ANNE (St.)

Legenda s[an]ctissime matrone anne genitricis v[ir]gis marie matris: & hiesu cristi auie. (Leipzig, Melchior Lotter, 16 September

      - 4to. (220 x 148mm.). 23ff. (lacks final blank). Gothic type, 34 lines. 19th/20th century vellum over paste-boards. 1498). Rare edition of this text first published by Lotter in the previous year, one of the first books to appear from his press. To cater for the interest in the life of the Virgin's mother Lotter also published c. 1497-1500 Johann Tritheim's (1462-1516)De laudibus sanctissimae Annae. "All our information concerning the names and lives of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary, is derived from apocryphal literature, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Protoevangelium of James. Though the earliest form of the latter, on which directly or indirectly the other two seem to be based, goes back to about A.D. 150, we can hardly accept as beyond doubt its various statements on its sole authority. In the Orient the Protoevangelium had great authority and portions of it were read on the feasts of Mary by the Greeks, Syrians, Copts, and Arabians. In the Occident, however, it was rejected by the Fathers of the Church until its contents were incorporated by Jacobus de Voragine in his "Golden Legend" in the thirteenth century. From that time on the story of St. Anne spread over the West and was amply developed, until St. Anne became one of the most popular saints also of the Latin Church." (Catholic Encyclopaedia). A number of margins filled with annotations by a 17th century? German hand. Folio B4 strenghened at inner and upper margins, single wormhole to lower blank margin. GW 2004. H1114*. Goff A746 (Folger, Huntington, Library of Congress & NYPL only). Not in BMC.