Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/80

66 €6 ST. ANNA altar, and a wood-worker generally showed his greatest skill in its constmo- tion. St. Anna was considered to have made the first tabernacle, namely, the Virgin Mary. A composition, called in the workshops ** the brains of St. Anna," was the great resource for hiding certain defects in the wood. It consisted of a strong glno mixed with sawdust of the defective wood, and was cleverly used to fill up cavities. Azevedos counts SS. Joachim and Anna among the " Advocates," or " Auxi- liary Saints." Pictures or drawings of Anna have been found in the catacombs : these and other early representations depict her with her hands stretched out in prayer ; near her a dove, bearing a ring or a crown in its beak. In mediaaval art she holds a book, and generally appears to be teaching the Virgin Mary to read, and sometimes pointing to the words, pictures the Virgin Mary, although she appears as a child sitting on her mother's lap, holds the Infant Christ. St. Anna is sometimes the centre figure of a com- plicated picture of the relatives of our Saviour. Sometimes she appears meet- ing and kissing St. Joachim at the Gulden Gate, bearing a lily, on the flower of which is represented the face of the Virgin Mary. According to the Oolden Legend^ Perfetto Leggendario^ etc., she was the daughter of Stolano, also called Gazarins, of the house of Juda, and her mother was Emerentia. They had another daughter, Hysmerye, who had a daughter, St. Elizabeth, mother of St. John the Baptist, and a son, Elynd, father of Emynen, of whom came "S. Servace whose bodye lyeth in Mastreyght upon ye ryver of Ye Mase." St. Anna was married three times, and by each marriage she had a daughter named Mary. Her first husband was Joachim, father of the B. V. Mary, " who chylded our lorde Jhesu cryste." Joa- chim was of Nazareth; Anna was of Bethlehem, and of the tribe of Juda. They were rich. They divided their goods into three parts: one they gave to the temple and its servants, one to pilgrims and the poor, and the third part they spent on themselves and their servants. When they had been married twenty years, and had long sorrowed because they had no child, they made a vow that if God would give them one, they would dedicate it to His service. At the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, St. Joachim went with his friends to Jerusalem, as usual, to make his ofifering* The high priest scornfully rejected it, saying that a man who, inasmuch as he had no children, was evidently under the displeasure of God, ought not to pre- sume to offer gifts at the altar. Joachim went away sorrowful and confused. In- stead of returning to Anna, he went to his herdsmen and stayed some time with them, until he was comforted in a vision by an angel, who told him his prayers and alms were accepted before God, and that Anna should have a daughter named Mary. She was to be brought up in the temple, and of her should be bom a great Lord, through whom salvation should come to all people. The angel said, *' By this sign thou shalt know that the vision is from the Lord : when thou shalt come to the Golden Gate of Jeru- salem, thou shalt meet Anna thy wife." Meantime, Anna remained sorrowfully at home. One day, as she sat under a laurel in her garden watching a bird bringing food to its little ones in the nest, she said to herself, ** Every wife has children except me ; the very birds in the trees have their children, but I have none." Then she heard her maid, on the. other side of the bushes, deriding her because of her barrenness. But now the same angol who had appeared to Joachim visited her in a dream, promised her a child, and relieved her anxiety about her husband's prolonged absence by telling her she should find him at the Golden Gate. They both obeyed the heavenly messenger, and went to Jerusalem. There, at the Golden Gate, they met. The next year Anna had a daughter, according to the promise of the angel ; and they called her Mary, as he had commanded. When Mary was three years old, they brought her to the temple, with offer in gs. T here were fifteen steps up the temple, and the child, who
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