Many years after hearing of the so-called legends [of Christ] in Cornwall I learned the Virgin's mother, St. Anne, the patron saint of France, had been born and bred in Brittany. Her home village of Palud was on the Atlantic coast some twenty miles south of Brest an area where, as shown in Sir Martin Gilbert's
Atlas of Jewish History, there were already substantial Jewish communities.
Little more is known of St. Anne other than that she and the Virgin's father, St. Joachim, were living in Palestine when Mary, at the age of fifteen, was married
to Joseph of Nazareth. Soon thereafter, following the death of Joachim, St. Anne
returned to her Breton village to remain there the rest of her life. She is said to
have been visited by Jesus while he was serving on that Phoenician ship. During the visit to Cornwall in Jesus's boyhood, those on Joseph's ship could in decent
weather have seen St. Anne's home while sailing past Palud's bay. It is
inconceivable to think of their not stopping by for a lengthy visit, especially if
the ship were Joseph's own.
Happily the fact of St. Anne's being in Brittany could account for the Virgin's
absence while Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus were in Cornwall buying tin and
overseeing the ingot's storage in the vessel's hold. During these weeks of activity,
Mary's time could well have been spent with her mother in the village now called
St. Anne de la-Palud. We can point to no proof of this other than its logic and
what is known about St. Anne. Her tradition in Brittany is similar to that of Christ's in Cornwall - a precious narrative to be hidden from strangers but otherwise spoken of freely so that the young might glory in the knowledge.
Those who refer to St. Anne with delight and pride-of-place are chiefly the nuns
of the orders having schools in Brittany and Normandy.
We are also told that the lighthouse at Place Manor in Cornwall was built in 1835 upon the foundation of an ancient chapel dedicated to St. Anne. That would be in keeping with the close relationship between the Bretons and the Cornish. Their fishermen used to work together, having common forebears and no more than minor differences in speech. The lighthouse still marks the nearest anchorage in Britain for anyone sailing from Palud. It is 150 miles across the Channel on a northerly course with no need to tack given a steady west wind.
A stern reference to St. Anne comes from Gladys Taylor, who has written extensively on the ancient traditions in Greater and Lesser Britain, "The very strong Breton traditions concerning St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, having resided in Brittany, are too important to be dismissed."
Robert C. Harvey, To The Isles Afar Off, Four Directions Press, Rhinebeck, NY,
2009, pp. 159, 160.
