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Pope Joan: A Novel Kindle Edition
“Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama—love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets. Cross has written an engaging book.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
In this international bestseller and basis for the 2009 movie of the same name, Donna Woolfolk Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.
For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die—Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.
Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak—and his identity—and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom—wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price . . .
“Brings the savage ninth century vividly to life in all its alien richness. An enthralling, scholarly historical novel.”—Rebecca Fraser, author of The Brontës
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateMay 29, 2009
- File size3198 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The time is 814, the place is Ingelheim, a Frankland village. It is the harshest winter in living memory when Joan is born to an English father and a Saxon mother. Her father is a canon, filled with holy zeal and capable of unconscionable cruelty. His piety does not extend to his family members, especially the females. His wife, Gudrun, is a young beauty to whom he was attracted beyond his will--and he hates her for showing him his weakness. Gudrun teaches Joan about her gods, and is repeatedly punished for it by the canon. Joan grows to young womanhood with the combined knowledge of the warlike Saxon gods and the teachings of the Church as her heritage. Both realities inform her life forever.
When her brother John, not a scholarly type, is sent away to school, Joan, who was supposed to be the one sent to school, runs away and joins him in Dorstadt, at Villaris, the home of Gerold, who is central to Joan's story. She falls in love with Gerold and their lives interesect repeatedly even through her Papacy. She is looked upon by all who know that she is a woman as a "lusus naturae," a freak of nature. "She was... male in intellect, female in body, she fit in nowhere; it was as if she belonged to a third amorphous sex." Cross makes the case over and over again that the status of women in the Dark Ages was little better than cattle. They were judged inferior in every way, and necessary evils in the bargain.
After John is killed in a Viking attack, Joan sees her opportunity to escape the fate of all her gender. She cuts her hair, dons her dead brother's clothes and goes into the world as a young boy. Gerold is away from Villaris at the time of the attack and comes home to find his home in ruins, his family killed and Joan among the missing. After the attack, Joan goes to a Benedictine monastery, is accepted as a young man of great learning, and eventually makes her way to Rome.
The author is at pains to tell the reader in an Epilogue that she has written the story as fiction because it is impossible to document Joan's accesion to the Papacy. The Catholic Church has done everything possible to deny this embarrassment. Whether or not one believes in Joan as Pope, this is a compelling story, filled with all kinds of lore: the brutishness of the Dark Ages, Vatican intrigue, politics and favoritism and most of all, the place of women in the Church and in the world. --Valerie Ryan
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
From Kirkus Reviews
Review
"No one knows for sure if Pope Joan, or Pope John Anglicus as she called
herself, really existed.--After finishing Donna Cross' novelization of
Joan's life, one may want her to be a real person, only because it is so
gratifying to read about those rare heroes whose strength of vision
enables them to ignore the almost overpowering messages of their own
historical periods."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A remarkable woman uses her considerable intellect--and more than a
little luck--to rise from humble origins to become the only female Pope,
in this breakneck adventure from newcomer Cross."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"--Cross' drama draws predictable conclusions about the way a woman might
handle power, but given the certain punishment that awaits Joan should
anyone discover her secret, this cross-dressing saga is also a page
turner."
-- Glamour
"In her first novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross--illuminates the Dark Ages and
its attendant milieu of barbarism, politics, bigotry, and religion.
Pope Joan also is a story of passion and faith--and a reminder that
something never change, only the stage and the players do."
-- Morning Star Telegram
"Cross succeeds admirably, grounding her fast-moving tale in a wealth of
rich historical detail. If Joan wasn't pope, she should have been."
-- Orlando Sentinel
"A fascinating and moving account of a woman's determination to learn
despite the opposition of family and society. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal (starred review)
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
Sarah Glazar, Assistant Editor
From the Back Cover
About the Author
In 1973, Cross moved to Syracuse, New York, with her husband and began teaching in the English department at an upstate New York college. She is the author of two books on language, Word Abuse and Mediaspeak, and coauthor of Speaking of Words. The product of seven years of research and writing, Pope Joan is her first novel. Cross is at work on a new novel set in 17th century France.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke. She moved in the bed, seeking the warmth and comfort of her older brothers' sleeping forms. Then she remembered. Her brothers were gone.
