St. Anne and the BVM in a Barbed Quatrefoil (BK67)

St. Anne—wife of St. Joachim; mother of Mary, the Blessed Virgin; grandmother of Jesus. + St. Anne teaching Mary to read the Scriptures from a book or scroll is, perhaps, *the* most familiar motif to contemporary viewers that features this saint. Statues of St. Anne and Young Mary grace innumerable Catholic churches, chapels, and parochial schools. + Nowhere mentioned in the canonical Gospels, St. Anne is named only in New Testament Apocrypha, specifically the Gospel of James. The Gospel of James purports to give a narrative history of the BVM’s family and early life from her miraculous conception to the birth of Jesus filling in the blanks before the Annunciation. Although rejected for inclusion in the canonical 27-book New Testament, the Gospel of James was an important source for Bl. James of Voragine’s chapter on the early life of Mary in his Golden Legend, the most important and most widely read book after the Bible during the Middle Ages. As such, the stories and the art based on them have come down to us today. + St. Anne is patroness of unmarried women, housewives, women in labor or who want to be pregnant, grandmothers, grandparents, and educators. She is also a patron saint of horseback riders, cabinetmakers, and miners. + Feast: July 26 (with St. Joachim). In the U.S., National Grandparents Day is celebrated by law in September on the first Sunday after Labor Day; but, many religious people also informally honor their grandparents on July 26th. + Image Credit (BK 67): Detail from an antique devotional print of St. Anne originally published by B. Kühlen, Mönchengladbach, Germany, late 19th-early 20th century, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.