Christ's Grandmother

A friend of Novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes was having trouble explaining to her little granddaughter the story of the Nativity. "I don't understand why Mary and Joseph had to go to a stable," said the child. "Why didn't they go to Grandma's?"

Inspired by this incident, Roman Catholic Author Keyes (a convert from Congregationalism in 1939) sent out a Christmas story to her friends titled Our Lord Had a Grandmother, Too. This warm, folksy meditation on the life of St. Anne, later reprinted in magazines, brought an avalanche of correspondence from Grandmother Anne's admirers, Protestant as well as Catholic.

Most of them echoed Author Keyes's own womanly questions about the saint: "Did she hear the 'good tidings of great joy' . . . from some kindly neighbor who came back to Nazareth before Mary and Joseph? . . . Did Jesus spend much time with her in the little house where the angel had announced His coming? Did she invite John to stay there, too, so that the small cousins would be company for each other? Was it she who taught Jesus to read?" Author Keyes decided to search out the answers, and the result is just published: St. Anne, Grandmother of Our Saviour (Messner; $5).

Triple Family. Author Keyes feels that St. Anne "seems closer to Christ than any other saint and closer to us even than the Blessed Mother." However this may be, Anne is widely and warmly venerated. She is patron saint of Brittany and of the world's second most famous healing shrine (Ste. Anne de Beaupre, Quebec). There are nearly 400 Roman Catholic churches dedicated to her in the U.S., plus many Episcopal churches.

The facts of her life are not to be found in the canonical books of the New Testament, but in the apocryphal Lost Gospels. The Golden Legend of Jacques de Voragines and other pious legends are filled with detail that Author Keyes draws on. St. Anne's birth, according to these accounts, was miraculously foretold to her mother and father, called by some Mathan and Maria; upon their couch appeared the Hebrew word Anna (grace) written in gold letters. She grew up and married a young man known as Joachim, whose name had an equally propitious meaning-"Preparation for the Saviour." Legend tells how Joachim was rebuked by the high priest for his childlessness after many years of marriage, then visited by an angel who foretold the birth of Mary, who was to be Mother of the Lord.

Some time between Mary's and Christ's childhood, Joachim apparently died; Christ's grandfather is rarely mentioned. An ancient tradition, no longer supported by the church, holds that Anne had three husbands, and there are many representations of Anne with what Author Keyes calls "her triple family"--technically known as the Trinubium. By each of her other two husbands--according to this version--she had another daughter called Mary, who bore the sons referred to in the Bible as Jesus' "brothers." Author Keyes points out that the Hebrews often used the word "brother" to designate "cousin" and "we do not need the theory of the Trinubium to find cousins among Our Lord's relatives."

Fruitful Vine. How did St. Anne feel when the Angel Gabriel announced that her virgin daughter was with child? Exalted, Author Keyes is sure, though she suspects Husband Joachim may have received the news "with feelings of more tempered happiness ... a human father's natural concern for his daughter."

As to when St. Anne died, legend is silent. Where she was buried is a subject of pious argument. Author Keyes feels that Anne's tomb in the French city of Apt is the genuine resting place (for the major portion of her body, at least). There, in a hidden crypt under the cathedral's high altar, the great Emperor Charlemagne himself is said to have discovered her stone-sealed coffin in 801. Above this tomb is carved a tree branch, interlaced with a grapevine--a perfect illustration, Author Keyes observes, for the church's Litany to St. Anne:

St. Anne, Fruitful Vine . . . pray for us.

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