Home › Rings in Ecclesiastical Usages › Rings in Ecclesiastical Usages: Anne

Rings in Ecclesiastical Usages: Anne

In Hone's 'Everyday Book' it is remarked that the meeting of St. Anne and St. Joachim at the Golden Gate was a popular theme. The nuns of St. Anne, at Rome, showed a rude silver ring as the wedding one of the two saints.

In the Braybrooke Collection is a thick, gold, nun's ring, with a conical surface to the band of the hoop, and an inscription of the fourteenth century, in Longobardic characters, X O (for avec) cest (for cet) anel seu (for je suis) espose de Fheusu Crist.' In the Waterton Collection at the South Kensington Museum is also a nun's ring of the same date, inscribed 'God with Maria.' In former times complaints were made in the 'Constitutions' of nuns wearing several rings. In the 'Ancren Riwle, or Regulæ Inclusarum' (Camden Society) nuns are forbidden to have brooch or ring, or studded girdle :- Ring ne broche nabbe ye; ne gurdel i-membred. 'Espousals to God' were not confined to the religious portion of the community.