According to apocryphal Christian and Islamic tradition, St. Anne was Mary's mother and Jesus' maternal grandmother. Mary's mother does not appear in the canonical gospels. St.
Anne was the mother of Mary and grandmother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. According to tradition, Ana, the ancestor of God, lived sixty-nine years, and his wife Joaquín, eighty; according to one story, St. Joaquín died two years before St. Anne.
The Theotokos had already been orphaned by her parents when she was eleven, when she lived in the temple (see Sept. Saint Anne is invoked for conceiving children and for helping in difficult births.
