Saints Anne and Joachim were the parents of the Virgin
Mary. St. Anne is one of the patron saints of Britain and Canada and of women in labor. As the grandparents of Jesus, Saints
Anne and Joachim are also considered the patron saints of
grandparents.
parents.
Information concerning their lives and names is found
in the 2nd-century Protevangelium (“First Gospel of James”) and
the 3rd-century Evangelium de nativitate Mariae (“Gospel of the
Nativity of Mary”). According to these noncanonical
sources, Anne was born in Bethlehem in Judaea. She married Joachim, and, although they shared a wealthy and devout
life at Nazareth, they eventually lamented their childlessness.
Joachim, reproached at the Temple for his sterility, retreated into
the countryside to pray, while Anne, grieved by his disappearance and by her barrenness, solemnly promised God that, if
given a child, she would dedicate it to the Lord’s service. Both
received the vision of an angel, who announced that Anne would
conceive a most wondrous child. The couple rejoiced at the birth
of their daughter, whom Anne named Mary. When the child was
three years old, Joachim and Anne, in fulfillment of her divine
promise, brought Mary to the Temple of Jerusalem, where they
left her to be brought up.
The account of their lives startlingly parallels the Old
Testament story of the barren Hannah and her conception of
Samuel (1 Samuel 1); she also dedicated her child to the service of God. According to later legends, Joachim died shortly
after Mary’s birth, and Anne, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, remarried. Some traditions hold that Anne in her alleged subsequent marriage(s) became the grandmother of the Apostles John and James (sons of Zebedee), Simon, Jude, and
James the Less (son of Alphaeus) and also of James, “the
Lord’s brother.”
Anne’s cult was fervent in the Eastern church as early
as the 4th century, and many churches, the first dating from the
6th century, were built in her honor. In the early 8th century
Pope Constantine probably introduced her devotion to Rome,
while Joachim’s cult was introduced in the West in the 15th century. Anne became extremely popular in the Middle Ages and
influenced such theologians as Jean de Gerson, Konrad Wimpinar, and Johann Eck. In response to attacks on her cult
by Protestant reformers, devotion to St. Anne was further promoted by post-Reformation popes.
The Protevangelium became the foundation for establishing the liturgical feasts of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary
(September 8) and the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed
Virgin Mary (December 8). The dedication of Mary at the Temple
became so important in church doctrine that by 1585 Pope Sixtus V included in the Western church calendar the liturgical feast
of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary (November 21). Although
this festival originated early in the East, probably at Jerusalem in
543, its first Western observance was recorded in England in
the 11th century.