ABSTRACT
In addition to the type of local parish devotion presented and encouraged in the Annenvitae, two other significant types of public and group devotion became defining factors of devotion to St. Anne in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The rapid growth of confraternities was one of the most notable characteristics of St. Anne’s cult from 1480 through the first years of the Reformation. St. Anne also had specific shrine sites within Northern Europe that developed into major pilgrimage destinations in the early sixteenth century. These two phenomena illustrate the complex religiosity of the period surrounding the Reformation, in particular the relationship between the church hierarchy, secular powers, and the many facets of what is termed “popular belief.” Both confraternities and pilgrimages satisfied spiritual needs by creating religious communities that promised salvational, social, and material benefits for the participants. St. Anne’s status as the grandmother of Christ and protector of her devotées placed her in a unique position to fulfill those promises.