It was raining, a hard spring downpour that filled the night air with the sweet-sour smell of newly plowed earth. Rain thudded on the roof of the canon's cottage, but the thickly woven thatching kept the room dry, except for one or two small places in the corners where water first pooled and then trickled in slow fat drops to the beaten earth floor.
The wind rose, and a nearby oak began to tap an uneven rhythm on the cottage walls. The shadow of its branches spilled into the room. The child watched, transfixed, as the monstrous dark fingers wriggled at the edges of the bed. They reached out for her, beckoning, and she shrank back.
Mama, she thought. She opened her mouth to call out, then stopped. If she made a sound, the menacing hand would pounce. She lay frozen, watching, unable to will herself to move. Then she set her small chin resolutely. It had to be done, so she would do it. Moving with exquisite slowness, never taking her eyes off the enemy, she eased herself off the bed. Her feet felt the cool surface of the earthen floor; the familiar sensation was reassuring. Scarcely daring to breathe, she backed toward the partition behind which her mother lay sleeping. Lightning flashed; the fingers moved and lengthened, following her. She swallowed a scream, her throat tightening with the effort. She forced herself to move slowly, not to break into a run.
She was almost there. Suddenly, a salvo of thunder crashed overhead. At the same moment something touched her from behind. She yelped, then turned and fled around the partition, stumbling over the chair she had backed into.
This part of the house was dark and still, save for her mother's rhythmic breathing. From the sound, the child could tell she was deeply asleep; the noise had not wakened her. She went quickly to the bed, lifted the woolen blanket and slid under it. Her mother lay on her side, lips slightly parted; her warm breath caressed the child's cheek. She snuggled close, feeling the softness of her mother's body through her thin linen shift.
Gudrun yawned and shifted position, roused by the movement. Her eyes opened, and she regarded the child sleepily. Then, waking fully, she reached out and put her arms around her daughter.
"Joan," she chastised gently, her lips against the child's soft hair. "Little one, you should be asleep."
Speaking quickly, her voice high and strained from fear, Joan told her mother about the monster hand.
Gudrun listened, petting and stroking her daughter and murmuring reassurances. Gently she ran her fingers over the the child's face, half-seen in the darkness. She was not pretty, Gudrun reflected ruefully. She looked too much like him, with his thick English neck and wide jaw. Her small body was already stocky and heavyset, not long and graceful like Gudrun's people. But the child's eyes were good, large and expressive and rich-hued, green with dark grey smoke-rings at the center. Gudrun lifted a strand of Joan's baby hair and caressed it, enjoying the way it shone, white-gold, even in the darkness. My hair, she thought gloatingly. Not the coarse black hair of her husband or his cruel dark people. My child. She wrapped the strand gently around her forefinger and smiled. This one, at least, is mine.
Soothed by her mother's attentions, Joan relaxed. In playful imitation, she began to tug at Gudrun's long braid, loosening it till her hair lay tumbled about her head. Joan marvelled at it, spilling over the dark woolen coverlet like rich cream. She had never seen her mother's hair unbound. At the canon's insistence, Gudrun wore it always neatly braided, hidden under a rough linen cap. A woman's hair, her husband said, was the net wherein Satan catches a man's soul. And Gudrun's hair was extraordinarily beautiful, long and soft and pure white-gold, without a trace of gray, though she was now an old woman of thirty-six winters.
"Why did Matthew and John go away?" Joan asked suddenly. Her mother had explained this to her several times, but Joan wanted to hear it again.
"You know why. Your father took them with him on his missionary journey."
"Why couldn't I go too?"
