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- St Joachim
- Also known as
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St Joachim
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primary name: St Joachim
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other name: Joachim
- Details
- individual; saint/martyr; Male
- Life dates
- fl. 1stC BC-
- Biography
- Christian saint; husband of St Anne (q.v.) and father of the Virgin Mary (q.v.); Joachim (whose name means Yahweh prepares), was honoured very early by the Greeks, who celebrate his feast on the day following the Virgin's birthday; the Latins were slow to admit it to their calendar, where it found place sometimes on 16 September and sometimes on 9 December; it was subsequently assigned, by Julius II, to 20 March, but suppressed some fifty years later, restored by Gregory XV (1622), then fixed by Clement XII (1738) on the Sunday after the Assumption, it was finally raised to the rank of double of the second class by Leo XIII (1 August, 1879); the "Gospel of James" describes how, in their old age, the prayers of Joachim and Anne were answered by the birth of Mary, and tradition has it that they, although living in Galilee, settled in Jerusalem, where she was born and reared; they both died and were buried within the city; a church, known at various epochs as St Mary, St Mary ubi nata est, St Mary in Probatica, Holy Probatica and St Anne, was built during the fourth century, possibly by St Helena, on the site of the house of St Joachim and St Anne, and their tombs were honoured there until the close of the ninth century, when the church was converted into a Moslem school; the crypt which formerly contained the holy tombs was rediscovered on 18 March, 1889.
