Anna

Anna, or ANNE, St, according to tradition, wife of St Joachim, and mother, after twenty years of barrenness, of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The first to mention her is St Epiphanius, in the 4th century; but towards the 8th, we find her all but universally held in honour. Her body is said to have been transferred from Palestine to Constantinople in 710; and since that time many churches have boasted of relics of her person, no less than three having equally good claims of having her head. She is the patron-saint of carpenters. Her festival falls on the 26th of July; with the Greeks, on the 9th of December. St Anne d'Auray, in Brittany, is a famous place of pilgrimage; and St Anne de Beaupré, near Quebec, is its counterpart in the New World.