Gudrun sighed patiently. The child was always so full of questions. "Matthew and John are boys; one day they will be priests like your father. You are a girl, and therefore such matters do not concern you." Seeing that Joan was not content with that, she added, "Besides, you are much too young."
Joan was indignant. "I was four in Wintarmanoth!"
Gudrun's eyes lit with amusement as she looked at the pudgy baby face. "Ah, yes, I forgot, you are a big girl now, aren't you? Four years old! That does sound very grown up."
Joan lay quietly while her mother stroked her hair. Then she asked, "What are heathens?" Her father and brothers had spoken a good deal about heathens before they left. Joan did not understand what heathens were, exactly, though she gathered it was something very bad.
Gudrun stiffened. The word had conjuring powers. It had been on the lips of the invading soldiers as they pillaged her home and slaughtered her friends and family. The dark, cruel soldiers of the Frankish Emperor Karolus. "Magnus," people called him now that he was dead. "Karolus Magnus." Charles the Great. Would they name him so, Gudrun wondered, if they had seen his army tear Saxon babes from their mother's arms, swinging them round before they dashed their heads against the reddened stones? Gudrun withdrew her hand from Joan's hair and rolled onto her back.
"That is a question you must ask your father," she said.
Joan did not understand what she had done wrong, but she heard the strange hardness in her mother's voice and knew that she would be sent back to her own bed if she didn't think of some way to repair the damage. Quickly she said, "Tell me again about the Old Ones."
"I cannot. Your father disapproves of the telling of such tales." The words were half statement, half question.
Joan knew what to do. Placing both hands solemnly over her heart, she recited The Oath exactly as her mother had taught it to her, promising eternal secrecy on the sacred name of Thor the Thunderer.
Gudrun laughed and drew Joan close again. "Very well, little quail. I will tell you the story, since you know so well how to ask."
Her voice was warm again, wistful and melodic as she began to tell of Woden and Thunor and Freya and the other gods who had peopled her Saxon childhood before the armies of Karolus brought the Word of Christ with blood and fire. She spoke liltingly of Asgard, the radiant home of the gods, a place of golden and silver palaces, which could only be reached by crossing Bifrost, the mysterious bridge of the rainbow. Guarding the bridge was Heimdall the Watchman, who never slept, whose ears were so keen he could even hear the grass grow. In Valhalla, the most beautiful palace of all, lived Woden, the father-god, on whose shoulders sat the two ravens Hugin, Thought, and Munin, Memory. On his throne, while the other gods feasted, Woden contemplated what Thought and Memory told him.
Joan nodded happily. This was her favorite part of the story.
"Tell about the Well of Wisdom," she begged.
"Although he was already very wise," explained her mother, "Woden always sought greater wisdom. One day he went to the Well of Wisdom, guarded by Mimir the Wise, and asked for a draught from it. 'What price will you pay?' asked Mimir. Woden replied that Mimir could ask what he wished. 'Wisdom must always be bought with pain,' replied Mimir. 'If you wish a drink of this water you must pay for it with one of your eyes.'"
Eyes bright with excitement, Joan exclaimed, "And Woden did it, Mama, didn't he? He did it!"
Her mother nodded. "Though it was a hard choice, Woden consented to lose the eye. He drank the water. Afterward, he passed on to mankind the wisdom he had gained."
Joan looked up at her mother, her eyes wide and serious. "Would you have done it, Mama--to be wise, to know about all things?"
"Only gods make such choices." Seeing the child's persistent look of question, Gudrun confessed, "No. I would have been too afraid."
"So would I," Joan said thoughtfully. "But I would want to do it. I would want to know what the well could tell me."
Gudrun smiled down at the intent little face. "Perhaps you would not like what you would learn there. There is a saying among our people. 'A wise man's heart is seldom glad.'"
Joan nodded, though she did not really understand. "Now tell about the Tree," she said, snuggling close to her mother again.
Gudrun began to describe Irminsul, the wondrous universe tree. It had stood in the holiest of the Saxon groves at the source of the Lippe river. Her people had worshipped at it until it was cut down by the armies of Karolus.
