medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Just a quick reply to Catherine - I too have enjoyed reading Ton Brandenbarg
and the book "Interpreting Cultural Symbols" - but I wish that my Dutch was
better so that I could understand all that Ton writes.
Just for interest: The Carmelite John Bale copied an anonymous life of St
Anne when he visited Belgium c1523-24. It's in Latin, around 35 pages when
typed, and describes the life of St Anne including some Carmelite
embellishments, e.g. St Anne is taken to Mount Carmel as a young girl by her
mother Emerenciana in order to consult the Carmelite hermits there. Anne
says that she wants to remain single and devote her life to God: but
fortunately for later church history, the hermits have a vision of a tree
bearing fruit which symbolises St Anne giving birth to Mary and then
producing the fruit, Christ himself. (Now who would have thought that the
whole of redemption depended on some Carmelite hermits.....!!!)
Richard
On 13 December 2010 13:41, Catherine.Lawless <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Thanks so much, Eliana and Richard! I really enjoyed researching and
> writing it. Richard is quite right, the northern legends identify
> Emerenciana or Emerentiana as the mother of St Anne and thus the grandmother
> of Mary. There are some great essays on the Holy Kindred or Holy Kinship in
> Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed.
> Pamela Sheingorn and Kathleen Ashley (Athens, GA, 1990), and Ton
> Brandenbarg has done a lot of work on same, e.g. ''Saint Anne: a Holy
> Grandmother and Her Children', in Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy
> Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. by Anneke Mulder-Bakker (New York and
> London: Garland, 1995), pp.31-65 and 'Saint Anne and Her Family. The
> Veneration of Saint Anne in Connection with Concepts of Marriage and the
> Family in the Early Modern Period', in Saints and She Devils, ed. by Lène
> Dresen-Coenders (London, 1987), pp. 101-129.
> best
> Catherine
>
> Dr. Catherine Lawless
> Course Director, MA in the History of Art and Architecture
> Department of History
> University of Limerick
> Limerick
> Tel: + 353-61-202636
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
> culture on behalf of Richard Copsey
> Sent: Mon 12/13/2010 12:59
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [M-R] jesus' great grandmother
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Richard Copsey O.Carm.
> I am not exactly a new member of Medieval Religion but rather a lost sheep
> returning to the fold after a number of years away. I am a Carmelite friar
> with a special interest in the medieval history of the mendicant orders,
> especially my own. Also, because of his links with the Carmelites, I have
> worked a lot on the writings of John Bale and especially unpublished early
> notebooks.
>
> I appreciated the reference to Catherine Lawler's article on Mary's
> grandmother and have just read it. It is certainly a well researched paper.
> However, as she points out, this legend of Ismeria as the grandmother of
> Mary is a local Florentine variant on the ancestory of Mary.
> The more generally accepted legend was that Mary's grandmother was
> Emerenciana and that Ismeria (or Ysmeria) was the grandmother of John the
> Baptist. There are many surviving early lives of St Anne which contain
> accounts of her childhood and her parents. These can be linked with the
> increasing devotion to St Anne in the Low Countries in the 15th century.
> There are some beautiful Flemish paintings illustrating the life of St Anne
> preserved in the City Art Gallery in Frankfurt which came from the
> Carmelite
> church there. One of them has an ancestral tree of St Anne which contains
> both Emerenciana and Ysmeria.
> Richard
>
> On 12 December 2010 19:53, eliana corbari <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> > Dear Colleagues
> >
> > Excellent article on Mary's grandmother, perhaps of particular interest
> in
> > the season of the nativity
> >
> > http://news.discovery.com/history/jesus-great-grandmother.html
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Eliana
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>
>
> --
> Richard Copsey O.Carm
> [log in to unmask]
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