Little is really known of the life of the Parents of the Blessed Virgin, though many quaint and touching legends have grown up around their names. Both are accounted as saints alike in the Greek and Roman Churches, the former celebrating St. Anne no less than three times — on the 9th of September, the reputed day of her marriage; the 9th of December, when she is said to have first known she was to become a mother; and the 26th of July, the supposed day of her death.
St. Joachim, who was of the royal tribe of Judah, and a man of wealth, owning many flocks and herds, is said to have dwelt at Safnieh, about six miles from Hebron, whither, when he was twenty years old, be took his young bride Anne, of lineage as lofty as nis own. For some nineteen years the pair lived together happily, with but one grief; the fact that no child was born to them. They were beginning to give up all hope of the blessing of offspring, and to feel the depression inseparable amongst the Jews from the lot of the childless, when the tragic incident occurred of the expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, which was the beginning of a new chapter in his life. It is related that one day, when he was offering a gift at the altar, a priest came up to him and reproached him sternly for daring to mix with those who bad given sons to Israel. Feeling that he was indeed under the wrath of God, Joachim offered no resistance to the verdict of exile, but left the sacred precincts at once. He did not like to return home; indeed, he was probably forbidden to do so as part of his punishment, so he withdrew to the mountains, taking with him the shepherds under him and all bis flocks and herds. Even Anne, his faithful wife, knew not whither he had gone, and many were the prayers she offered up for him in her solitude, entreating God to restore him to her, and to deal with her even as He had dealt of old with Sarah.
One day, says the legend, the childless wife had been weeping bitterly, complaining that the Lord bad forsaken her, and bemoaning in touching terms the hardness of her lot. She knew not, she complained, to what she could compare herself, for the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the very waves of the sea, and the plains of the land, were more fruitful than she. Suddenly she felt that she was no longer alone; she looked up, and, behold, an angel stood beside her. Surprised and terrified, she would fain have bidden from his presence; but he bid her remain, saying: ‘Fear not, for God will give thee a child, and He who shall be born of her shall be the wonder of all future ages.’ At the same moment another angel appeared to St. Joachim in bis retreat among the bills, commanding him to return home, for the Lord had heard his prayers, and would bless him and his wife with a daughter, whose lot should be honored above that of all other women.
Relieved to a certain extent only, for the promise of a daughter brought none of the joy and pride he would have felt had he heard that he would have a son, Joachim hastened to obey, and, it is said, met his wife at the Golden Gate of the Temple, whither she had been directed to go by her heavenly visitor. In due time St. Anne gave birth to a daughter, who was called Mary, and when the child was old enough, she was taken by her parents to be presented in the Temple, from which they had been so long excluded. After the little one had been blessed and restored to the arms of her mother, the latter is said to have burst into a song of triumph, crying aloud to the assembled worshippers: ‘Listen, listen! oh ye tribes of Israel, while I sing the praise of Him who has removed my reproach from amongst women.’ The rest of the life of Saints Joachim and Anne is left in obscurity, but a touching tradition has been preserved of a vision vouchsafed to the father on his death-bed of the glorious but terrible destiny before his daughter. He died, it is said, blessing Mary with a smile of triumph on his lips; but St. Anne, who followed him to the grave in a few months, remained to the last in ignorance of the anguish her child was to pass through before she also could enter into rest.
On her death, the date of which is uncertain, St. Anne was buried at Bethlehem ; but her body is said to have been removed later to the Valiev of Jehoshaphat, where her tomb is still shown, although the sacred relics it contained axe supposed to have been removed to the Cathedral of Apt, in Vaucluse, by St. Auspice, first Bishop of that city, where some of them are said to be still.
When St. Joachim is represented without St. Anne it is generally in the Temple offering a lamb, or standing amongst his flocks on a hill listening to the angel’s message. In the former case certain early artists, ignoring the facts of archaeology, depicted the scene as if it had taken place in a Christian Church, the priest withdrawing the paten as the childless father approaches to receive it.
In some old Greek calendars, a crown marks the 9th of September, the day of the Conception of the Virgin; a crown is therefore one of the characteristics, though a rare one, of St. Anne. Another occasional symbol is a nest of young birds, in memory of the tradition recorded in the ‘Protoevangelium,’ that St. Anne’s anguish at her sterility was increased just before the angel appeared to her by the sight of a nest of young birds in the laurel-tree beneath which she was praying. St. Anne is also sometimes represented, as in the Greek Martyrology for September 8th, lying on a couch attended by several women bringing gifts, whilst seated on a low stool beside her is a nurse about to wash the new-born child.
