Stories about Anne form part of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, but her mother is not mentioned. An early source mentioning Emerentia, is Josse Bade's (Jodocius Badius Ascensius, 1461–1535) 1502 translation of Petrus Dorlandus' work Vita gloriosissime matris Anne contained in the larger compilation Vita Iesu Christi ... ex evangelio et approbatis ab ecclesia catholica doctoribus sedule collecta per Ludolphum per Saxonia (published in Paris), which tells the story:
Seventy seven years before the birth of Christ, a pious maiden, quite well off and remarkably beautiful, was in the habit of visiting, with her parents' permission, the sons of prophets on Mount Carmel. She was disinclined to marriage, until one of the Carmelites had a prophetic dream, they saw a root from which grew two trees, one had three branches, all bearing flowers, but one a flower more pure and fragrant than all the rest ... Then a voice was heard saying: "This root is our Emerentia, destined to have great descendants.
Another source is Johann Eck, who related in a sermon that Anne's parents were named Stollanus and Emerentia.[4]