The Ladies’ Shrine
Is There a Hidden Message in St. Anne’s Chapel?
Peter Harper, Smoke Signals #24, April 1994
If you want to be Mary's friend
Be sure to be dedicated to her mother
Serve her with good faith
Jesus and Mary will not let it go unrewarded.— 1499, Die Historie van Sint-Anna, Wouter Bor
I am sure you have sometimes wondered about our St. Anne's Chapel. Why is it not simply a Lady's Chapel as in other Anglo-Catholic churches? You have heard the story that it is a memorial chapel built by our Founder in remembrance of his mother. Indeed, her name was Anne Key and a chapel dedicated to her patron seemed quite appropriate. But do you think we would have got a chapel if the good lady's name had been Melissa, Melody or Pamela? My feeling is that there is more than meets the eye in this little chapel, and let me try to offer an expanded reading.
St. Anne's Chapel.
The Legend of St. Anne
The parents of Our Lady are not mentioned in the Gospels. Their names and stories originate in a text called the Protogospel of James. Though attributed to James, the brother of Jesus, the text was written only in the 2nd c.. in Egypt or in Asia Minor. It is a polemical book defending the absolute purity and virginity of Our Lady. Though never part of the New Testament canon, this writing nonetheless generated a number of our liturgical feasts: the Conception (December 8), the Nativity (September 8), the Presentation of Our Lady (November 21), as well as the feasts of St. Joachim (August 16) and St. Anne (July 26).
The story was further expanded during the late Middle Ages and the development of the legend peaked around 1500; this resulted in the addition of a further generation, that of Jesus’ great-grandparents. In its heyday, the legend went something like this: a devout young Jewish girl called Emerentia(na) or Esmeria went to Mount Carmel to live in seclusion (in a way joined the Carlemites!), in the tradition of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. As her parents insisted that she be married, she consulted a holy hermit who saw in a dream a tree bringing forth a beautiful branch carrying a splendid flower (Mary) and a remarkable fruit (Christ), as well as other branches. The branches were interpreted as the lineage God chose her to bring forth. She therefore went to Temple to pray for a suitable husband. Six suitors presented themselves, but they sought marriage for the wrong reasons, be it beauty (she was gorgeous), greed (she was rich), or mere unchastity or desire of the flesh (she was sexy)... The suitors were somehow killed off: in some versions, they fell dead when they attempted to touch her, in others, they were carted away by devils, who were attempting thereby to prevent the Incarnation. A seventh suitor called Stollanus was chosen and became the true husband: he somehow longed for a chaste and virtuous marriage. The newlyweds lived in Sephora and despite their chastity two girls were born to them in old age, when she was 61 and he 71. The two girls were Anne, the mother of Our Lady and Hysmeria (Ismeria), the mother of her cousin Elizabeth (who married Ephraim). The legend also added a son Eliud, whose own son Elimen was said to be the ancestor of St. Servantius, the 4th c. bishop of Maastricht, Tongeren and Liège.
Then appeared Joachim, a rich God-fearing man of the House of David who married Anne. Again the marriage was for the same good reason: chastity and again false suitors were driven away. The couple led a righteous life, dividing their possessions, a third for Temple, a third for the poor, and a third for themselves. Not surprisingly, given their chastity and lack of lust, they still had no children after 20 years of marriage. One day Joachim's offering in the Temple was refused by the high priest, on the ground that all just men have children. Joachim retired in humiliation to the desert for 40 days. Meanwhile, Anne mourned her barrenness and the disappearance of her husband. One day while Anne, dressed in her wedding gown, was crying at the sight of bird’s nest full of nestlings, she was consoled by an angel. The angel also told Joachim to return home. The couple met and kissed at the Golden Gate of the Temple, upon which Anne became immediately pregnant. So was Our Lady conceived by a public kiss, an image forbidden in 1677 by Innocent XI as too physical (!).
No. 6 Scenes from the Life of Joachim: 6. Meeting at the Golden Gate
Giotto (1266–1337). Link.
After Joachim’s death, Anne lived alone, in charity, industrious-ness, and chastity, not as the arrogant and sensuous older women of tales. Yet she re-married on God's direct orders given by an angel, first with Cleophas, who was either Joseph's or Joachim's brother and bore a daughter, Mary Cleophas. Again widowed, she married Salomas, from which arose another Mary, called Salomas or Salome. Mary Cleophas married Alphaeus and their children were the future apostles James the Less, Simon Joseph the Righteous, and Jude. Similarly, Mary Salomas wed Zebedee and their children were James the Greater and John the Evangelist. So the three Marys were halfsisters.
