Holy Kinship

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Extended family of Jesus

title: "Holy Kinship" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["christian-iconography", "christian-saints", "family-of-jesus"] description: "Extended family of Jesus" topic_path: "society/religion" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Kinship" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Extended family of Jesus ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/De_heilige_maagschap_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-500.jpeg" caption="in}}, now in the [[Rijksmuseum]], [[Amsterdam" alt="An oil painting of St. Anne, the Virgin Mary and their numerous relatives and offspring, set within a Gothic cathedral"] ::

The Holy Kinship (, ) was the extended family of Jesus supposedly descended from his maternal grandmother Saint Anne through her trinubium or three marriages. The group were a popular subject in religious art throughout Germany and the Low Countries, especially during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, but rarely after the Council of Trent. According to this medieval tradition, Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was grandmother not just to Jesus but also to five of the twelve apostles: John the Evangelist, James the Greater, James the Less, Simon and Jude. These apostles, together with John the Baptist, were all cousins of Jesus.

Smaller groups of Jesus and his parents, often plus his cousin John the Baptist and John's mother Elizabeth (Gospel of Luke ) and perhaps Saint Anne, are known as the Holy Family, and were considerably more common in art. After the Council of Trent dismissed the legend of the three marriages of Anne, the full subject was thereafter rarely painted, although the limited group of the families of the cousins Jesus and John the Baptist remained in use.

''Trinubium''

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Meister_der_Heiligen_Sippe_001.jpg" caption="[[Master of the Holy Kinship]], 1500"] ::

The basis for this family tree rests upon the trinubium, the tradition that Anne had married three times, and had had three daughters, the Three Marys, each called Mary and with different fathers. That version runs thus:

:Anna solet dici tres concepisse Marias, :Quas genuere viri Joachim, Cleophas, Salomeque. :Has duxere viri Joseph, Alpheus, Zebedeus. :Prima parit Christum, Jacobum secunda minorem, :Et Joseph justum peperit cum Simone Judam, :Tertia majorem Jacobum volucremque Johannem.

:Anna is usually said to have conceived three Marys, :Whom her husbands Joachim, Cleophas, and Salome begot. :These [Marys] the men Joseph, Alphaeus, and Zebedee took in marriage. :The first bore Christ; the second bore James the Less, :Joseph the Just, with Simon [and] Jude; :The third, James the Greater and the winged John.

The legend of the three marriages probably originated in the 9th century with Haimo of Auxerre's Historiae sacrae epitome. This list totals 17 people, all of whom might be shown, plus sometimes others. The Geertgen tot Sint Jans has nineteen figures. Although the character of the older generations is matriarchal, notably, the youngest generation, shown as children, are all male. They often carry their attributes, as do the three boys in the centre of the Geertgen: the saw (Simon), barrel (James the Great) and chalice (John the Evangelist).

Extra figures may relate to a local Dutch legendary genealogy which held that Anne’s sister, Hismeria (or Esmeria), was the mother of John the Baptist's mother Elizabeth and of a second child, Eliud, who was in turn the grandfather of Servatius of Tongeren, a 4th-century bishop in the Netherlands.

Salomite controversy

The legend of the trinubium came under attack soon after it began spreading. In the 1170s, Prior Maurice of Kirkham wrote treatise Against the Salomites, those who believed that the disciple Salome mentioned in the Gospel of Mark was a man and the husband of Anne.

Gallery

File:Sainte Anne et les trois Marie.jpg|Saint Anne and the Three Marys, Jean Fouquet File:Holy Kinship, Silesia, view 1, c. 1500, beech wood - Bode-Museum - DSC03100.JPG|Beechwood relief sculpture from Silesia, c. 1500 Image:Mojster iz Okoličnega - Sv. sorodstvo.jpg|Master from Okoličné, c. 1510, with 25 figures Image:Lucas Cranach d. Ä. 065.jpg|Lucas Cranach the Elder Image:Wolf Traut 001.jpg| File:Nuremberg chronicles f 95r.jpg|Nuremberg Chronicles File:The Holy Family and kindred by Lucas Cranach the Elder.jpg|Woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1509-10 File:Jörg Breu d.Ä. & Jörg Breu d.J. - Die Heilige Sippe.jpg|Jörg Breu the Elder and the Younger

References

References

  1. James Hall, ''Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art'', 2nd ed. (John Murray, 1996, {{ISBN. 0719541476), p. 335.
  2. Beda Kleinschmidt, ''Die heilige Anna''. ''Ihre Verehrung in Geschichte'', Kunst und Volkstum. 1930.
  3. James, M. R.. (1934). "The Salomites". The Journal of Theological Studies.
  4. Jacobus de Voragine’s ''Golden Legend''. Volume II, Chapter 131.
  5. Mellie Naydenova-Slade and [[David Park (art historian). David Park]], "The Earliest Holy Kinship Image, the Salomite Controversy, and a Little-Known Centre of Learning in Northern England in the Twelfth Century", ''Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes'', 71 (2008), 95–119.
  6. (2024). "Salome and the Kin of Jesus: The Treatises of Maurice of Kirkham and Herbert of Bosham". Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

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