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La papesse Jeanne
Une femme, travestie en homme, aurait occup la chaire de saint Pierre vers 855. C'est du moins ce qu'affirme une tradition lgendaire largement rpandue depuis le XIIe sicle, encore vivace de nos jours. Au-del de son allure romanesque, le rcit met en jeu un interdit fondamental de la culture catholique : le refus du sacerdoce fminin. Il pose aussi la question troublante de l'imposture : que se passe-t-il quand un pouvoir suprme (et divinement sanctionn) se laisse usurper Ce livre propose d'abord de reprer l'origine du rcit en interrogeant un rite imaginaire (mais constamment rapport) qui soutient l'existence de la papesse : lors du couronnement pontifical, on vrifierait la virilit du pape, afin de conjurer la menace d'une nouvelle papesse. Qu'est-ce qui se noue autour de ce rite Puis on aborde une autre nigme de Jeanne : jusqu'au XVIe sicle, l'Eglise croit et fait croire l'authenticit de l'pisode. Comment expliquer ce paradoxe L'enqute tablit les contextes prcis d'utilisation du rcit, en abordant, de biais, les moments de grande tension de l'Eglise mdivale (question de la pauvret franciscaine, Grand Schisme). L'auteur esquisse une thorie de l'historicit des modes de croyance. Enfin, rejete par l'Eglise catholique, la papesse entre dans l'argumentation rforme et anticlricale et passe en littrature o elle poursuit son existence trange et fascinante.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 18, 2012
Wow, this book was a tough, but really worthwhile read. A bit opaque in style, Alain Boreau's exhaustive tracking of the origin and diffusion of the Pope Joan myth is nonetheless a fascinating ontological and epistemological study with real (if probably unintended) application to what we read on the web. I'll show you why you won't want to read this book before explaining why I'm so glad I did (and so you won't need to).
Boreau's work bristles with outbursts of critical nonsense that give academic papers a bad name. Here's a typical passage (p. 312):
It will probably not surprise you at all to learn that Boreau does not bother to lay out the actual Pope Joan myth until the epilogue of his book. In his defense, the tale of Pope Joan is at best tangential to the story of the story's emergence and evolution. But let's start with it anyway.
In a nutshell, the story goes that sometime in the mid-ninth century, a woman with a love of reading follows her study partner/lover into the church, masking her sex to do so. You'll forgive me if this sounds a bit like Yentl. Boreau actually cites to Yentl as one of the myth's many, many literary offshoots (that's in the body of the text; in fact the appendix includes 30 pages of single-spaced bibliography of every work that mentions the Popess, including the work of fiction I almost got out of the library instead of this estimable tome, Pope Joan).
So much for Yentl. Joan rises on the merits of her own erudition, eventually getting elected Pope in 854. Things proceed normally until a papal procession some two years later, when she suddenly goes into labor and dies giving birth, at which point all the gender-deception comes crashing down. Ruh-roh. A female Pope? Perish the thought.
To eliminate future potential threats to the seamless succession of the patriarchy, subsequent investiture ceremonies undergo two consequential changes: first, the procession route is detoured to avoid a shrine memorializing the Popess' ill-fated corner (a pre-existing Marian altar, of course); and second, new Popes are made to suffer the indignity of having their testes groped at the Lateran before they can take the miter. (Cue the Rodney Dangerfield tie-loosening impression, "Hey, what goes around, comes around, y'know? No respect.")
In fact, history (and the Louvre) have given us an imperial Roman birthing chair used during investiture rituals
, and that's where Boreau begins his inquisition. Why would would-be popes be made to sit ceremonially on these toilet lids? For aesthetic reasons (who doesn't appreciate orange marble)? Because of the chairs' ties to an official antiquity? Just to check the new pontiff for pontificals? Did they in fact serve any purpose, or were they just vestiges of prior ritual whose ultimate significance had long been forgotten? Over a thousand years later, how are we to know?
It's this last question that really nags at the author. Can or should we extrapolate backward from artifact (chair) to action (ceremony) to evidence that could substantiate oft-repeated accounts of a woman pope? If the annals themselves derived from such a deductive approach, what can they truly tell us about the past (if anything)?
Even with respect to this ceremony, Boreau gives the historical record strict scrutiny. He shows how fragile historical foundations can be. Did incoming popes sit on the chairs at all? On p. 18, Boreau cross-examines one eyewitness' testimony, "The author uses the same tone to narrate what he has seen, what he knows about, and what he is interpreting…. When he states, 'The Pope sits down,' we can read this, simultaneously, as 'I have seen him sit down,' 'I know for a fact that he sat down {though I myself was not physically present in the moment to see it},' 'He is supposed to sit down {at this juncture of the ceremony},' and 'It seems that he sat down.'" Boreau here is calling out the limits of deductive logic and the challenge of relying on any single eyewitness account. "Let him have it." At the end of the day, we cannot know from a mere four ambiguous words what the writer really observed, let alone what he meant to say, or for that matter what really happened.
