Anna

ANNA (Heb. Hannah «Grace»). - Name of various women of the Old and New Testaments.

1) ANNA, wife of the Ephraimite Elkanah (v.) living at Ramathaim-zophim (I Sam. 1-2). Beloved by her husband, though barren, she silently endured the insults of her fertile rival Peninnah. One day, finding herself at Shiloh with her husband, who had gone there to offer sacrifices before the Tabernacle, A. made a vow to the Lord to consecrate to him for his whole life the son "if thou wilt give unto thy handmaid a male" (I Sam. 1, 11), with perpetual Naziriteship (v.). While she prayed in a low voice, she was reproved by the high priest Eli, to whom she explained herself and from whom she obtained the priestly blessing. She received the grace she asked for, becoming the mother of Samuel (v.). When she had weaned him (at about three years, according to Hebrew custom: II Mach. 7, 27) or reared him (the Hebrew gāmal has both meanings), she brought him to Shiloh and presented him to the Lord, offering sacrifices of thanksgiving. She then uttered the sublime inspired canticle, in which she praises divine power, justice and goodness and looks forward to messianic salvation (I Sam. 2, 1-10); the Magnificat (v.) of Mary Most Holy (Lk. 1, 46-55) echoes almost entirely the sacred jubilation of the mother of Samuel. A. is considered a figure of the Mother of Jesus because of her miraculous fruitfulness, and of the Church, persecuted in its origins, then fruitful and glorious. Peninnah with her children is a figure of the synagogue, at first fruitful and then repudiated. St. John Chrysostom devotes 5 homilies to the moral teachings deriving from A.'s motherhood (PG 54, 631-75).

2) ANNA, wife of Tobit (v.), of the tribe of Naphtali, mother of Tobias the younger. She remained faithful to her husband in the captivity of Nineveh, even amid the persecutions stirred up by his works of charity. Her irascible character showed itself in a quarrel with her blind husband who, hearing the bleating of a kid received by A. as wages, feared it was a theft (Tob. 2, 19-23), and on the occasion of their son's journey to Rages (Tob. 5, 23-25; 10, 4-7). Her sadness turned to jubilation when, from the hill where she often went to scan the horizon, she caught sight of her son returning (Tob. 11, 5-6). In the Septuagint the welcome is narrated with more details. Having survived her husband, A. was cared for by her son and daughter-in-law until her death (ibid. 14, 14).

3) ANNA, wife of Raguel, a relative of Tobit, at Ecbatana. In the Septuagint (Tob. 7, 2-18; 8, 16) she is called Edna (Hebrew "delight"). She cordially welcomed her cousin Tobias, who had come to marry her daughter Sarah.

4) ANNA, saint. Prophetess, daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. Having come into the temple of Jerusalem on the occasion of the presentation of Jesus, she "gave praise to God and spoke of the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem" (Lk. 2, 36-38). "She never left the Temple" (ibid.), probably living in some adjoining room. She had lived with her husband seven years and, having been left a widow, had by then reached the age of 84. The interpretation of St. Ambrose, that A. remained a widow for 84 years, so that she would have been more than a hundred years old, is improbable. She is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on Sept. 1, on Feb. 3 or Aug. 28 in the Byzantine rite, on Feb. 2 in the Coptic Church.

5) ANNA, saint, mother of the Virgin Mary. She is not commemorated in the canonical books; her name spread from the 2nd century onward through the Protoevangelium of James and its reworkings. According to these traditions, A., daughter of Mathan, a Bethlehemite priest, would have had two elder sisters: Mary (who later became the mother of Mary Salome) and Sobe (who later became the mother of Elizabeth). Married to Joachim (v.), a Galilean of Nazareth, she was barren. After long prayers, already old, she had the good fortune to become the mother of Mary Most Holy. When the latter was three years old, she presented her at the Temple and died shortly afterward. It is difficult to determine, in these accounts transmitted with notable variations in the apocryphal texts, in what proportion the legend is grafted onto history.

Her cult appears in the 6th century in the East (Justinian built a church at Constantinople in her honor), in the 8th century in the West (her image in S. Maria Antiqua). Her feast spreads ever more from the 12th century; in the 14th century it is extended to almost all of Europe, and Urban VI (bull Splendor, 1378) prescribed it for all of England. Luther attacked the cult of A., then very much in vogue. Gregory XIII (1584) imposed the feast of precept of A. on the whole Church. In the East it is celebrated on July 25, in the West on July 26. Today she is much venerated in Brittany (Ste-Anne d'Auray) and in Canada (Ste-Anne de Beaupré). She is invoked as patroness of mothers and widows, of sailors and miners. "St. Anne's water" has been used, since the end of the Middle Ages, against fever and various illnesses, for women in childbirth and for the possessed.

Pietro De Ambroggi

Iconography. - The episodes of the life of St. A. most frequently represented are those inspired by the protoevangelium of James and relating to the birth of the Virgin; these, besides constituting a Christological prelude, document, through the unbroken tradition, the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Indeed the episode of the Meeting of A. and Joachim at the golden gate was given the greatest prominence; already known to Byzantine miniature painting, it passed into the repertoire of Romanesque sculpture (Chartres) and then into the celebrated fresco by Giotto at Padua. The scene of the nativity of Mary follows the scheme of that of Jesus, as in the mosaic by P. Cavallini at S. Maria in Trastevere, and later is enriched, with the works of Ghirlandaio and Andrea del Sarto, with episodic motifs extraneous to the scene, which represent persons and settings of the painter's own time. Episodes of the infancy of Mary are also fairly frequent, in which A. enters as a leading figure, and this from the 14th-century mosaics of the Kahrie giami of Constantinople, down to the composition of A. teaching Mary to read, fairly widespread in the Baroque era. With international Gothic a type of Holy Family with A., the Madonna and Jesus spreads widely, which, fairly common also beyond the Alps, in Italy reaches high expressive values: e.g.: in the painting by Masaccio at the Uffizi, in the marble group by A. Sansovino in S. Agostino at Rome and in the two different versions by Leonardo in London and Paris.

Kurt Rathe

In popular traditions and poetry. - In the anxious expectation of a child, the mothers of the common people invoke St. Anne, that she may assist them and favor the happy outcome of childbirth: for this purpose they are accustomed to keep her image above the bed. She is also the protectress of embroiderers, who, on the day of her feast (26 July), abstain from embroidering because they believe that, if they were to contravene this rule, the frame would fall to the ground and the work be ruined. And since legend says that Anne, in her early youth, was a laundress, the custom prevails that, out of devotion, on that day one also abstains from doing the laundry. In France the pilgrimage of women to Saint'Anne d'Auray is famous. The fact that Anne was a "pregnante annosa" has given rise to certain popular sayings. Anne appears in numerous lyric-narrative songs which, within the brief compass of a single stanza, portray her in delicate attitudes of care and affection toward the child Mary; these are predominantly graceful lullabies, rich in poetic images and lively feeling. Also quite widespread are certain brief prayer-invocations of a lyrical character: one, very ancient, since it is found in a manuscript of the Guarnacci library in Volterra dating back to the 14th century, is still repeated by the women of the common people to obtain the grace of a child. - See Pl. CXV.

Paolo Toschi