St Anne

St Anne is one of those saints about whom devotion is strong while hard biography is slight. Of the mother of Our Lady, nothing is certainly known. Even the names Anne and Joachim depend on the old Protevangelium of James, a very ancient but not trustworthy apocryphal writing. That book tells the familiar story of childlessness becoming a public reproach to Joachim, his retreat into the desert to fast and pray, Anne mourning and praying beneath a laurel bush, and the angelic message promising that she would conceive and bring forth the one whose offspring would be spoken of in all the world. The resemblance to the Old Testament account of Samuel’s conception, whose mother also bears the name Anne, is one more reason for caution rather than confidence. Yet devotion is not left empty.

What remains firm is the cult of St Anne itself. There is early veneration of her at Constantinople, where Justinian dedicated a shrine in her honor, and ancient Roman traces of devotion as well. Later centuries greatly increased that affection, until Anne became one of the best-loved saints in the Church, especially as the grandmother of the Lord and as a quiet emblem of holy family life. So the life does two things at once. It refuses to pretend that the tender popular story is solid biography, and it still honors the serious and enduring place St Anne has held in Christian devotion in East and West.