The Imitation of God’s Grandmother

September is back-to-school month, which means parish religious education programs are about to resume. Christian mothers in particular will be requested to assume with their own feminine genius—in a way that is not exclusive but irreplaceable—the responsibility for handing on knowledge and faith that is central to their vocation. To experience this start of the school year with joy and serenity, they can find help and inspiration by reconnecting with the traditional devotions to Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary—and the patron saint of women teachers and catechists. 

Wasn’t Saint Anne a good mother?

Neither the New Testament nor the apocryphal gospels tell us how Saint Anne educated her daughter, the blessed among all women. This particular devotion—which has inspired so many artists—was neither revealed nor even suggested by an ancient tradition: It sprang from a deduction which, all things considered, is quite logical. Indeed, history teaches us that among the Jewish people at the time Mary was born, mothers were the ones who educated their daughters. And in particular they taught them to read by having them learn by heart verses from the Torah and the Psalms and then decipher them. Next, by having them transcribe the verses, they taught them to write. It is legitimate to think that, from this perspective, Saint Anne was a good mother, especially inspired by the Holy Spirit to raise little Mary in a suitable way, until her ineffable vocation was completely fulfilled. And in fact, Mary, as she is revealed to us by the Gospels—a young married woman, about fifteen or sixteen years old—appears to us not only full of grace, but also thoroughly instructed, to the point where she finds in Scripture the words of spontaneous praise that she lifted up to heaven in response to the greeting of her cousin Elizabeth (see Lk 1:39-55)¹. With good reason, then, the very logical devotion to Saint Anne as a model for teaching mothers and catechists has been approved and strongly encouraged by the Church for more than a thousand years. 

The polychrome wooden sculpture that decorates the cover of this issue of Magnificat is an admirable testimony to this tradition. It was produced by the Master of Saint Benedict, who was active in the early 16^_th century in Hildesheim (near Hanover in Germany). It is impressive in both quality and dimensions: the seated figures are depicted at full scale. 

Whereas in Rome at that same time the Renaissance was triumphant with the sculptures of Michelangelo (1475–1564), this work still belongs to what is conventionally called the late Rheinland Gothic, particularly in the significant archetype of its figures and the convention of the draperies with deep shadows among the folds. But we discern developments that foretell a new style which, curiously enough, will skip over the Renaissance style, strictly speaking, by passing directly to the Baroque. Evidence of this is, for example, the tendency toward exuberance in the volume of the clothing, which at the same time starts to let us see the contours of a living body beneath the folds. Or the expression of Saint Anne, which manages to be eloquent in its very restraint. 

The Old Testament ends and the New commences

Although it belongs to the same tradition, this work proves to be highly original compared to most examples of the Education of the Virgin. First, Mary is crowned here and is no longer a child. She is a young lady, as tall as her mother and seated beside her, on the same level, not seen from the perspective of the teacher who towers over the student. Next, we see that with her left hand Saint Anne invites her daughter to keep learning from the book of the Old Testament which she holds on her knees, turning the pages with her right hand. Now Mary’s face shows that she is elsewhere—not that she is no longer paying attention to the lesson, but rather that the hour has come for her to be no longer a student of Scripture but to accomplish with her inmost being what she has learned from it. And now Anne understands that this is an important moment: Suddenly her facial expression belies the gesture of her hand; she stares at the closed book that Mary holds on her knees. Her face is lit up with a gentle smile. She has understood. She will be able to close the book of the Old Testament, while by her Fiat, Mary, blessed among all women, will open the book of the New Testament: “Let it be done to me according to your word, may the Spirit and Life of Scripture be fulfilled within me; may the Word of God be brought to earth through me.”²

Thus, thanks to the genius of the Master of Saint Benedict, we have the chance to rediscover the heights to which an inspired artist dared to invite Christian mothers—and of course now, in our post-Christian civilization, he invites grandmothers as well as mothers.

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² In this sense, in many comparable works from the 14^th century to the 16^th, the book of the Old Testament that Saint Anne carries ends with the New Testament phrase that indicates its perfect fulfillment: Et Verbum caro factum est (“And the Word became flesh,” Jn 1:14). From the 18^th century on, artists dazzled by the lights of rationalism would lose the ultimate meaning of the traditional iconography of The Education of the Virgin and would depict the volume merely as an ABC book. 

Pierre-Marie Dumont
The Education of the Virgin, Master of Saint Benedict (c. 1510–1530, attr. to), Philadelphia Museum of Art. © Bridgeman Images.