The marriage of Our Lady repeats the same rigmarole. Mary grew up in the Temple, but as she neared puberty, the high priest wanted to get her out "lest she pollute the sanctuary"; he assembled widowers as prospective husbands, and when the staff of St. Joseph flowered and that of the others did not, the choice became obvious. The widower status of Joseph has been used in other traditions to explain the existence of Jesus’ brothers, as being born of an earlier marriage. This also made Joseph an old man, which a Medieval play has saying: "In bed we shall never meet, for I wis, maiden sweet, an old man cannot rage".
Original Sin
A problem underlying this whole story is that of original sin. Ever since St. Augustine, it had been thought that original sin was transmitted during sexual intercourse through sexual desire, since the satisfaction of desire even in marriage was sinful. This explains the late maternities which pervade these stories and recall the Biblical accounts of the miraculous pregnancies of Sarah and Hannah (the probable source of Anne’s name and tale). The births are due more to the miraculous intervention of God than to the lustful inclinations of the parents. Chastity in marriage does not mean no sex at all, it means lustless sex only for procreation—remember Pius XI’s encyclical Casti connubii: the births occur at an age when natural birth is no longer possible and when lust has supposedly subsided (oh yeah!). In late Medieval times, there was much discussion about the birth of Mary. On the one side, were the "maculists", mainly the Dominicans, who held that Mary was conceived in sin as we all are, but that she was cleansed in her mother's womb in preparation for her future mission. On the other side stood the "immaculists", among them the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Carthusians, who argued that Our Lady was, by special divine dispensation, without sin since her conception. The immaculists eventually won and it was later found indecent that Anne who gave birth to the immaculate Mary should have married again and had two more children, so that part of the story was quietly dropped.
The Holy Kinship
The reason for the three marriages was to solve the problem of Jesus’ brothers by making them first cousins and knitting the New Testament story into a family affair. From this period date numerous paintings of the extended Holy Family. A typical one is the Ortenberg Altarpiece (c. 1410) by an unknown master now in the Darmstadt Landesmuseum. It represents Mary in the centre with the Child Jesus. Next to her sits Mary Cleophas with her four children, two in arms (Simon and Joseph), two at her side (James the Less and Judas Thaddeus). Mary Alphaeus, St. Anne and St. Joseph are also there . Elizabeth sits nearby with John the Baptist, Ismeria (Anne's sister), as well as their descendant bishop St. Servantius. Mary Salome with St. James the Great and St. John the Evangelist complete the picture. Engaging in "sacra conversazione" with the Holy Family are Saints Agnes, Dorothy, and Barbara.
Ortenberger Altar, Szene Die Heilige Sippe. Meister des Ortenberger Altars, c. 1340. Link.
Other representations show Anne and Mary sitting on parallel thrones, with Jesus in His grandmother’s arms (Cologne, The Master of Holy Kinship, c.1500). There are numerous similar paintings by Metsys, Cranach and others. This will become the "new female-dominated Trinity" to be replaced after the Reformation by a new Trinity of Jesus-Mary-Joseph. The most curious of the Holy Kinships is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna by Bernard Strigel (c.1520) in which the roles are played by Emperor Maximilian (Cleophas), Mary of Burgundy (Mary Cleophas), Philip the Fair (Jacob the Younger), Charles V (Simon), and Ferdinand (Joseph the Righteous). After 1558, the real names were painted over and the connection with the Holy Family lost.
The Social Message
The devotion to St. Anne and to the Holy Family in the 15th c. corresponded to a new emphasis on family in society. Marriage had become an important ceremony to be performed in church before witnesses and before the priest. Legal marriage and marital fidelity were the pillars of the new bourgeois - merchant - urban - middle - class society developing in the Low Countries and the Rhineland. Christ was no longer represented as a king, but as a child among his (bourgeois) family. From this time also arose a keen interest in family trees in which the new rich merchant classes were looking for noble roots, despite the humanists’ reminder that nobility lies in the heart. "To pride themselves on lineage and power is the prerogative of great, but foolish families" (Brant). Anne’s role in the lineage of Christ is reflected in the liturgical references to her as "Stirps beata" (blessed stock) and "Radix sancta" (holy root).
