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Mary's
Mother Saint Anne in Late
Medieval Europe
Virginia
Nixon
January | 2005
6.125 x 9.25 | 232 pages | 40 illustrations
History-European, Religion-Western, Art History
Hardback: $38.00 TR
ISBN: 978-0-271-02466-0
Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, is not a biblical figure. She first
appears in a second-century apocryphal infancy gospel as part
of the
story of the savior’s birth and maternal ances try. Over the
ensuing centuries, Anne’s story circulated throughout eastern
and western Christendom, but it was not until the late Middle Ages
that a cult of Saint Anne gained a firm footing in Europe. Mary’s
Mother is about the remarkable rise of Anne as a figure of devotion
among medieval Christians who found solace in her closeness to Jesus
and Mary.
Anne’s popularity grew especially in German-speaking areas,
so much so that by the late 1400s artists in Germany, Flanders, and
Holland were busy producing all manner of sculptures, prints, and
paintings of her. Anne’s power derived from her physical connection
to the Redeemer and his mother, a connection that artists emphasized
in works that depicted her. In the most widely reproduced trope, known
as Anna Selbdritt, Anne is depicted as a matronly woman presiding
over Mary and Jesus, who both appear as children.
Clerics played a crucial role in fostering Anne’s growing popularity.
They promoted her as having power to help in salvation, a matter of
urgent concern to late medieval German Christians. Churches and convents
(and rulers too) adopted her as a fund-raising device in an increasingly
competitive ecclesiastical landscape. Churches, shrines, and altars
were dedicated to her, lay brotherhoods adopted her as their patroness,
and many families named their daughters for her.
Anne’s clerical promoters frequently used her as a model of
sober domesticity for women, part of a broader attempt to channel
the growing lay piety that the clergy perceived as a potential threat
to their own power and incomes. And yet, as a gender model, she embodied
conflicts between medieval and early modern ideas about sanctity and
sexuality. Devotion to Anne gradually declined in the 1500s as medieval
modes of religious practice and ideas about women’s place in
family life began to change.
Today many Catholics know Saint Anne as the mother of the Blessed
Virgin and the protector of women in labor, but few know how she came
to be a figure of devotion. Mary’s Mother brings her
story to life for general readers as well as scholars and students
of history, art history, religious studies, and women’s studies.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Early History of the Cult of Saint Anne
2 Changes in the Late Fifteenth Century
3 Saint Anne and Concepts of Salvation in Late Medieval Germany
4 Salvational Themes in the Imagery of Saint Anne
5 Anne’s Promoters: Why Did They Do It?
6 Economic Factors and the Cult of Saint Anne: Augsburg and Annaberg
7 Functions and Perceptions: How People Used Images
8 Anne’s Decline
9 The Images
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Virginia
Nixon teaches Art History and Music History in the Liberal
Arts College of Concordia University, Montreal.
