary. She is not named in the Quran, where she is referred to as "the wife of Imran". The Quran describes her remaining childless until her old age. One day, Anne saw a bird feeding its young while sitting in the shade of a tree, which awakened her desire to have children of her own. She prayed for a child and eventually conceived; her husband, Imran, died before the child was born. Expecting the child to be male, Anne vowed to dedicate him to isolation and service in the Second Temple.[N 1][8][9]
However, Anne bore a daughter instead, and named her Mary. Her words upon delivering Mary reflect her status as a great mystic, realising that while she had wanted a son, this daughter was God's gift to her:[8][9]
When she delivered, she said, “My Lord! I have given birth to a girl,”—and Allah fully knew what she had delivered—“and the male is not like the female. I have named her Mary, and I seek Your protection for her and her offspring from Satan, the accursed.” So her Lord accepted her graciously and blessed her with a pleasant upbringing—entrusting her to the care of Zachariah...
Although the canonical books of the New Testament never mention the mother of the Virgin Mary, traditions about her family, childhood, education, and eventual betrothal to Joseph developed very early in the history of the church. The oldest and most influential source for these is the apocryphal Gospel of James, first written in Koine Greek around the middle of the second century AD. In the West, the Gospel of James fell under a cloud in the fourth and fifth centuries when it was accused of "absurdities" by Jerome and condemned as untrustworthy by Pope Damasus I, Pope Innocent I, and Pope Gelasius I.[10] However, despite having been condemned by the Church, it was taken over almost in toto by another apocryphal work, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which popularised most of its stories.[11]
In the fourth century and then much later in the fifteenth century, a belief arose that Mary was conceived of Anne without original sin. This belief in the Immaculate Conception states that God preserved Mary's body and soul intact and sinless from her first moment of existence, through the merits of Jesus Christ.[12] The Immaculate Conception, often confused with the Annunciation of the Incarnation (Mary's virgin birth of Jesus), was made dogma in the Catholic church by Pope Pius IX's papal bull, IneffabilisDeus, in 1854.
In the Eastern church, the veneration of Anne herself may go back as far as c. 550, when Justinian built a church in Constantinople in her honor.[14] The earliest pictorial sign of her veneration in the West is an eighth-century fresco in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome.[10]
The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary had reached southern Italy by the ninth century. The cult of Saint Anne had developed in northern Europe by the twelfth century. A shrine at Douai, in northern France, was one of the early centers of devotion to St. Anne in the West.[15]
The Anna Selbdritt was a type of iconography depicting the 3 generations of Saint Anne, Mary, and the child Jesus. Emphasizing the humanity of Jesus, it drew on the earlier conventions of the Seat of Wisdom, and was popular in northern Germany in the 1500s.[16]
During the High Middle Ages, Saint Anne became increasingly identified as a maritime saint, protecting sailors and fisherman, and invoked against storms.[17]
Two well-known shrines to St. Anne are that of Ste-Anne-d'Auray in Brittany, France; and that of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré near the city of Québec. The number of visitors to the Basilica of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré is greatest on St Anne's Feast Day, 26 July, and the Sunday before Nativity of the Virgin Mary, 8 September. In 1892, Pope Leo XIII sent a relic of St Anne to the church.[17]
By the middle of the seventh century, a distinct feast day, the Conception of St. Anne (Maternity of Holy Anna) celebrating the conception of Mary by Saint Anne, was observed at the Monastery of Saint Sabas.[20] It is now known in the Greek Orthodox Church as the feast of "The Conception by St. Anne of the Most Holy Theotokos", and celebrated on 9 December.[21] In the Roman Catholic Church, the Feast of Saints Anne and Joachim is celebrated on 26 July.