However, this discussion takes us not even a third of the way down the author's epistemological rabbit hole. Discussion of birthing chairs and investiture processional routes all really amounts to analysis of historical hearsay of circumstantial evidence that itself only might point to the existence at one time of a Popess. It doesn’t tell us anything about who she might have been, or when she might have lived or presided over the Roman Catholic Church. Boreau painstakingly continues to consider other historical references to Pope Joan, what meaning medieval folk might have made of her possible existence ("Assigning strict veracity to history... seems anachronistic. History, like anecdote or legend, tells one truth that is plausible, optional, and open to permutations," p. 131), and also what denial of her (or any woman's) papal existence and/or legitimacy tells us about the deniers' times. "We will undoubtedly never know what people believed," Boreau says on the preceding page, "…it is difficult enough to discern what they were given to believe. Do we ourselves know what we believe?"
Well, thanks to the author, I now believe we have the medieval scribe Martinus Polonus to thank for pinning Joan to a time in history 400 years antecedent to the date he set quill to paper. Polonus is also ultimately crucial to perpetuating Joan mythology, as it is the erudite Dominican’s papal succession history that is ultimately to be circulated and referenced down the years. Since Polonus, many writers have looked at the extensively accreted written record and reached the mistaken conclusion that all that white smoke must indicate a fire, thereby ironically adding their voices to the noisy smog echoing down through history. But Boreau is able to find only a single signal repeating out of this billowing confusion; irrespective of the degree of separation, all later mentions appear ultimately to derive from Polonus’s original chronicle of popes and emperors.
This is a conspiracy of accident, not intent, and one with enormous ramifications to our time, given the power of the internet as a massive disinformation propagation machine. In 1278, Polonus is the one-man Wikipedia who names, dates, and injects Joan into the papal succession lists. His work is an elaboration of separate and independent Franciscan accounts (and presumably his own 13th century-era inquiries at taverns and monasteries). As for the two Franciscan accounts he must have used, these relied entirely on circulation of local rumor (oral tradition), but served different purposes. One was Jean de Mailly's Latin marginalia at the bottom of a late 11th century folio, "Require," as in, "I've heard people mention that there a woman once snuck her way into the clergy… somebody should check this out." The other was one of the more popular fables in itinerant preacher Etienne Bourbon's arsenal, his fox-and-grapes story: "Didja ever hear the one about the woman who got to be Pope? Well, listen up my brothers and sisters and heed the moral." Neither of these accounts have much to offer by way of inherent credibility. Only Martinus Polonus' version, buried as it was in a long annotated chronology, had real truthiness.
If Polonus' was guilty offanciful extrapolation/of ribald embellishment of logical deduction from these and other sources, from whence did he get his information? Perhaps Joan was derived from tales of Adrian IV. Perhaps Joan arose from a typo that mistakes "Anglicus" (the Englishman) from "Angelicus" (the angelic) and so accords with a 13th century Joachimite and Franciscan prophesy. Perhaps Joan is derived from 12th century tales of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Rhineland virgins escorted by Pope Cyriacus. Perhaps part of her can find embodiment by reference to Hildegard of Bingen, a nun who made her home near Mainz, one of the places-of-origin with which Joan would be associated. Perhaps, perhaps... Boreau continues in this vein, until finally calling a halt to all the speculation at p. 127, where he writes:
In using the myth of Pope Joan to unpack the historian's dilemma of how we can ever know what we know, I found two of the author's digressions to be of particular interest. Joan's existence aside, do we have any independently verified and sourced accounts of one or more women with claims to theocratic legitimacy (we do and they're fascinating)? And what does it say about the church that Roman Catholics (who feared) and Protestants (who jeered) should get so exercised about the gender of a spiritual leader?
Asserting male authority, medieval male clerics went to great lengths to justify and then perpetuate their patriarchy, not just to establish their own temporal power but also for reassurance, oft-times using a convoluted course of reasoning to avoid questioning the legitimacy of the status quo. So at page 42, the author notes canonization of norms that distinguish men and women by facial hair and hair length to better signal gender identity (because all anyone has to wear is a crude, shapeless, body-masking gown), and extensive nonsensical exegesis assigning attributes of "heat" and "cold" to explain them. Of course, you can always build a case for anything you want to justify. These rationales accrete over time, but the fact of their accretion should not be taken as argument for their underlying legitimacy.