In certain old liturgies, notably in the ‘Hours’ published at Troyes in 1511, a quaint engraving occurs of St. Anne teaching the little Mary to read, a subject often treated by artists, as in the fresco by Pinturicchio in S. Onofrio, Rome; in the oil painting by Rubens in the Antwerp Gallery ; the well-known composition by Murillo in the Prado, Madrid; and the fine stained-glass window, by Burne-Jones, in St. James’s, Weybridge. In a beautiful miniature in an old Greek MS. in the Vatican Library, St Anne is tucking her little daughter up in bed, and examples occur in which she is seen with the Virgin on her knees, the latter, child though she still is, holding the infant Savior in her arms. Or, again, St. Anne is assisting at the education of Jesus, and looking on in loving admiration at Him and the young St. John as they stand beside her daughter. In many old paintings and stained-glass windows, too, St. Anne is the center of a group of children supposed to be her own daughters and their respective little ones, born, according to tradition, after the Virgin.
When the parents of the Virgin are represented together, it is usually, as in the Greek ‘Menology’ for September 9th, and on various coins or medals, at the Golden Gate of the Temple, or, more rarely, in the sacred building itself, taking the child Mary to be presented. In certain pictures, dating from medieval times, a lily is seen springing from the lips of the pair as they meet in their first kiss after their separation, and occasionally the meaning of this quaint symbol is rendered more clear by the addition of a head of the Virgin issuing from the calyx of the flower. The romantic re-union of St. Joachim and St. Anne is referred to in several old liturgies, such as the Breviary of Laon, dating from the fifteenth century, and that of St. Martin of Tours, introduced about 1635.
St. Joachim, for a reason evident enough, was the chosen patron of the ancient Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception, and St. Anne, who is specially honored at Madrid, in Provence, in the Canary Isles, in Brunswick, and in Belgium, is patroness of needlewomen, lacemakers, old clothesmen, and housekeepers, for she is supposed to have been the type of a good manager, who never wasted anything. She is invoked against poverty, probably because, according to the legend, she and her husband distributed much of their property to the poor as a thank-offering for the birth of the Virgin. Joiners and carpenters also turn to St. Anne for protection, and the reason for this is said to be because she was the tabernacle in which the Mother of the Savior was for a time enshrined. When, in mediaeval times, a defective piece of wood had to be filled in, the mixture of glue and sawdust employed was called the ‘brain of St. Anne,’ and in some old missals occurs a hymn called ‘Ad matris Annae,’ in which she is referred to as the Ark of the New Testament.
In the many series of scenes from the life of the Virgin with which it early became the custom to decorate the walls of churches and other sacred buildings, the Expulsion of St. Joachim from the Temple, the Visit to him of the angel, the Meeting at the Golden Gate, the Birth of the Virgin and her Presentation in the Temple, are generally included ; but it is rare for either St. Anne or St. Joachim to be introduced in pictures of the later events of their daughter’s life. Amongst the finest representations of the scenes enumerated above are the frescoes by Giotto in the Arena Chapel, Padua; those attributed to Taddeo Gaddi in the Church of S. Croce, Florence ; the ‘Angel foretelling the Birth of the Virgin to St. Anne,’ the ‘Meeting at the Golden Gate,’ and the ‘Birth of the Virgin’ by Luini, now in the Brera Gallery, Milan; the great fresco of the ‘Birth of the Virgin’ by Andrea del Sarto in the Church of SS. Annunziata, Florence; the large triptych by Quentin Matsys, now in the Brussels Gallery, which includes the ‘Death of St. Anne with other subjects ; the frescoes by Ghirlandaio in the Church of S. Maria Novella, Florence; the ‘Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple’ by Carpaccio, now in the Venice Academy; the ‘Presentation’ by Titian in the same gallery, painted for the Scuola della Carita; the same subject by Andrea Mantegna, now in the Brera Gallery, Milan; and the quaint series of woodcuts by Albert Durer, which in their homely simplicity and naive truthfulness to nature present a marked contrast to the elaborate and ornate compositions of the Italian masters. The story of St. Anne and St. Joachim forms the subject also of some of the twelfth century bas-reliefs of the West Front of Chartres Cathedral; but it has not often been treated in plastic art, either mediaeval or modern.
In ‘Holy Families’ and other devotional pictures St. Anne is constantly introduced, as in the beautiful picture by Francia in the National Gallery, London, in which she shares the throne of her Daughter, and is offering an apple to her Grandson; in the ‘Madonna and Child’ by Luini, now in the Brera Gallery, Milan; the celebrated ‘Family of St. Anne’ by Perugino in the Marseilles Gallery, in which she appears behind and above the enthroned Virgin as the principal figure in a group of the near relations of the Lord; the ‘Holy Family’ by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre ; and that by Albert Durer, in which the aged St. Joachim is watching his Grandson, who is springing from his Mother’s knees into the arms of St. Anne. The appearance of St. Joachim is of comparatively rare occurrence, for he was from the first treated by artists as of quite secondary importance to his wife, and only now and then, as in a picture by Vivarini in the Venice Academy, is he admitted to equality with St. Anne in representations of the Coronation of their Daughter.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).