⇒ Libro Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

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Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

“Pope Joan” is a fictional account based on the legend of a woman who served as pope under the guise of a man in the mid-ninth century. The book follows Joan’s entire life, from birth until death, and in a way serves as a tour of the early Middle Ages from a distinctly feminist point of view.

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.


Tags : Pope Joan: A Novel [Donna Woolfolk Cross] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. "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,Donna Woolfolk Cross,Pope Joan: A Novel,Ballantine Books,0345416260,Reading Group Guide,Church history,Church history;Middle Ages, 600-1500;Fiction.,FICTION Historical General,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Fiction Action & Adventure,Fiction Historical,Fiction Mythology,GENERAL,Historical - General,Joan (Legendary Pope),Joan (Legendary Pope);Fiction.,Middle Ages, 600-1500,ScholarlyUndergraduate,United States

Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books Reviews

Today’s book is the historical fiction novel Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross. It is a fascinating look at the life of a girl named Johanna (Joan) who lived during the 6th century. Joan’s father was a member of the clergy during the period in time when it was common for them to be married and have children. Unfortunately, it was also a time period where families wanted sons to carry on the family name, work the land, and follow in their father’s profession. Or in this case, to become priests and scholars. A daughter was considered almost worthless. Girls were only good for cooking, cleaning, sewing, and bearing children. To marry them off, a dowry needed to be provided, so they were also considered a drain on a family’s meager finances. They were considered less intelligent and incapable of reason. In other words, while Joan was loved by her mother and brothers, she was not truly wanted by her father, who had hoped for another son.

Joan, however, never understood why she was not supposed to learn the things her brothers did. She was very close to her eldest brother who secretly taught her to read and write, risking their father’s wrath in doing so. Joan was actually very smart and soaked up all she could learn from her brother’s teaching. It broke her heart when he became ill and died at a young age. Her eldest brother had been intended to become a scholar priest, and with his death, that destiny became her other brother’s. Unfortunately for him, he had neither the desire nor the aptitude for study that both the elder brother and his sister possessed.

When a scholar passed through the area with the potential to be hired by Joan’s father for her brother, Joan desperately hoped she would be able to learn from him. Like most men from that time, her father felt that education was only for the sons who were destined for the priesthood. The tutor, however, upon realizing that Joan was the more likely of the two children to appreciate and learn from him, only agreed to teach her brother on the condition that she was to also be taught by him. Given no choice if he wished for his son to continue his education, her father reluctantly agreed.

Eventually, the tutor gained a more prestigious position elsewhere. Before he left for good, he promised Joan that he would find a way for her to continue her studies. Where her brother had struggled with his education, she had soaked up the Latin and Greek as well as everything else she could and only wished to learn more. It was a few years before that promise was fulfilled. One day a group of soldiers arrived in the area. They had been sent to bring Johanna to the school to study with the other students. Unfortunately, her brother’s name was John and her parents convinced the soldiers that it was John, who had no desire to become a scholar priest, that they were supposed to retrieve and not Joan.

Unwilling to remain in a household where she was unappreciated and her desire to learn brought her nothing but punishments as her father tried to beat this unnaturalness out of her, she ran away and followed the soldiers. At the school, the amused head of the school allowed her to remain and to study with the boys, though she clearly could not be housed in the school’s dormitory with them. A Knight who was in attendance at the time offered to allow her to stay at his home with his family.

During the time she was at the school, Joan thrived. Her brother John enjoyed the military training he received with the other boys, though he hated the academic studies he was forced to endure. He had only been allowed to remain because of his sister attending the school. It was considered unseemly for her to be there without some sort of family member in attendance as well, so he was allowed to remain even though he was not academically inclined. The main teacher there was one who believed that girls were incapable of reasoning. He hated the fact that he was forced to teach her and would have gladly done anything to be rid of a girl in his classes.

When the knight who was Joan’s protector was away, his wife, who had realized the growing attraction between her husband and Joan, arranged for Joan to be married to a local boy and convinced Joan that it was her husband’s idea. The wedding was to take place before Sir Gerald would return, and there was no way for Joan to avoid it. Being married meant that she would belong to the man who wed her and she would no longer be allowed to study at the school. Her brother, who was only allowed there because of her, was to be sent to join a monastery by their father. He had hoped to become a soldier rather than a priest, but that would no longer be a possibility for him. He would be forced to become a priest and he blamed his sister.

During the wedding ceremony, the town was attacked by Viking raiders. As the whole town was gathered in the church and unarmed, there was no escape. Joan was lucky enough to find a place to hide that was not discovered by the raiders and was apparently the only survivor. As she knew she couldn’t remain there on her own, she changed into her brother’s clothing, cut her hair off, and travelled to the monastery to join the monks in John’s place. To all that had known her, Joan was considered to have been either killed or carried off as a prisoner by the Viking raiders that day.

There is much more to this story, but as usual I do not wish to spoil the whole book for you. It is well worth reading about how a young girl who was considered worth less than nothing one day manages to rise to become the Pope in Rome without having been discovered to be a woman rather than a man. It is a tale I definitely consider worth reading and would gladly recommend to anyone.

While this book is a work of fiction, there is a section at the end of the book where the author describes her research into this project. There is some debate as to whether there really was a female Pope. The author clearly believes there was and that many tried to erase her existence from history. I found her reasoning very compelling and am inclined to agree with her, though others will disagree that Pope Joan ever actually existed. Take a look at this book, read the extra info at the end provided by the author, and decide for yourself what you think.
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!
“Pope Joan” is a fictional account based on the legend of a woman who served as pope under the guise of a man in the mid-ninth century. The book follows Joan’s entire life, from birth until death, and in a way serves as a tour of the early Middle Ages from a distinctly feminist point of view.

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.