All this amounts to exercises in (of?) fear and power, which cannot be attributed solely, or even primarily to sexist chauvinism. My favorite part of Pope Joan is Boreau's consideration of "The Popess'" in the first Tarot decks (pp. 172-173). These 15th century decks were commissioned by the Visconti family of Milan and proudly employed the likeness of ancestral cousin Manfreda as a trump card. And why Manfreda Visconti as Pope?
It seems that in the 13th century there lived a woman named Guglielma who cultivated a backlash against women's exclusion from the traditions of the church. She acquired many disciples, chief among them Manfreda Visconti, who held Guglielma to be an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. Guglielma, Visconti maintained, had died and revived a la Jesus, disavowing the existing Roman Catholic hierarchy in favor of designating Visconti as her personal vicar (Pope) in the short span of time between Guglielma's resurrection and disappearance. This was, as Boreau puts it, "a radically feminized Christianity." Manfreda went on to name women cardinals (her servant Taria, included) held services, and otherwise "took her place in a glorious gallery of eminent men." In short, Manfreda oozed chutzpah. She was cool. She had major... cojones.
Bottom line, Manfreda Visconti represented a stereotypical threat to the hegemony of the church power structure, a threat of dilution and diffusion to competing practice and ideology. Small wonder the church was so vigilant in its desire to weed out heresy. Heresy is how new churches are born. And, as anyone with a Twitter account will tell you, followers are power. What with a more or less constant available population of potential parishioners, evangelism’s a zero-sum game, so every new convert to some other religion means one less for yours. Any Pope who would hold tightly to power must speak softly and carry a big ferula. Against such established power base, Joan never stood a chance.
Boreau's work bristles with outbursts of critical nonsense that give academic papers a bad name. Here's a typical passage (p. 312):
Still, if we want to account for the unity that subsumes the very different uses of this episode, we will have to accept the idea that a metastasis of meaning (the various uses) develops from a nucleus that is not directly signifying (do I dare say, that is unconscious?), always present in the name of the popes but never expressed. That structure (an unknown nucleus and metastases of meaning) takes us away from myth, which is a perfectly explicit statement; a permanent, founding narrative that is reactivated metaphorically along the same lines as its original meaning.Sknzzxxxxzzzzz… wha- what? I'm awake. Why? Did he call on someone?
It will probably not surprise you at all to learn that Boreau does not bother to lay out the actual Pope Joan myth until the epilogue of his book. In his defense, the tale of Pope Joan is at best tangential to the story of the story's emergence and evolution. But let's start with it anyway.
In a nutshell, the story goes that sometime in the mid-ninth century, a woman with a love of reading follows her study partner/lover into the church, masking her sex to do so. You'll forgive me if this sounds a bit like Yentl. Boreau actually cites to Yentl as one of the myth's many, many literary offshoots (that's in the body of the text; in fact the appendix includes 30 pages of single-spaced bibliography of every work that mentions the Popess, including the work of fiction I almost got out of the library instead of this estimable tome, Pope Joan).
So much for Yentl. Joan rises on the merits of her own erudition, eventually getting elected Pope in 854. Things proceed normally until a papal procession some two years later, when she suddenly goes into labor and dies giving birth, at which point all the gender-deception comes crashing down. Ruh-roh. A female Pope? Perish the thought.
To eliminate future potential threats to the seamless succession of the patriarchy, subsequent investiture ceremonies undergo two consequential changes: first, the procession route is detoured to avoid a shrine memorializing the Popess' ill-fated corner (a pre-existing Marian altar, of course); and second, new Popes are made to suffer the indignity of having their testes groped at the Lateran before they can take the miter. (Cue the Rodney Dangerfield tie-loosening impression, "Hey, what goes around, comes around, y'know? No respect.")
In fact, history (and the Louvre) have given us an imperial Roman birthing chair used during investiture rituals
, and that's where Boreau begins his inquisition. Why would would-be popes be made to sit ceremonially on these toilet lids? For aesthetic reasons (who doesn't appreciate orange marble)? Because of the chairs' ties to an official antiquity? Just to check the new pontiff for pontificals? Did they in fact serve any purpose, or were they just vestiges of prior ritual whose ultimate significance had long been forgotten? Over a thousand years later, how are we to know?It's this last question that really nags at the author. Can or should we extrapolate backward from artifact (chair) to action (ceremony) to evidence that could substantiate oft-repeated accounts of a woman pope? If the annals themselves derived from such a deductive approach, what can they truly tell us about the past (if anything)?
