Early Evidence for the Cult of Anne in Twelfth-Century England

Author:

Ihnat Kati

Abstract

Despite scholarly attention on its later medieval popularity, the feast of Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, first appeared in the West in twelfth-century England. The earliest surviving liturgical texts for the feast were composed in the 1130s by Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster, for Worcester Cathedral. They attest to the novelty of the celebration and the process by which a saintly identity was constructed for Anne, an apocryphal figure. To understand why Anne began to be celebrated at this time and how her liturgy was crafted, this article explores Osbert's texts in their devotional context. A lively monastic cult of the Virgin Mary in England provides an important backdrop to the emergence of the celebration of Anne. Debates about the Anglo-Saxon feast of Mary's Conception were especially influential, and a comparison between the liturgical texts for the feast of the Conception and the feast of Anne yields striking parallels. This suggests that the liturgy for Anne both drew on and supported the contentious feast of the Conception. At the same time, Anne was presented as a monastic role model, a virtuous and chaste woman with special appeal for nuns. The history and identity of Anne were therefore deeply embedded in trends of monastic devotion to Mary as Anne was shaped into a deserving mother of her illustrious offspring but also as a worthy saint in her own right.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Literature and Literary Theory,Philosophy,Religious studies,Visual Arts and Performing Arts

Reference167 articles.

1. Heslop , “Origins” (n. 31 above). For the manuscript, see Henry Avril , The Eton Roundels (Aldershot, UK, 1990), especially at 32–43 for the connection to Worcester. Other institutions followed suit in having Marian seals, including Great Malvern priory — a Worcester dependancy — Reading, Abingdon, Pershore, and Kelso abbeys, and Lincoln Cathedral, all in the first half of the twelfth century, but Worcester seems to have been the first. See Heslop T. A. , “The Virgin Mary's Regalia and Twelfth-Century English Seals,” in The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology Presented to Christopher Hohler , ed. Borg Alan and Martindale Andrew (Oxford, 1981), 53–62, at 56–58; and idem, “The Romanesque Seal of Worcester Cathedral,” in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral (Leeds, UK, 1978), 71–79.

2. Osbert of Clare, the Sarum Breviary, and the Middle-English Saint Anne in Rime Royal

3. See Clayton , Apocryphal Gospels , 129–30, for the Protevangelium, and 319–22 for a transcription of the text. See also Gransden Antonia , “The Cult of St. Mary at Beodericisworth and Then in Bury St Edmunds Abbey to c. 1150,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55 (2004): 627–53, at 642–43; and Webber Teresa , “The Provision of Books for Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy , ed. Gransden Antonia , British Archaeological Association 20 (Leeds, 1998), 186–93, at 188. The Trinubium is found in Cambridge, St. John's College MS 35 (B. 13) and is discussed in Hall , “Trinubium.”

4. For Honorius's biography, see Flint V. I. J. , Honorius Augustodunensis of Regensburg (Aldershot, UK, 1995).

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