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Pope Joan: A Novel, by Donna Woolfolk Cross
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"Engaging . . . Pope Joan has all the elements: love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
For a thousand years men have denied her existence--Pope Joan, the woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to rule Christianity for two years. Now this compelling novel animates the legend with a portrait of an unforgettable woman who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.
When her older brother dies in a Viking attack, the brilliant young Joan assumes his identity and enters a Benedictine monastery where, as Brother John Anglicus, she distinguishes herself as a scholar and healer. Eventually drawn to Rome, she soon becomes enmeshed in a dangerous mix of powerful passion and explosive politics that threatens her life even as it elevates her to the highest throne in the Western world.
"Brings the savage ninth century vividly to life in all its alien richness. An enthralling, scholarly historical novel."
--Rebecca Fraser, Author of The Brontës
- Sales Rank: #1476820 in Books
- Published on: 1996
- Released on: 1997-08-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.24" h x .98" w x 5.47" l, .95 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 422 pages
Features
- Woman Pope
- Catholic Legend
Amazon.com Review
One of the most controversial women of history is brought to brilliant life in Donn Woolfolk Cross's tale of Pope Joan, a girl whose origins should have kept her in squalid domesticity. Instead, through her intelligence, indomitability and courage, she ascended to the throne of Rome as Pope John Anglicus.
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
Cross makes an excellent, entertaining case in her work of historical fiction that, in the Dark Ages, a woman sat on the papal throne for two years. Born in Ingelheim in A.D. 814 to a tyrannical English canon and the once-heathen Saxon he made his wife, Joan shows intelligence and persistence from an early age. One of her two older brothers teaches her to read and write, and her education is furthered by a Greek scholar who instructs her in languages and the classics. Her mother, however, sings her the songs of her pagan gods, creating a dichotomy within her daughter that will last throughout her life. The Greek scholar arranges for the continuation of her education at the palace school of the Lord Bishop of Dorstadt, where she meets the red-haired knight Gerold, who is to become the love of her life. After a savage attack by Norsemen destroys the village, Joan adopts the identity of her older brother, slain in the raid, and makes her way to Fulda, to become the learned scholar and healer Brother John Anglicus. After surviving the plague, Joan goes to Rome, where her wisdom and medical skills gain her entrance into papal circles. Lavishly plotted, the book brims with fairs, weddings and stupendous banquets, famine, plague and brutal battles. Joan is always central to the vivid action as she wars with the two sides of herself, "mind and heart, faith and doubt, will and desire." Ultimately, though she leads a man's life, Joan dies a woman's death, losing her life in childbirth. In this colorful, richly imagined novel, Cross ably inspires a suspension of disbelief, pulling off the improbable feat of writing a romance starring a pregnant pope.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-A woman pope? The author's notes document the possibility that there was one for a brief time in the ninth century. The Joan in this novel has all the qualities a woman would need to become pope: superior intelligence, imagination, daring, and the determination that her sex would not keep her illiterate and subservient, as were most women of the period. Joan is an apt pupil at the cathedral school, where she is allowed to study only because her brother cannot master Latin. A Viking raid on her wedding day gives Joan the opportunity to escape an unwanted marriage; she takes her dead brother's clothes, presents herself at a nearby monastery, and becomes Brother John Anglicus. Her skill in healing and her passion for learning attract attention, and she fears discovery. Still disguised as a monk, Joan takes the pilgrim's road to Rome, where her skills as a healer attract the attention of the Pope himself. YAs, especially girls, will follow the adventures of this amazing heroine with fascination, and at the same time will learn much about life in the Middle Ages, and about the history of this tumultuous period just after the death of Charlemagne.
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
210 of 230 people found the following review helpful.
Pope Joan as Revisionist Superwoman
By J Thomas
I really did want to like this book. The author is a good storyteller, does a wonderful job of evoking a real sense of the period (no shirking of historical research here), and the idea of a female pope is a fascinating one. One can imagine that spiritual women denied access to the church, or clever women denied access to learning, might indeed have sought to escape the confines of their gender.
But somewhere between Joan/John outarguing Greek philosophers, becoming a famous healer, inventing intinction, miraculously surviving beatings/viking raids/plague, inventing modern courtroom procedure (witnesses, questioning), establishing orphanages, saving peasants from floods, cleverly applying her knowledge of hydraulic engineering to save the Vatican from an invading Frankish army, saving the pope from [...], exposing ecclesiastical corruption, and thwarting a raging city fire, I found it harder and harder to keep suspending disbelief. This Pope Joan is a liberal, feminist, secular humanist, Dark Ages superhero rather than a living, breathing, believable woman of her time. The author takes such pains to eliminate anachronism in all other aspects of the novel: perhaps that is why John/Joan's highly anachronistic behavior & beliefs seem so grating in contrast.
John/Joan's enamorata Gerold is also a disappointment. There is no attempt at character development here. Think Ken to Joan's Barbie, Ned to Joan's Nancy Drew ... the tall, lusty, handsome, resourceful hero of any one of a thousand cheesy romance novels.
Finally, I was disappointed by the author's overreliance on deus ex machina (sp?). Far too often she relies on improbable plot twists, timely intercessions and amazing coincidences to move her plot forward. I don't want to spoil the plot for potential readers - but I will say that Joan always seems to be behind the right wall when there is a useful conversation to be overheard, Viking raids have never been more conveniently timed, and old friends/allies have a way of miraculously appearing just when they are most needed.
I guess I'm saying that while this is an entertaining book, it is certainly not a great book. Be prepared to enjoy it for the story & the history, but not necessarily for the literary merit.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
The "special chair"
By Indiamike
I did not know the "story" of Pope Joan and it's potential of actually being real so began the tale simply expecting a good historical novel. I loved it! Well researched, lovely period detail. More important, the writer creates an atmosphere of beliveability from Joan's perscpective. Joan simply wanted to be able to read and learn in a time when teaching girls was just not done. Since reading Pope Joan I have read innumerable articles about the potential reality and especially loved reading about the "special chair". Taken from Wikepedia - "As a consequence, certain traditions stated that popes throughout the medieval period were required to undergo a procedure wherein they sat on a special chair with a hole in the seat. A cardinal would have the task of putting his hand up the hole to check whether the pope had testicles, or doing a visual examination.[citation needed] This procedure is not taken seriously by most historians, and there is no documented instance. It is probably a scurrilous legend based on the existence of two ancient stone chairs with holes in the seats that probably dated from Roman times and may have been used because of their ancient imperial origins. Their original purpose is obscure."
I really enjoy a good historical novel (not the romancey stuff) and this was a great read, true or no. Highly recommend!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A great read. It will certainly make you think!
By H. Weidle
I read Pope Joan many years ago when it first came out and just finished a re-read. I have been suggesting this book to friends for years but had forgotten some of the story line and wanted to refresh my memory. I am so glad that I did. The story has many qualities of today's fiction including the too perfect heroine / superwoman but I must admit that this will never be a turn off to me regardless of believability. I am always willing to suspend disbelief for a strong woman who defies the status quo! After some research into the history of the possibility of a real "Pope Joan", I have to say that it makes a lot of sense to me. There is certainly much to support the claim and little to refute it other than lack of information. Regardless, it is a fabulous story that held my attention all the way through and has obviously kept me thinking on the subject for many years. I will continue to recommend this book wholeheartedly.
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