eBook The She-Pope: A Quest for the Truth behind the Mystery of Pope Joan ePub

AGAD

I was transfixed while reading POPE JOAN: A NOVEL by Donna Woolfolk Cross. At the end of her mesmerizing novel, Cross recommends additional reading which included POPE JOAN by Emmanoue Rhoide and THE SHE-POPE by Peter Stanford. I read both.

As a person who graduated from Catholic elementary school, high school and college, I have always accepted the existence of a female Pope. The nuns often said, "People are imperfect, but the Catholic Church isn't." The existence of a female Pope did not seem like a controversy. Well, it did not seem like a controversy until I stated reading about the defensive posture of the Church leadership described in Stanford's work. The Church hierarchy appears to be handling the Pope Joan issue in the same manner they have been handling the priest/pedophile scandals. If you trust someone, it is hard to tell if he/she is lying to you! If he/she lies to you, it is hard to trust them!

According to Stanford, arguments for and against the existence of Pope Joan are somewhat balanced. The strongest argument AGAINST the existence of Pope Joan is the Protestant Reformation. Because the Church's hierarchy is incapable of envisioning itself in an objective manner and is incapable to accept the possibility of corruption among its own leadership, the Protestant Reformation was born. Protestants reacted to the Catholic corruption by assuming that EVERYTHING must be a lie: A pattern of corruption leads to distrust. Yet, the fact remains, the Catholic Church could be telling the truth! So, researchers (i.e., Stanford) are forced into a position of searching for the truth without access to documents that would be the most revealing. The mere act of refusing access reinforces the position that Pope Joan existed. Thus, Stanford concludes that although the scales are quite balanced, the evidence is slightly tilted toward the existence of Pope Joan.

The reader is left with the impression that the 9th century is the most corrupt within papal history. This corruption creates fertile soil for the emergence of a female Pope. The organizational structure within the papacy allowed the position to be bought and sold. Many of those who employed money and political power to gain the papal position were just as likely to be amoral as intensely spiritual. However, I get the impression that some Popes had little spirituality. This lack of spirituality is a reflection on those who installed the Pontiff.

The basic question is: Does Stanford do a good job of exposing all the historical documents regarding Pope Joan? Based on the resistance he faced, I think he did an excellent job. Throughout the book, I found myself reversing positions more times that I can count. While reading one chapter, I would be convinced Pope Joan existed, but in the next chapter I would be convince that Pope Joan is just a myth. Such an unrelenting reversal of positions suggests that Stanford's work is well balanced. In the end, I accept the position I took while a student at Our Lady of Peace Elementary School - Pope Joan existed.

Footnote: Throughout reading Stanford's work, I was preoccupied into wondering what historical events were the catalysts for the emergence of the inequality of the sexes.

Groll

This is one of the most objective books I've ever read! Obviously, he has an opinion, but really went out of the way to be fair, and consider both sides of this fun subject. I'm anxious to order some of his other books. Great, entertaining author! Thanks! Dave (in Colorado)

Xaluenk

Pope Joan is alleged to have reigned for two years during the ninth century. She kept her identity hidden until the truth of her sex was revealed when she gave birth in the middle of the street. Her story is told by Peter Stanford in The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth. I had long been interested in this cross-dressing pope and was hoping for a story that would leave me spellbound. One does not need tabloid journalism to tell a story as sensational as this. Unfortunately I found Stanford's story quite boring, and this slim book of only 200 pages took me twelve days to finish. Stanford travelled to Rome to conduct his research and accessed mediaeval documents in libraries and museums. He discovered quite soon how difficult it was to research a pope from over a millennium ago. Often the only surviving sources were from a time four hundred years after Joan's alleged reign, leaving much room for the original writers' reinterpretations or worse--time to excise Joan from the public record. Stanford did not rely solely on the most well-known texts, and strove to find their sources--some of which were not lost after all.

The main theory for the promotion of Pope Joan's existence was that she was created by the Protestant church in order to cast the Catholic church in a disparaging light. A certain way to turn followers away from Catholicism would be to promote the idea that they elected an unchaste woman as pope and were all too blind to notice. The story becomes sensational when she is said to have given birth--on the street no less. It smacks of a mediaeval urban myth, according to Stanford. However Joan does have her defenders:

"The fall-back of harder-hearted, less fanciful defenders of Joan has been to dwell on the fact that this was the Dark Ages, a period of political turmoil, illness, famine and marauding armies across Europe, when for many life hung by a thread. There was little time for scholarship or keeping records for posterity. Moreover, the argument goes, if the lack of a contemporaneous written record is taken as sufficient in itself to damn any story or character, Jesus himself is in trouble."

Stanford raises the issue of the scant information about many mysterious popes throughout history, such as Lando, about whom hardly anything is known. The names at least of male popes are recorded for all history, yet prominent women figures have been ignored. Could Pope Joan have been ignored merely because she was a woman, or could her biographies have been excised from all church records once the truth about her sex was revealed? Could the Catholic church have rewritten its own history?

The church did not always bar women from high office. There were women bishops prior to the Reformation. There was thus already a precedent, and in the ninth century a woman could have risen within the Catholic hierarchy. But to the position of pope? The pope back then had not yet assumed the powerful and influential worldly title of an international head of state. There were many pretenders to the throne--the antipopes--and popes were deposed by being either imprisoned or murdered. The papal seat was a highly volatile position and it does seem possible that Joan could have existed and risen to the throne.

Stanford covers the theory that Pope Joan was a fantastic manifestation of the sexless and celibate priesthood. Priests, years after having taken the vows of celibacy, might have fantasized about women being under the priestly robes. Joan could have been an all-encompassing priestly sexual fantasy.

The jury is still out about Pope Joan. I am led to believe that Stanford considers her to be a real figure who was in fact pope. Stanford concludes the book with the following questions:

"Did she, or didn't she? Could a German woman of English parentage pull off one of the greatest deceptions of all time and rise, disguised as a man, to the pinnacle of the Catholic church in the ninth century? If so, did the Catholic church then achieve a remarkable triumph by putting this embarrassing skeleton back in the cupboard in the post-Reformation period? Or is Pope Joan an empty and malicious legend promoted by generation after generation of anti-Catholics and anti-clerics? Perhaps, though, the truth is less clear-cut. Could Pope Joan be a significant myth or an allegory for some other historical happening? Or a bit of both?"

Kegal

A fascinating exploration - Stanford shows how the story of a woman who became Pope in the Eighth Century (a native of Fulda of English descent, educated in Greece) deserves more than to be dismissed out of hand. We're guided through various medieval chronicles (and later Protestant polemics), the societal context of the age in which she supposedly lived, and various literary treatments over the centuries. He also talks about Joan with women who wish to be recognised as priests within the Catholic Church, and there's a remarkable interview with Ludmilla Javorova, who was ordained as a underground priest in communist Czechoslovakia.