The alleged relics of St. Anne were brought from the Holy Land to Constantinople in 710 and were kept there in the church of St. Sophia as late as 1333.[12]
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, returning crusaders and pilgrims from the East brought relics of Anne to a number of churches, including most famously those at Apt, in Provence, Ghent, and Chartres.[10] St. Anne's relics have been preserved and venerated in the many cathedrals and monasteries dedicated to her name, for example in Austria, Canada,[28] Germany, Italy,[29] and Greece in the semi-autonomous Mount Athos, and the city of Katerini.[30] Medieval and baroque craftsmanship is evidenced in, for example, the metalwork of the life-size reliquaries containing the bones of her forearm. Examples employing folk art techniques are also known.
Düren has been the main place of pilgrimage for Anne since 1506, when Pope Julius II decreed that her relics should be kept there.
Patronage
The Church of Saint Anne in Beit Guvrin National Park was built by the Byzantines and the Crusaders in the twelfth century, known in Arabic as Khirbet (lit. "ruin") Sandahanna, the mound of Maresha being called Tell Sandahanna.
Saint Anne is patroness of unmarried women, housewives, women in labor or who want to be pregnant, grandmothers, mothers and educators. She is also a patroness of horseback riders, cabinet-makers[15] and miners. As the mother of Mary, this devotion to Saint Anne as the patron of miners arises from the medieval comparison between Mary and Christ and the precious metals silver and gold. Anne's womb was considered the source from which these precious metals were mined.[31]
In John Everett Millais's 1849–50 work, Christ in the House of His Parents,
Anne is shown in her son-in-law Joseph's carpentry shop caring for a young Jesus who had cut his hand on a nail. She joins her daughter Mary, Joseph, and a young boy who will later become known as John the Baptist in caring for the injured hand of Jesus.
Iconography
The subject of Joachim and Anne The Meeting at the Golden Gate was a regular component of artistic cycles of the Life of the Virgin. The couple meet at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem and embrace. They are aware of Anne's pregnancy, of which they have been separately informed by an archangel. This moment stood for the conception of Mary, and the feast was celebrated on the same day as the Immaculate Conception. Art works representing the Golden Gate and the events leading up to it were influenced by the narrative in the widely read Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. The Birth of Mary, the Presentation of Mary and the Marriage of the Virgin were usual components of cycles of the Life of the Virgin in which Anne is normally shown here.
Her emblem is a door.[15] She is often portrayed wearing red and green, representing love and life.[3]
Anne is never shown as present at the Nativity of Christ, but is frequently shown with the infant Christ in various subjects. She is sometimes believed to be depicted in scenes of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple and the Circumcision of Christ, but in the former case, this likely reflects a misidentification through confusion with Anna the Prophetess. There was a tradition that Anne went (separately) to Egypt and rejoined the Holy Family after their Flight to Egypt. Anne is not seen with the adult Christ, so was regarded as having died during the youth of Jesus.[33] Anne is also shown as the matriarch of the Holy Kinship, the extended family of Jesus, a popular subject in late medieval Germany; some versions of these pictorial and sculptural depictions include Emerentia who was reputed in the fifteenth century to be Anne's mother. In modern devotions, Anne and her husband are invoked for protection for the unborn.
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
The role of the Messiah's grandparents in salvation history was commonly depicted in early medieval devotional art in a vertical double-Madonna arrangement known as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Another typical subject has Anne teaching the Virgin Mary the Scriptures (see gallery below).
^"O my Lord! I do dedicate into Thee what is in my womb for Thy special service: So accept this of me: For Thou hearest and knowest all things." (Quran 3:35).
^ abWheeler, Brannon M. (2002). Prophets in the Quran: an introduction to the Quran and Muslim exegesis. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN0-8264-4957-3.
^ abDa Costa, Yusuf (2002). The Honor of Women in Islam. LegitMaddie101. ISBN1-930409-06-0.
^Some writers gave her age at death, as part of a general family chronology, but no generally accepted tradition developed on this point, even during the Middle Ages.
^O. Bitschnau: Das Leben der Heiligen Gottes 1883, 558
External links
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