The Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

July 26 – The Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary –

The Scriptures tell us nothing about the parents of the Virgin Mother, not even their names. An early but unreliable document, known as the Proto-Gospel (or Proto-Evangelion) of James, calls them Anne and Joachim, by which names they are customarily known. Our only real information about them, however, is an inference from the kind of daughter they reared.

Image: An 18th-century icon of Ss Joachim and Anne with the Virgin Mary, from the monastery of the Pantocrator on Mt Athos.