medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The most recent study;
Boureau, Alain The Myth of Pope Joan. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
400 p., 5 halftones, 2 maps. 6 x 9 2001
Paper $22.50sp 0-226-06745-9 Spring 2001
In the ninth century, a brilliant young woman named Joan disguised
herself as a man so that she could follow her lover into the
then-exclusively male world of scholarship. She proved so successful
that she ascended the Catholic hierarchy in Rome and was eventually
elected pope. Her pontificate lasted two years, until she became
pregnant and died after giving birth during a public procession from the
Vatican.
Or so the legend goes--a legend that was fabricated sometime in the
thirteenth century, according to Alain Boureau, and which has persisted
in one form or another down to the present day. In this fascinating saga
of belief and rhetoric, politics and religion, Boureau investigates the
historical and ecclesiastical circumstances under which the myth of Pope
Joan was constructed and the different uses to which it was put over the
centuries. He shows, for instance, how Catholic clerics justified the
exclusion of women from the papacy and the priesthood by employing the
myth in misogynist moral tales, only to find the popess they had created
turned against them in anti-Catholic propaganda during the Reformation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Boureau/Myth
Contents
Part I The Sex of the Popes: A Roman Story
1 The Pontificals
2 The History of a Chair
3 The Popes between Two Stools
Part II Joan Militant
4 Joan the Catholic: Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries
5 The Popess and Her Sisters
Part III Death and Transfiguration of the Popess
6 Joan at the Stake: Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries
7 The Popess in Litearture
Epilogues
8 First Epilogue: Historiography of the Popess
9 Second Epilogue: Joan's Body
Subjects:
CULTURE STUDIES
GENDER AND SEXUALITY
HISTORY: European History
MEDIEVAL STUDIES
RELIGION
RELIGION: Christianity
WOMEN'S STUDIES
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consult our international information page.
File last modified on 04/17/2005.
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Tom Izbicki
Thomas Izbicki
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>>> [log in to unmask] 04/24/05 5:02 PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
O Learned Ones:
Today's newspaper (the Montreal Gazette) carries the remark that
"writers who declare the legend [of Pope Joan] to be utterly without
foundation have tended to be utterly Catholic in their outlook". Does
anyone know what the current opinion of historians is about the basis
of the story?
Bernadette Filotas
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