"It was very beautiful," her mother said, "and so tall that no one could see the top. It--"
She stopped. Suddenly aware of another presence, Joan looked up. Her father was standing in the doorway.
Her mother sat up in bed. "Husband," she said. "I did not look for your return for another fortnight."
The canon did not respond. He took a wax taper from the table near the door and crossed to the hearthfire, where he plunged it into the glowing embers until it flared.
Gudrun said nervously, "The child was frightened by the thunder. I thought to comfort her with a harmless story."
"Harmless!" The canon's voice shook with the effort to control his rage. "You call such blasphemy harmless?" He covered the distance to the bed in two long strides, set down the taper, and pulled the blanket off, exposing them. Joan lay with her arms around her mother, half-hidden under a curtain of white-gold hair.
For a moment the canon stood stupefied with disbelief, looking at Gudrun's unbound hair. Then his fury overtook him. "How dare you! When I have expressly forbidden it!" Taking hold of Gudrun, he started to drag her from the bed. "Heathen witch!"
Joan clung to her mother. The canon's face darkened. "Child, begone!" he bellowed. Joan hesitated, torn between fear and the desire to somehow protect her mother.
Gudrun pushed her urgently. "Yes, go. Go quickly."
Releasing her hold, Joan dropped to the floor and ran. At the door, she turned and saw her father grab her mother roughly by the hair, wrenching her head back, forcing her to her knees. Joan started back into the room. Terror stopped her short as she saw her father withdraw his long, bonehandled hunting knife from his corded belt.
"Forsachistu diabolae?" he asked Gudrun in Saxon, his voice scarcely more than whisper. When she did not respond, he placed the point of the knife against her throat. "Say the words," he growled menacingly. "Say them!"
"Ec forsacho allum diaboles," Gudrun responded tearfully, her eyes blazing defiance, "wuercum and wuordum, thunaer ende woden ende saxnotes ende allum..."
Rooted with fear, Joan watched her father pull up a heavy tress of her mother's hair and draw the knife across it. There was a ripping sound as the silken strands parted; a long band of white gold floated to the floor.
Clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, Joan turned and ran.
In the darkness, she bumped into a shape that reached out for her. She squealed in fear as it grabbed her. The monster hand! She had forgotten about it! She struggled, pummelling at it with her tiny fists, resisting with all her strength, but it was huge, and held her fast.
"Joan! Joan, it's all right. It's me!"
The words penetrated her fear. It was her ten-year-old brother Matthew, who had returned with her father.
"We've come back. Joan, stop struggling! It's all right. It's me." Joan reached up, felt the smooth surface of the pectoral cross that Matthew always wore, then slumped against him in relief.
Together they sat in the dark, listening to the soft splitting sounds of the knife ripping through their mother's hair. Once they heard Mama cry out in pain. Matthew cursed aloud. An answering sob came from the bed where Joan's seven-year-old brother John was hiding under the covers.
At last the ripping sounds stopped. After a brief pause the canon's voice began to rumble in prayer. Joan felt Matthew relax; it was over. She threw her arms around his neck and wept. He held her and rocked her gently.
After a time, she looked up at him.
"Father called Mama a heathen."
"Yes."
"She isn't," Joan said hesitantly, "is she?"
"She was." Seeing her look of horrified disbelief, he added, "a long time ago. Not any more. But those were heathen stories she was telling you."
Joan stopped crying; this was interesting information.
"You know the first of the Commandments, don't you?"
Joan nodded and recited dutifully, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
"Yes. That means that the gods Mama was telling you about are false; it is sinful to speak of them."
"Is that why Father...?"
"Yes, " Matthew broke in. "Mama had to be punished for the good of her soul. She was disobedient to her husband, and that also is against the law of God."
"Why?"
"Because it says so in the Holy Book." He began to recite, "'For the husband is the head of the wife; therefore, let the wives submit themselves unto their husbands in everything.'"