Women were to learn their proper place in society. Anne was used as a role model for wife, mother, grandmother, and widow. The importance of women as educators of children was greatly stressed; children were to be brought up in virtue, good manners, chastity, devotion, decency, modesty... Still, raising Our Lady who was sinless must have been a breeze compared to the usual lot of boisterous kids most of us have to deal with. St. Anne is generally portrayed teaching Our Lady to read. And the old English word "Nan" for Grandmother, echoes that connection, and so does the word "nanny".
The emphasis was on virtue for which the life of Anne served as example for both men and women. She reflected day and night on God's commandments, she had a strong faith, she led a holy life, she did good works, she made a careful choice of companions... But the message was mostly for women: St. Anne was never seen loitering on the street, she indulged in no idle talk, she did not dance, she did not go to the theatre, she stayed home and worked diligently, she was an exemplary mother. This was also a period where grandparents, especially widowed grandmothers, were taking on a greater place in family life. In this instance, the story of St. Anne takes on a further inspiration from the account of Anna the prophetess in St. Luke’s Gospel, herself drawing much on the image of the old Roman Sybil, the Seer. The Church disapproved of remarriage of widows, especially of an older woman with a younger man or vice-versa. Anne therefore was known to defend the chastity of widows. She was also the image of the wise elderly lady, the antithesis of the old witch of Medieval tales, of the lustful old crone... and of the battle-ax of modern lore.
Her power as Mary's mother and Jesus' grandmother was limitless. She was invoked as protection against illness, defamation, poverty, slander... and she predictably helped snuff out the lusts of the flesh...
The Devotion to St. Anne
Pious societies were formed to spread these devotions to Jesus’ kinfolk. A famous one was the Brotherhood of St. Anne in Frankfurt (1479), which met at the Carmelite Monastery and was made up mainly of foreign merchants who came to Frankfurt for the trade fairs and were ministered to by the Carmelites. Notice the continuing association with Mount Carmel. They commissioned a famous altarpiece made in Brussels in which the legend of their patron is represented in 16 scenes.
In 1493, the brotherhood acquired a relic (an arm-bone) of their patron from Lyon. At about the same time in Mainz a mason found another relic (a skull) in a wall of the Dominican St. Stephen’s Church, stole it and gave it to the Franciscans in Düren, near Aachen. A great dispute ensued and even Emperor Maximilian got involved.
The traditional relic of St. Anne was in Apt in southern France where her body and shroud had been brought by St. Auspicius who saved them from desecration in Marseilles where they had been deposited by none other than Lazarus and Mary Magdalen. Apt is the origin of our own relic (also a bit of arm) at St. Anne-de-Beaupré. The devotion to St. Anne was greatly revived in the 17th c. by the barrenness of Queen Anne of Austria and the “miraculous” birth in 1638 after 23 years of marriage of her son Louis-Dieudonné, Louis the God-given, the future Louis XIV. The queen had travelled to Apt to touch the relics of her patron. Following the birth of Louis, the shrine was richly endowed by the queen, and further relics (fingers) were obtained.
At the same period (1623), in Brittany, a peasant called Yves Nicolasic found a statue in a field representing a woman suckling two infants, which was interpreted as St. Anne with Mary and Jesus (!), though it was probably a Roman statue of the Bona Dea. The memory of Anne de Bretagne (+ 1514), thrice married and twice queen of France together with the devotion of the reigning queen led to the dedication of Brittany to St. Anne and the erection of a shrine to her at Auray. The shrine is popular to this day and it was visited last year by the Pope. The Great Pardon on July 26th each year is a high point of religious life in Brittany, when a great procession assembles the people in their traditional costumes.
Marie de l’Incarnation brought the devotion to New France which was dedicated to St. Anne. Relics were sent and a precious garment for her statue embroidered by Queen Anne of Austria is still kept at Beaupré. St. Anne was proclaimed patron of Québec in 1876. The shrine at Beaupré is directed by the Redemptorists, who invented the chaplet of St. Anne, a devotion which consists of three cycles of one Our Father and five Hail Marys, one in honour of Jesus, the second in honour of Mary, and the third in honour of Anne... that old Trinity again.
Basilique Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec.
The Holy Family
The devotion to St. Anne and to the extended family of Jesus gradually subsided in modern times, except in backward places such as Québec and Brittany. Still most married couples identified more readily with the chaste union of Joachim and Anne (and her remarriages) than the non-union of Joseph and Mary, in which Joseph is too often represented as an impotent old sap. The devotion to the restricted Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph steadily gained ground, reflecting no doubt the advent of the modern nuclear family.
So next time you admire the fine glass in St. Anne’s Chapel, remember the lessons, both theological and moral, hidden behind these innocent scenes.