In her 1996 historical fiction novel, Pope Joan, author Donna Woolfolk Cross imagines a young girl who becomes the leader of the Catholic world. As a local clergy member of the Catholic Church, Joan’s father insists that his family practice Catholicism. Joan’s Saxon mother, however, also teaches Joan an appreciation for the “Old Ones,” or the gods that she knows. Joan’s education exposes her to different languages and perspectives, and teaches her the value of observation and reason. In order to continue her education, Joan adopts a male identity as a child. She maintains a male identity in public throughout her adulthood, and ultimately becomes the Pope. The idea of a female Pope may seem like the obvious shock and offense, if there is one, in Donna Woolfolk Cross’s story. However, over the course of Joan’s life, the substantive challenges to the Catholic church reveal themselves. Joan refuses to accept the Catholicism that her father, some of her teachers, and various peers push on her. Instead, she develops her own unique understanding defined by a questioning of Catholic superiority. Through her thoughts, words and actions, Joan’s real challenge to the Catholic Church becomes clear.

Joan Undermines Christian Doctrine

As a girl, Joan asks Gerold: “How can we be sure of the truth of the Resurrection? If no one ever witnessed it?” (p. 98). Joan questions the validity of the Resurrection of Christ - the fundamental Christian belief that after Christ’s crucifixion, he rises from the dead. Joan highlights the lack of evidence to support the story of Christ’s Resurrection. The scripture and common acceptance is not enough to convince her. At the beginning of her papacy, Pope Joan visits the Campus Martius, the poorest part of Rome, and observes the filthy water that surrounds the people there. Although Joan’s advisers suggest that she begin her papacy with the construction of a Christian building, Joan decides to rebuild the Marcian aqueduct. Joan says: “What need do the poor have of more churches…Rome abounds with them. But a working aqueduct could save untold lives” (p. 360). Joan suggests that many people of Rome have no use for another church, which Catholic people believe help save people’s souls. Instead, Joan focuses on the salvation of people’s very lives. She places a greater importance on clean water than an abundance of churches, and traditional expectations. Regarding the construction of the aqueducts, Joan laments: “The books which had preserved the accumulated wisdom of the ancients regarding these complicated pieces of construction had been lost or destroyed centuries ago. The parchment pages on which the precious plans were recorded had been scraped clean and written over with Christian homilies and stories of lives of saints and martyrs” (p. 361). Joan hails the construction plans as wise, “complicated,” and “precious.” She gives no such laudatory description of the new Christian texts. The word “stories” instead of accounts or testaments to describe the Christian texts suggests that Joan suspects a fictional element to the writing. Joan questions the Resurrection of Christ, prefers sanitary water over more churches, and infrastructural plans over Christian “stories.”

Joan Questions God

During several trying times, Joan doubts God and the effectiveness of prayer. When Rome receives word that Saracen ships are on their way to Rome, Pope Sergius insists that faith and prayer can protect the city against the Saracens. In response to Pope Sergius’s assertion, Joan thinks: “When the Saracens are at the gates, all the prayer in the world will not help half so much as a single division of good fighting men” (p. 306). Joan exhibits a clear preference for real world action over prayer. She disparages the effectiveness of prayer, and values skilled men. During Pope Leo’s papacy, a tremendous fire kills scores of people in the city, and Joan wonders: “How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were surely not guilty or any sin? Her heart was troubled as the shadow of her ancient doubt fell upon her once again” (p. 335). In the face of tragedy, Joan questions God. She wonders if God can truly be good when he allows such destruction on earth. She questions God especially regarding the suffering of innocent children. Joan struggles to understand how such terror can exist on earth under a good God. At one of the worst times in her life, Joan finds herself in a dungeon, and tries to pray, “But at the core of her being, she felt nothing but emptiness. The seed of doubt, planted in her childhood…had taken deep root within her soul. She tried to weed it out, to rise up into the solacing light of grace, but she could not. Was God listening? Was He even there?” (p. 276). Wrongly accused, and in a sincere time of need, Joan feels no connection to God. Joan recognizes that her religious doubts are a fundamental part of her, and that she remains unable to completely overcome her doubts. She questions whether God can hear her prayers, and considers the possibility of there being a complete absence of a higher power. Throughout her life, Joan questions God’s power, his goodness, and even his existence.

Joan Values Pagan Elements

While Joan questions Christianity, she also considers her mother’s paganism throughout her life. As a child, Joan gazes at a wooden sculpture of Christ on the cross, and “Joan knew she should be filled with love and awe at Christ’s sacrifice, but instead she felt revulsion. Compared with the beautiful, strong gods of her mother, this figure seemed ugly, broken, and defeated” (p. 24). Although Joan knows that the crucifix represents Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the salvation of her own soul, the image does not impress her. Instead of appreciation, Joan feels disgust. Joan prefers the images of the pagan gods. In contrast to images of Christ, the pagan gods seem more attractive to her. Many years later at the Fulda monastery, the cruel Abbot Raban orders a ruthless beating of Brother Gottschalk. As Joan treats the life-threatening lacerations on Brother Gottschalk’s back, Joan refers to Hippocrates’s treatise on wounds. Upon Brother Gottschalk’s recovery, “Joan joined in praising God, but in her mind she also gave thanks to the pagan Hippocrates, worshiper of idols, whose bones were dust many centuries before Christ was born, but whose wisdom had reached across the distant years to heal one of His sons” (p. 192). Joan gives thanks not only to God, but dedicates a special prayer to a man as well. Joan credits the practical knowledge of Hippocrates for Brother Gottschalk’s survival. She celebrates Hippocrates’s relevance both long before and after the life of Christ. Following the death of Pope Leo, and the day the people elect her to be the new Pope, Joan visits a small English church in Rome where “The incongruity of the sacred altar and its pagan base seemed to Joan a perfect symbol of herself: a Christian priest, she still dreamed of her mother’s heathen gods…” (p. 354). Joan appreciates the nuances in the real world, including the non-Christian elements that pervade the Christian world. She recognizes the dissonance which exists in herself - both her Christian and her pagan identities. As a child, Joan sometimes prefers images of her mother’s gods over Christ, values pagan individuals, and even as she becomes Pope, admits she harbors both Christian and pagan beliefs.

Joan’s secret femininity in the story, Pope Joan, proves to be only one of many possible affronts to the Catholic Church. Joan makes those around her believe she is man, and as such rises to the most important position that a man can hold in the Catholic world. As she rises in power, however, her fundamental skepticism never goes away. She does not share the same unconditional respect for Catholic traditions as many of those around her. Furthermore, she does not keep her controversial ideas to herself - she often expresses them to others. She questions commonly held Catholic understandings such as the Resurrection of Christ, and describes Catholic churches and Catholic texts as sometimes less important than other practical structures and written information. Her critical view of Catholic beliefs, buildings, and writings reflects a pragmatic approach to life that includes the Catholic church to scrutiny. Perhaps even more shocking, is Joan’s scrutiny not only of Catholic elements, but of God himself. In addition to Joan’s unconventional view of the Catholic church and the Catholic God, lies her penchant for paganism. She remains attracted to pagan aesthetics and wisdom, and believes that there is room in her heart and in the world for both pagan and Catholic qualities. In the end, Pope Joan’s unconventional values, not her gender, make her a truly interesting and contentious Pope.

References

Cross, D. W. (1996). Pope Joan. Broadway Books.