medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
3. February is also the feast day of:
Simeon the Old and Anna the Prophet (d. late 1st cent. BCE or very early 1st cent. CE). Since at least the eleventh century eastern-rite churches have celebrated these two personae of Luke's account of the Meeting (in Greek, Hypapante) of the Lord in the Temple of Jerusalem on the day following the feast commemorating that event. Since its revision of 2001 the Roman Martyrology has likewise commemorated Simeon and Anna on this day immediately following the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple (traditionally, feast of the Purification of Mary).
Simeon (also, in accordance with his name form in the Greek New Testament, Symeon; in Orthodox writing, often S. the God-Receiver or God-Bearer) is the old man in the temple at Luke 2:25-35 who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until after he had seen the Messiah, who takes the child Jesus into his arms and utters the _nun apolueis_ (in its Latin Vulgate translation, _Nunc dimittis_), and who then prophesies both Jesus' importance for the world and Mary's own future sorrow. He is traditionally thought of as a priest.
Anna (Luke 2:36-38) is a pious, ascetic, and very elderly widow who is said to spend night and day in the temple and who, coming up to Mary, Joseph, and the child Jesus, gives thanks to God and speaks of Jesus to all who await the Redemption. Luke, using a feminine-gendered form (_prophetis_; in the Vulgate, _prophetissa_), styles Anna a prophet. Consequently, though we have no written text of her utterances, she is often shown with that attribute of the prophets, a scroll (the texts on her scrolls in items e) and m) below are adaptations of Luke 2:12).
Thanks to the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, we know that in the early Middle Ages 2. February was the feast both of the Purification and of Simeon. The also ninth-century St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard entered Simeon in their martyrologies under 8. October. That is also where he was in the RM prior to its revision of 2001 and is still his feast day in Zadar (which has relics said to be his).
Ado entered Anna under 1. September in the _Libellus sanctorum_ prefixed to his martyrology but omitted her from the latter's main sequence. Usuard also omitted her. The pre-2001 Roman Martyrology, following Ado, commemorated Anna under 1. September. This is her first notice in this list's 'FEASTS'/'saints of the day'/'Feasts and Saints of the Day'.
Herewith some depictions and other representations of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple certainly or very probably including Anna as well as Simeon (others showing Simeon alone may well come along on 8. October):
a) in the late tenth- or early eleventh-century (ca. 1000) so-called Menologium of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. Gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/5znol5
b) in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored betw. 1953 and 1962) of the katholikon of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/48qyyze
c) in a late eleventh-century fresco (1095) in Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi (Monastery of St. Moses the Ethiopian) near Al-Nabk (Nebek; Rif-Dimashq governorate) in Syria:
http://www.medievalart.org/htm/immerzeel17.jpg
d) in the earlier twelfth-century sculptures (ca. 1145) of the right portal of the west facade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Chartres (the figure second from left in the first view very probably is A.):
http://tinyurl.com/yamstk3
http://tinyurl.com/yb5479c
e) in a later twelfth-century fresco (ca. 1164) in the nave of the church of St. Panteleimon (Pantaleon) at Nerezi Lartëm (Skopje municipality) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/6egzft6
http://tinyurl.com/6gm9zgh
f) in a later twelfth-century (1178-1180) Coptic-language Gospels from Damietta (Paris, BnF, ms. Copte 13, fol. 142r):
http://tinyurl.com/yjmu8bm
g) in one of the panels of the early thirteenth-century bronze doors of the cathedral of Benevento, badly damaged by the Allied bombing of 1943 and recently restored:
http://tinyurl.com/yuze93
h) in the earlier thirteenth-century sculptures (ca. 1240-1255) on the left jamb of the west facade of the cathedral of Reims' central portal (A. at far right):
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intdept/pnp/images/cath9.jpg
i) in a later thirteenth-century relief (1260) by Nicola Pisano on his pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa:
http://www.wga.hu/art/p/pisano/nicola/1pisa_3.jpg
j) in a later thirteenth-century fresco (ca. 1263-1270 or 1270-1272) in the nave of the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/y9ohkcu
k) in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 26r):
http://tinyurl.com/yau2uy7
l) in a late thirteenth-century mosaic (ca. 1293) by Pietro Cavallini in Santa Maria in Trastevere (the verses are by the future cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi, d. 1341 or 1343):
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/19858731.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/4fog5ua
m) in a very late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1300), attributed to Manuel Panselinos, of the Protaton church on Mount Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/6jg59qn
n) in an early fourteenth-century fresco (1304-1306) by Giotto di Bondone in the Arena Chapel (Cappella dei Scrovegni) in Padua:
http://tinyurl.com/y9f5nfd
o) in a panel painting (ca. 1308-1311) by Duccio di Buoninsegna, part of the predella of his Maestà in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena:
http://www.wga.hu/art/d/duccio/maesta/predel_f/pre_f_g.jpg
p) in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (1320-1325) by Giotto di Bondone in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (MA):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/giotto/z_panel/3polypty/2present.jpg
q) in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1322-1324) in the nave of the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/4ban6jv
http://tinyurl.com/46c2dmd
r) in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) in the nave of the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/4os8hwn
http://tinyurl.com/4phzvds
s) in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1330s) in the nave of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/4zlw4dc
http://tinyurl.com/6cbt96v
t) in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (1342) panel painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence:
http://www.wga.hu/art/l/lorenzet/ambrogio/8present.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/64n7fvz
u) in a fourteenth-century marble statuary group in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny) in Paris:
http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/101046087
v) in a later fourteenth-century Armenian-language Gospels (Paris, BnF, ms. Arménien 333, fol. 3r), with Anna holding a a lit candle aloft:
http://tinyurl.com/yzgnclm
w) in an earlier fifteenth-century panel painting (1433-1434) by Beato Angelico on the predella of his Annunciation altarpiece in the Museo diocesano in Cortona:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/angelico/04/3predel4.jpg
x) in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1455) by Rogier van der Weyden on his St. Columba altarpiece in the Alte Pinkothek in Munich:
http://www.wga.hu/art/w/weyden/rogier/11columb/3columb.jpg
y) in an earlier sixteenth-century glass roundel (ca. 1525) of Netherlandish origin or inspiration in the Church of St. Peter, Nowton (Suffolk; photograph by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2237707408/
Best,
John Dillon
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