"Why?"
"Why?" Matthew was taken aback. No one had ever asked him that before. "Well, I guess because...because women are by nature inferior to men. Men are bigger, stronger and smarter."
"But--" Joan started to respond but Matthew cut her off.
"Enough questions, little sister. You should be in bed. Come now." He carried her to the bed and placed her beside John, who was already sleeping.
Matthew had been kind to her; to return the favor, Joan closed her eyes and burrowed under the covers as if to sleep.
But she was far too troubled for sleep. She lay in the dark, peering at John as he slept, his mouth hanging slackly open.
He can't recite from the Psalter and he's seven years old. Joan was only four but already she knew the first ten psalms by heart.
John wasn't smart. But he was a boy. Yet how could Matthew be wrong? He knew everything; he was going to be a priest, like father.
She lay awake in the dark, turning the problem over in her mind.
Towards dawn she slept, restlessly, troubled by dreams of mighty wars between jealous and angry gods. The angel Gabriel himself came from heaven with a flaming sword to do battle with Thor and Freya. The battle was terrible and fierce, but in the end the false gods were driven back, and Gabriel stood triumphant beforethe gates of paradise. His sword had disappeared; in his hand gleamed a short, bone-handled knife.
Product details
- ASIN : B002BH5HO4
- Publisher : Crown (May 29, 2009)
- Publication date : May 29, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 3198 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 434 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #236,803 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #450 in Women's Adventure Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #493 in Historical European Fiction
- #1,310 in Romantic Action & Adventure
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Hi, Pope Joan fans and readers!
Thank you all so much for your heartwarming support of Pope Joan--an inspirational story of female empowerment through learning.
I'd like to encourage everyone to purchase the 2009 Three Rivers Press (Broadway) edition of Pope Joan, instead of previous editions. Yes, you might save a few dollars by purchasing an earlier edition, but you will miss a lot.
Here's why:
1. This is not just a reprint of the novel; it's a whole new edition. I was able to make changes and additions to the text (every writer's dream--to make the book better AFTER publication!) AND I explain these changes and additions in the Author's Note at the end.
2. The Three Rivers Press (Broadway) edition has larger print. Previous editions have teeny-weeny print that's hard on the eyes. Many readers complained about this, so I made sure the print was enlarged for this new edition.
3. The Three Rivers/Broadway edition includes new information about Joan's historical existence that emerged after my novel was first published. You might be surprised!
4. The Three Rivers Press/Broadway edition has a list of "Best of the Best" Reading Group questions, garnered from my many years chatting by speakerphone with reading groups all over the U.S. and Canada. Guaranteed, through the test of time, to spark interesting and lively conversation!
Biography:
I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in English.
After graduation, I went to live in London, England. Worked as editorial assistant for a small publishing house on Fleet Street, W.H. Allen and Company, where one of my duties was to read--and usually reject--submitted manuscripts (most memorable--a verse poem in ten volumes on the life of Admiral Lord Nelson--written by a Texan!!!)
Upon my return to the U.S., I worked at Young and Rubicam, the Madison Avenue advertising company, where I first learned how a clever wordsmith can twist words in order to deceive and mislead (this became the topic of my first book "Word Abuse: How the Words We Use Use Us). I spent a year helping write Aurora toilet paper commercials until the whole endeavor began to strike me as a very silly way to spend a life. So I went to graduate school at UCLA, where I got a master's degree in Literature and Writing.
Information on Pope Joan
The movie version of my novel Pope Joan, starring Johanna Wokalek, John Goodman, David Wenham, and Iain Glen, had its world premiere in 2009. It premieres in the U.S. as a two-part television mini-series on REELZ channel in December 2011.
Pope Joan was a selection of the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Clubs. It is an international bestseller, translated into 36 different languages. In Germany, Pope Joan was the #1 bestseller for over three years. It is still on the list of longterm German bestsellers. There has even been a special bottling of wine in its honor: "Die Paepstin" ("She-Pope") wine, whose label features the book cover for Pope Joan!
