Editing Saint Anne (section)

==Beliefs==
[[File:Saint Anne et Marie enfant.JPG|thumb|Saint Anne with Mary as a child]]
Although the [[Biblical canon#Christian canons|canonical books of the New Testament]] never mention the mother of the Virgin Mary, traditions about her family, childhood, education, and eventual betrothal to Joseph developed very early in the history of the church. The oldest and most influential source for these is the apocryphal [[Gospel of James]], first written in [[Koine Greek]] around the middle of the second century AD. In the West, the Gospel of James fell under a cloud in the fourth and fifth centuries when it was accused of "absurdities" by [[Jerome]] and condemned as untrustworthy by [[Pope Damasus I]], [[Pope Innocent I]], and [[Pope Gelasius I]].<ref name=reames>{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/44sr.htm |title=Reames, Sherry L. ed., "Legends of St. Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary: Introduction", ''Middle English Legends of Women Saints'', Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2003 |publisher=Lib.rochester.edu |access-date=15 August 2013}}</ref> However, despite having been condemned by the Church, it was taken over almost ''in toto'' by another apocryphal work, the [[Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew]], which popularised most of its stories.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Ehrman|first1=Bart|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqQ9LSzs8hgC|title=The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations|last2=Plese|first2=Zlatko|date=21 July 2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-983128-9|language=en}}</ref>

Ancient belief, attested to by a sermon of [[John of Damascus]], was that Anne married once.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wehling |first=Fr John |date=2017-09-02 |title=Excerpts From St John Of Damascus: An Oration On The Nativity Of The Holy Theotokos Mary |url=https://www.ocanwa.org/single-post/2017/09/02/excerpts-from-st-john-of-damascus-an-oration-on-the-nativity-of-the-holy-theotokos-mary |access-date=2024-07-29 |website=st-john-oca |language=en}}</ref> The sister of Saint Anne was [[Sobe (sister of Saint Anne)|Sobe]], mother of [[Elizabeth (biblical figure)|Elizabeth]]. In the fifteenth century, the Catholic cleric [[Johann Eck]] related in a sermon that St Anne's parents were named Stollanus and [[Emerentia]]. [[Frederick George Holweck]], writing in the ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'' (1907) regards this genealogy as spurious.<ref name=holweck>{{cite web|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01538a.htm|title=Holweck, Frederick. "St. Anne." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 3 May 2013 "The renowned Father John of Eck of Ingolstadt, in a sermon on St. Anne (published at Paris in 1579), pretends to know even the names of the parents St. Anne. He calls them Stollanus and Emerentia. He says that St. Anne was born after Stollanus and Emerentia had been childless for twenty years"|date=1 March 1907|publisher=Newadvent.org|access-date=15 August 2013}}</ref>

In the 4th century and then much later in the fifteenth century, a belief arose that Mary was conceived of Anne without [[original sin]]. This belief in the [[Immaculate Conception]] states that God preserved Mary's body and soul intact and sinless from her first moment of existence, through the merits of Jesus Christ.<ref name=holweck/> The Immaculate Conception, often confused with the [[Annunciation]] of the [[Incarnation (Christianity)|Incarnation]] (Mary's virgin birth of Jesus), was made [[Dogma in the Catholic Church|dogma]] in the Catholic church by [[Pope Pius IX]]'s [[papal bull]], [[Ineffabilis Deus|''Ineffabilis'' ''Deus'']], in 1854. The 13th century ''[[Speculum Maius]]'' of [[Vincent of Beauvais]] incorporates information regarding the life of Saint Anne from an earlier work by [[Hrotsvitha]] of Gandersheim Abbey.{{sfn|Nixon|2004|p=12}}