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The cult of this S. Anne was at first confined to the east. The first mention of her outside of Syria and Jerusalem is at Constantinople, where, according to Procopius,1 in the middle of the sixth century, Justinian erected a church in her honour. This was restored by Justinian II a century and a half later.2

The earliest trace of her cult in Rome is in a fresco in the Capella Palatina, supposed by Mr. G. J. Turner to have been placed there by Pope Constantine, a Syrian by birth, after a visit made to Constantinople in 709.3

At the close of the ninth century appeared an Encomium on SS. Joachim and Anna, from the pen of Cosmas Vestitor. George of Nicomedia spoke her praises, so did Peter of Argos.

The first occurrence of S. Anne in a liturgical document is in a tenth century Sacramentary, "undoubtedly of Roman origin, and was probably written for some Greek monks in Rome; in its Holy Saturday litany the first two names after the confessors are S. Anne and S. Elizabeth, who have precedence even before all the Roman virgin martyrs."

But the veneration of S. Anne, thus introduced, was confined to Rome. In or about 800, however, her body was supposed to have been discovered in a cave at Apt, and the elevation took place in the presence of Charlemagne.

No trace of any cult can be found in England till the marriage of our Richard II with Anne of Bohemia, when the name spread, and by a rescript of Pope Urban VI, dated June 21, 1381, the veneration of the Mother of Our Lady was ordered to be introduced; the command was forwarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the bishops under his metropolitan jurisdiction.5 S. Anne is, however, found inserted in the Exeter Martyrology of 1337, drawn up by Bishop Grandisson, the friend of John XXII. Whilst staying with the Pope at Avignon, he had doubtless heard of the devotion to her relics at Apt, near by.

After 1381 S. Anne became a popular saint, and churches having earlier dedications were rededicated to her in the fifteenth century. And thenceforth her name appears in Calendars, previously it was conspicuously absent from them.

Among hymns in honour of S. Anne none date from an earlier period

1 De ædificiis Justiniani, i, 3; iii, 185; in the Corpus Scriptorum Historia Byzantina, Bonn, 1838.

2 Bandurius, Imperium Occidentale, ii, 656-7; Du Cange, Constantinopolis Christiana, lib. IV, vii, 4, p. 143.

3 "The Introduction of the Cultus of S. Anne into the West," in The English Historical Review, xviii (1903), pp. 109-11.

4 Ibid., p. III.

5 B. Brantyngham's Register, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, 1901, p. 497.

than the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In France there was a Brotherhood of S. Anne in the thirteenth century.

Nevertheless there was no great extension of the cult till the period just before the Reformation. Trithemius in his work, De Laudibus S. Annæ, which appeared in 1494, speaks of her memory as diu neglecta. Valerius Anselm, in his Chronicle, under the year 1508 says that till about that date Anne was little thought about; and Trithemius speaks of the cult as quasi novum. Luther in his violent fashion exclaimed, "How old is this idol, S. Anne? Where was she till some ten, twelve, forty years ago?" and again, “We Germans have been always inventing new saints and helpers in need, as is the case of SS. Anne and Joachim, novelties not over thirty years old.” 1 The day of S. Anne, mother of the B.V.M., is July 26.

At Whitstone in Cornwall, where there is not only a church, but also a Holy Well of S. Anne, the parish feast is on Easter Day. The way in which S. Anne in Brittany has stepped into the place of one of the Bonæ Deæ, tutelary earth goddesses, and themselves representing the Celtic or pre-Celtic Ane, mother of the gods, may be judged from the illustrations we give. The first represents a statue of a Bona Dea of the Gallo-Romano period found at Rennes; the second is an image above the Porte S. Malo at Dinan, representing S. Anne, bearing on one arm the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the other Christ.

The genealogies of Coel Godebog,3 of Rhodri the Great, king of all Wales, consequently of all the royal families of Gwynedd, Powys and Dyfed, also of S. Beuno,5 S. David, and S. Catwg, are traced

1 Schaumkell, Der Cult d. H. Anna, 1893.

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2 Cormac (b. 831, d. 903), Ana is mater deorum hibernensium, well she used to nourish the gods, from whose name is said anae, i.e. abundance, and from whose name are called the Two Paps of Ana, west of Luchair (County Kerry), also Bu-anann, nurse of the heroes. as Ann was mother of the gods, so Buanann was mother of the Fiann." W. Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries, London, 1862, pp. xxxiii, 2, 5.

3 Harl. MS. 3859. A genealogy drawn up in the tenth century, but the MS. of late eleventh or early twelfth century.

▲ Ibid. The genealogy is traced up to Aballac, the son of Amalech, “qui fuit Beli Magni filius et Anna mater ejus quam dicunt esse consobrina Mariæ Virginis Matris D'ni n'ri Ih'u Xp'i." Y Cymmrodor, ix, p. 170. Traced to

Belinus the son of Anna, who

5 Cambro-British Saints, p. 21. was cousin to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ."

• Ibid., pp. 102, 144. Traced to a "son of the sister of Mary."

7 Jesus Coll., Oxford, MS. 20, early fifteenth century. S. Catwg's pedigree is traced back to Caswallon "the son of Beli the Great, the son of Anna. This Anna was a daughter of a Roman Emperor, and said by the men of Egypt to have been first cousin to the Virgin Mary." In the Cognatio of Brychan Brycheiniog, his mother's ancestry is traced up to a certain "Annhun rex Grecorum (Cambro-British Saints, p. 273). In the above noted Jesus Coll. MS. 20, he appears as "Annwn du vrenhin groec." (Y Cymmrodor, viii, p. 83.)

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back to Anna, sister or cousin of the Blessed Virgin.

This is none

other than the Great Earth Mother; in the same way the Anglo-Saxon kings derived their ancestry from Wuotan, and the Norse kings from Odin, and the kings of Rome from Mars.

The great expansion given to the cult of S. Anne in Brittany is due. to a misconception and to a religious speculation. In 1625, whilst ploughing a field at Keranna, in the parish of Plunevet, in Morbihan, a farmer named Yves Nicolayic turned up out of the ground a statue, probably a Bona Dea of the pagan Armoricans, numbers of which have been found of late years, and, knowing nothing of the pre-Christian religion of the early Armoricans, he rushed to the conclusion that it represented S. Anne.

The Carmelites, who had been zealous advocates of the cult of the Mother of Our Lady, saw their opportunity and promptly seized on the occasion. In 1627 they had constructed a chapel for the image, and had organised pilgrimages to it, which met with great success. The image was destroyed at the Revolution, but the pilgrimages continue, and S. Anne is esteemed the patroness of the Bretons.

The name of S. Anne occurs, as already said, in no early calendars. It obtained admission in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the day being July 26; this was ordered to be observed by Gregory XIII in 1584. As already mentioned, Oxenhall, on a stream flowing into the Severn, in Gloucestershire, is dedicated to S. Anne, and is the only church bearing that dedication that can by any probability be supposed a foundation of the mother of S. Samson.

Siston, near Bristol, is also dedicated to S. Anne.

S. ANNO, or AMO

THIS Saint's name occurs only in the alphabetical catalogue of the Welsh Saints in the Myvyrian Archaiology.1 It is there given as Amo, but whether a male or female Saint we are not told. Two churches are mentioned as being dedicated to the Saint. One is Llanamo in Radnorshire, which is to-day usually called Llananno. It is subject to Llanbadarn Fynydd, and is sometimes said to be dedicated to an imaginary S. Wonno. The other church mentioned is "Rhosyr yn Mon," that is, Newborough, in Anglesey, called Llanamo in a MS.

1 P. 418.

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