Was Saint Anne Mary's mother

Answer 1

Saint Anne (also Ann or Anna, from Hebrew Hannah חַנָּה or Channah‎, meaning "favor" or "grace.") of David's house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ according to Christian and Islamic tradition. Her name Anne is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Hannah.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the following information:

A 16th century priest Fr. John of Eck of Ingolstadt, in a sermon on St. Anne (published at Paris in 1579), refers to the names of the parents of St. Anne. He calls them Stollanus and Emerentia.

He says that St. Anne was born after Stollanus and Emerentia had been childless for twenty years; that St. Joachim died soon after the presentation of Mary in the temple; that St. Anne then married Cleophas, by whom she became the mother of Mary Cleophae (the wife of Alphaeus and mother of the Apostles James the Lesser, Simon and Judas, and of Joseph the Just); after the death of Cleophas she is said to have married Salomas, to whom she bore Maria Salomae (the wife of Zebedaeus and mother of the Apostles John and James the Greater).

The same spurious legend is found in the writings of Gerson (Opp. III, 59) and of many others. There arose in the sixteenth century an animated controversy over the marriages of St. Anne, in which Baronius and Bellarmine defended her monogamy.

The Greek Menaea (25 July) refer to the parents of St. Anne as Mathan and Maria, and relate that Salome and Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist, were daughters of two sisters of St. Anne.

Answer 4

Yes, according to Catholic tradition, Saint Anne is believed to be the mother of the Virgin Mary.

Answer 5

Mary was conceived by the "normal" means. Anne was not overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.

Answer 6

Yes, Anne was the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Answer 7

We do not know how old Anne was but she was approaching the end of the normal child bearing years, probably in her late 40s or early 50s.

Answer 8

We do not know her age but, according to tradition, she was already quite elderly.

Answer 9

We are not sure of Anne's birth place but Mary's family seems to have been from Nazareth.