The musical "Die Paepstin", based on my novel, premiered in Germany on June 3rd and is currently playing to sold-out houses.
Reviews and other information about the novel can be found at the book website (again, google Pope Joan and you'll find it).
Previous Books and Media Credits
1977 Speaking of Words, Holt Rinehart (with James MacKillop)
1979 Word Abuse: How the Words We Use Use Us, G.P. Putnam
1981 Daddy's Little Girl: The Relationship Between Fathers and Daughters, (with my father, William Woolfolk), Prentice-Hall
1983 Mediaspeak: How Television Makes Up Your Mind, G.P. Putnam
Bibliography
Non-fiction
Word Abuse: How the Words We Use Use Us (1979) ISBN 978-0-698-10906-3
Daddy's Little Girl: The Unspoken Bargain Between Fathers and Their Daughters (1983) (with William Woolfolk) ISBN 978-0-13-196279-8
Mediaspeak: How Television Makes Up Your Mind (1984) ISBN 978-0-451-62802-2
Speaking of Words: A Language Reader (1986) (with James MacKillop) ISBN 978-0-03-003953-9
Novels
Pope Joan (1996) ISBN 978-0-307-45236-8
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Pope Joan is a historical novel about Joan from Ingelheim, a young girl who hungered for learning and was denied by her father, a canon of the Catholic church, and the time in which she lived, because she was female. A Greek teacher recognized her intelligence and refused to teach Joan's brother John unless Joan was included, and this pattern continued until fate offered her a chance to change things by assuming her brother's name and gender. John was massacred during a Viking raid on the day of Joan's contracted marriage. Since she was the ward of a local landowner, whose wife was jealous of Joan's relationship with her husband, Joan had to go and in a way that would destroy all her hopes of a different life as an educated woman.
The 9th century was the darkest of the Middle Ages. Few people, even among the clergy, could read or write and women were meant to cook, sew, clean, and bear children, as many children as their bodies would accommodate. Many women, from the age of 14, were given in marriage and were pregnant every year. Many children were stillborn and even more never grew up to become productive citizens. It was believed that a female who could read and write used up all her fertile energy and could not bear children. It is the reverse of the modern joke that men have only enough blood in their bodies to run one brain at a time, except this was no joke, but the way society perceived women as chattel and baby factories.
Donna Woolfolk Cross uses her research skills and her background in writing nonfiction to infuse Pope Joan with as much fast as was available and considerable fictional skills to bring the times and Joan to life. The longing to be able to read and write and knowing the only obstacle in the way is one's gender is one that will resonate with many women even in today's world. To be hampered by biology is unthinkable to someone who hungers for more -- more books, more languages, more learning, and more life as a being with reason and intelligence. In this, Cross has hit all the right notes, even down to the internal war of wanting physical love at the peril of being unmasked as a fraud.
Pope Joan is a novel that encompassed the historical truths while offering a glimpse of the sacrifices made in the name of equality and knowledge. Pope Joan is the story of female empowerment at a time when women had no power and the only way to realize such lofty dreams was to hide what they were in order to choose knowledge and freedom. Many women throughout this period, and in other times in the history of the world, have donned masculine disguise to hide their perceived inadequacies and prove that the only inadequate thing about them is the society in which they live. Although Joan lived more than a thousand years ago, her story is as powerful today as it ever was.
The Catholic church has long denied the existence of a female pope, even while many of the popes who followed her acknowledge her existence and her contributions. I find it most telling that it was not until after Pope Joan's sex was undeniably proven that future popes must be publicly examined in order to prove they are male. There was no need before Pope Joan since no other woman had made it so far.
Cross's historical novel is as wonderful as it is shocking and all the more timely when women's rights and place in society is at peril. How many women in today's world are willing to sacrifice everything to realize their dreams? After reading Pope Joan, they may find the sacrifice worth the prize. With solid historical details and an understanding of the complexities of the human heart, Pope Joan is an outstanding novel with a strong message for our times.
