ABSTRACT

For mid-sixteenth-century German Catholicism, St. Anne was both essential and highly problematic. Her role as the mother of the Virgin Mary made her indispensible for considerations of Christ’s lineage, particularly in relation to the Immaculate Conception and Mary’s physical and moral purity. However, the idea of a powerful, matriarchal saint with multiple husbands ran counter to developing ideals about gender and holiness within Early Modern Catholicism, just as it did for Protestant regions.1 The Council of Trent, while not discussing the Holy Kinship itself, did devote considerable time to the control of women and gender relations as a way to create religious and social order.2 Recent work on early modern Catholic states has demonstrated that the regulation of marriage and sexuality was also a concern of secular governments, which sought to create morality and order through their use of Tridentine ideals to police their citizens, particularly women.3