How did Saint Anne live back then?

Answer 1

Anne (Ann, Anna, Hannah) (1st century), mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. No historical details of her life are known. She was first mentioned by name in the apocryphal gospel of James (2nd century); Epiphanius and Gregory of Nyssa praised her. A church was built in her honour at Constantinople by Justinian; relics were taken from it to Jerusalem and Rome, where there are pictures of her at S. Maria Antiqua (8th century). In the 10th century her feast, called the ‘conception of St. Anne’, was kept at Naples and, soon afterwards, in England and Ireland. The increasing cult of the Virgin Mary in the 12th century led to new interest in her parents. Anne's feast was kept at Canterbury from c.1100 and at Worcester soon afterwards. Relics of her were claimed by Duren (Rhineland) and Apt-en-Provence; by Canterbury, Reading, and Durham. In art she is often represented teaching the Virgin to read: this picture may be English in origin; there are examples of the 13th century in manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in wallpaintings at Croughton (Northants). She was also represented with her husband Joachim at their betrothal or their marriage. The most famous shrine in her honour in England was at Buxton. She was patron of various religious guilds in England from the reign of John in London, and from the 14th century in Bury, King's Lynn, Lincoln, and elsewhere. Her cult was bitterly attacked by Luther, especially the images representing her with Jesus and Mary, favoured by Renaissance painters. This did not prevent the Holy See extending her feast to the Universal Church in 1584; it had been obligatory in England since 1382. The cult has left literary record in three ME Lives. It was, and still is, especially popular in Brittany and Canada. Feast: 26 July (with S. Joachim); in the East, 25 July.