The novel begins with Joan as the child in the village of Ingelheim in Thuringia. There, we are introduced to the first of her many misogynistic male adversaries. The worst one of all is her own father, a tyrannical English canon who sets the stage of the medieval view of women that Joan must overcome. Indeed, from the moment of Joan’s birth, he declares his wife’s labor was “all for nothing,” considering the birth of a girl to be a “punishment from God.” When Joan is a little older and wants to learn to read like her brothers, her father tells her, “You are a girl and therefore such matters do not concern you.” It only gets worse from there.
Joan, however, refuses to accept the place her father would have her in life. Her older brother secretly teaches her to read, and when a Greek scholar named Aesculapius shows up in the village, he insists on tutoring Joan, recognizing her intelligence. Through his teachings, Joan develops a keen mind, forged from the writings of Cicero and other classics, which will eventually allow her to outwit many a man. But only if she can escape her father. When he finds her reading a copy of Homer in Greek, he deems it the work of a “godless heathen” and nearly whips her to within an inch of her life.
Things change, however, when Aesculapius arranges an invitation for Joan to study at a school in Dorstadt. There, she is sent to live with a count named Gerold and his wife. Gerold ultimately becomes Joan’s love interest in this tale, even though it’s creepy to think of a girl with, effectively, her foster father. But at least the author waits until Joan is fourteen (still a bad age for a modern audience, but probably more acceptable in the ninth century) for the affair to develop. Still, the love affair is more of a subplot, than the main plot, which all concerns Joan quest to succeed in the male-dominated medieval society.
After a series of events which I refuse to spoil, Joan decides to pose as a male, taking her brother’s name and calling herself John Anglicus. Disguised as a man, she joins the monastery at Fulda and, relying on her knowledge of Hippocrates, earns a reputation as a skilled healer. Eventually, the story takes her to Rome, where her healing arts bring her into the service of Pope Sergius, a prodigious eater and drinker, and one of my favorite characters in the novel. Sergius has taken ill, leaving his corrupt brother to run Rome, and Joan realizes that the only way to stop the corruption is to quickly heal the pope.
As good as the novel was during Joan’s childhood in Thuringia and her time with Gerold’s family in Dorstadt, her time in Rome is where the novel shines the brightest. There, she is faced with all the intrigue, politics, and backstabbing that you’d except to find in the papal palace, along with a horde of misogynistic antagonists that Joan must outlast and outwit. The Roman scenes also involve some major historical events, including the Saracen sacking of Rome, the erection of the Leonine Walls around what today is the Vatican, and the battle of Ostia. Rome also brings the return of Gerold, who is in the service of the Frankish emperor, and he is by her side when she’s ultimately elected Pope John. But by then, she’s made a host of dangerous enemies, which propels the novel toward its climax.
Even though the book is only 434 pages, it seemed overlong at times. Each phase of Joan’s life could have been its own novella, but they were all engaging enough to keep me reading through the end. My one peeve was with the author’s shifting viewpoints. While at times the book seemed written in a third-person limited point-of-view, other times it slipped into a more outdated omniscient point-of-view, often in the middle of scenes. I would have preferred a more personal point-of-view throughout.
That said, I found “Pope Joan” to be a well-written, thought provoking, and fully engaging novel. An extensive Author’s Note at the end contributes to this by asserting that the legend of Pope Joan was widely accepted as true until the mid-seventeenth century when the Vatican expunged any reference Joan in the papal records. According to the author, the Church’s position on Joan “is that she was an invention of Protestant reformers eager to expose papist corruption.” Nonetheless, the author notes that until the sixteenth century, every pope elected after Joan had to confirm their manhood through genital inspection before they could sit on St. Peter’s Throne, complete with a photo of the toilet-like seat used for the examinations. I found this pretty compelling, but I encourage you to read the book and decide for yourself.