Many Christians are often surprised to learn that St. Anne, Mary's mother and the grandmother of Jesus, is entirely absent from the New Testament and does not appear in any source until the second-century Protoevangelium of James. A millennium later, the cult of St. Anne captured the imagination of medieval Christians, who venerated her as a devout woman and model wife, mother, and grandmother. Over a decade before criticizing excessive devotional practices, a young Martin Luther prayed to St. Anne for protection during a thunderstorm, crying out, “St. Anne, help me! I will become a monk” (1).

How did St. Anne transform from a marginal figure in early Christianity to the root of a vibrant cult in the later Middle Ages, only to have Luther decry her “extremely dubious legend” (135)? Jennifer Welsh's The Cult of St. Anne in Medieval and Early Modern Europe seeks to understand the dynamic cult of the most revered grandmothers in Christianity. Employing a broad chronological scope, Welsh examines the rise of the medieval cult, how it endured criticism by both Protestants and the post-Tridentine Catholic Church, and its surprising Baroque revival. Welsh mines an array of devotional sources in Germanic-speaking northern Europe, including vitae, miracle collections, confraternal records, liturgical texts, sermons, broadsheets, and images of Anne Selbridtt (grouping of St. Anne, Mary, and Jesus) and the Holy Kinship (illuminations of the multi-generational Holy Family).

Using three analytical concepts, Welsh argues that this “invented saint” offers a useful conduit into the changing dynamics of Christian devotion in late medieval and early modern Europe. (21) First, Welsh uses the lens of popular belief to examine the intersection of clerical and lay devotional practices. Second, by using gender as a methodological tool, St. Anne's cult offers an opportunity to consider how members of the Holy Kinship were reshaped to conform with societal norms. Finally, Welsh claims art and devotional images are integral to understanding St. Anne's cult as well as broader socio-cultural and religious shifts.

The first four chapters examine the development and rise of St. Anne's cult. A series of early medieval narratives were written about St. Anne to address two pressing theological issues: Mary's conception and the absence of Mary's lineage in the Gospels. Intricate narrative and visual family trees (Arbor Annae) framed Mary, St. Anne, and Anne's own mother, St. Emerentia, as virtuous women, teachers of the faith, and models of pious domestic life. Next, Welsh examines how, through relics, pilgrimage shrines, and confraternities, different medieval communities encountered St. Anne. These chapters demonstrate how Anne's cult reflected societal expectations of family life and the complexity of late medieval religiosity.

Welsh expertly maneuvers from broader issues, such as changing gender expectations, to nuanced episodes, such as the sixteenth-century theft of a fragment of St. Anne's skull. The ensuing dispute between two competing shrine sites became so contentious that it involved local, imperial, and papal authorities. Subsequently, Welsh analyzes the aspects of St. Anne's cult that made it susceptible to criticism from both Protestant and Catholic reformers. The lack of scriptural evidence for St. Anne was a central concern among Protestants, who also felt that she was an unsuitable head of the family. Although the role of matriarch was heralded in the later Middle Ages, Protestant sources recast the venerated grandmother as a silent, devout matron.

The cult experienced an unexpected revival in the Baroque era, particularly as St. Anne was reconfigured in the role of a pious widow. This resurgence of popular devotion culminated with a nine-day centennial commemoration in Gotteszell in 1729 celebrating the survival of an image of St. Anne in a fire, as evidenced in devotional texts, confraternal records, and sermons. The epilogue examines an increased emphasis on the Mary–Anne connection in nineteenth-century devotional sources: St. Anne was not to be venerated as an individual figure. This extended chronological framework underscores how St. Anne's cult continued to offer a means of gauging change and cultural differences.

Welsh challenges religious historians to rethink the two-tiered model of religious devotion and, instead, consider how popular devotional practices were utilized across clerical and lay communities. Rather than viewing St. Anne's cult as primarily a clerical phenomenon, Welsh surveys the lay efforts that contributed to both the rise and revitalization of St. Anne's cult. In another vein, Welsh focuses on gender within and in relation to St. Anne's cult. However, additional analysis of how her three husbands, especially Joachim, appeared in devotional and narrative sources, would offer some interesting commentary on changing expectations of marriage and spousal roles. Given the recent scholarship on the early modern rehabilitation of St. Joseph, a similar examination of Joachim would fit well within this project, especially since gender is such a central focus throughout the book.

Within a narrower field, Welsh directly contests aspects of Virginia Nixon's Mary's Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (Penn State University Press, 2004), which primarily examined St. Anne through her role as Mary's mother. Welsh, however, treats St. Anne as an individual entity but also observes when devotional sources intentionally linked St. Anne with members of the Holy Kinship. Whereas Nixon focused on the height of St. Anne's cult (circa 1480–1530) and its subsequent decline, Welsh argued that the seventeenth-century revival of the cult revealed that “the beliefs and values of the Middle Ages continued to be more relevant in later centuries than past historians have recognized” (4).

Through vivid prose and sharp analysis, Welsh weaves together a series of compelling narratives that demonstrate how St. Anne's cult adapted to the needs of different devotional movements. By synthesizing trends of a particular saint's cult, Welsh extrapolates larger trends in Christian devotional practices. This well-researched project should be read by late medieval and early modern religious historians alike, who will appreciate the thoughtful commentary on the interconnected issues of religion, culture, and gender in medieval and early modern Europe.