Even with respect to this ceremony, Boreau gives the historical record strict scrutiny. He shows how fragile historical foundations can be. Did incoming popes sit on the chairs at all? On p. 18, Boreau cross-examines one eyewitness' testimony, "The author uses the same tone to narrate what he has seen, what he knows about, and what he is interpreting…. When he states, 'The Pope sits down,' we can read this, simultaneously, as 'I have seen him sit down,' 'I know for a fact that he sat down {though I myself was not physically present in the moment to see it},' 'He is supposed to sit down {at this juncture of the ceremony},' and 'It seems that he sat down.'" Boreau here is calling out the limits of deductive logic and the challenge of relying on any single eyewitness account. "Let him have it." At the end of the day, we cannot know from a mere four ambiguous words what the writer really observed, let alone what he meant to say, or for that matter what really happened.
However, this discussion takes us not even a third of the way down the author's epistemological rabbit hole. Discussion of birthing chairs and investiture processional routes all really amounts to analysis of historical hearsay of circumstantial evidence that itself only might point to the existence at one time of a Popess. It doesn’t tell us anything about who she might have been, or when she might have lived or presided over the Roman Catholic Church. Boreau painstakingly continues to consider other historical references to Pope Joan, what meaning medieval folk might have made of her possible existence ("Assigning strict veracity to history... seems anachronistic. History, like anecdote or legend, tells one truth that is plausible, optional, and open to permutations," p. 131), and also what denial of her (or any woman's) papal existence and/or legitimacy tells us about the deniers' times. "We will undoubtedly never know what people believed," Boreau says on the preceding page, "…it is difficult enough to discern what they were given to believe. Do we ourselves know what we believe?"
Well, thanks to the author, I now believe we have the medieval scribe Martinus Polonus to thank for pinning Joan to a time in history 400 years antecedent to the date he set quill to paper. Polonus is also ultimately crucial to perpetuating Joan mythology, as it is the erudite Dominican’s papal succession history that is ultimately to be circulated and referenced down the years. Since Polonus, many writers have looked at the extensively accreted written record and reached the mistaken conclusion that all that white smoke must indicate a fire, thereby ironically adding their voices to the noisy smog echoing down through history. But Boreau is able to find only a single signal repeating out of this billowing confusion; irrespective of the degree of separation, all later mentions appear ultimately to derive from Polonus’s original chronicle of popes and emperors.
This is a conspiracy of accident, not intent, and one with enormous ramifications to our time, given the power of the internet as a massive disinformation propagation machine. In 1278, Polonus is the one-man Wikipedia who names, dates, and injects Joan into the papal succession lists. His work is an elaboration of separate and independent Franciscan accounts (and presumably his own 13th century-era inquiries at taverns and monasteries). As for the two Franciscan accounts he must have used, these relied entirely on circulation of local rumor (oral tradition), but served different purposes. One was Jean de Mailly's Latin marginalia at the bottom of a late 11th century folio, "Require," as in, "I've heard people mention that there a woman once snuck her way into the clergy… somebody should check this out." The other was one of the more popular fables in itinerant preacher Etienne Bourbon's arsenal, his fox-and-grapes story: "Didja ever hear the one about the woman who got to be Pope? Well, listen up my brothers and sisters and heed the moral." Neither of these accounts have much to offer by way of inherent credibility. Only Martinus Polonus' version, buried as it was in a long annotated chronology, had real truthiness.
If Polonus' was guilty of
Enough of this series of analogies, which are endless and perhaps senseless. To continue on this path is to risk finding all the reasons in the world to situate John, the Englishman from Mainz, in 854, thanks to a cancerous proliferation of microcausal cells that coagulate without any articulation among them. Contextual causality, that peril to historiography, begins here. Its ravages are obvious to anyone who cares to peruse school textbooks for the "causes" of the French Revolution in 1789 or of World War I in 1914: everything converges, hence nothing is explained. The event disappears under layers of a context that exists only by reason of the event.
In using the myth of Pope Joan to unpack the historian's dilemma of how we can ever know what we know, I found two of the author's digressions to be of particular interest. Joan's existence aside, do we have any independently verified and sourced accounts of one or more women with claims to theocratic legitimacy (we do and they're fascinating)? And what does it say about the church that Roman Catholics (who feared) and Protestants (who jeered) should get so exercised about the gender of a spiritual leader?
Asserting male authority, medieval male clerics went to great lengths to justify and then perpetuate their patriarchy, not just to establish their own temporal power but also for reassurance, oft-times using a convoluted course of reasoning to avoid questioning the legitimacy of the status quo. So at page 42, the author notes canonization of norms that distinguish men and women by facial hair and hair length to better signal gender identity (because all anyone has to wear is a crude, shapeless, body-masking gown), and extensive nonsensical exegesis assigning attributes of "heat" and "cold" to explain them. Of course, you can always build a case for anything you want to justify. These rationales accrete over time, but the fact of their accretion should not be taken as argument for their underlying legitimacy.
All this amounts to exercises in (of?) fear and power, which cannot be attributed solely, or even primarily to sexist chauvinism. My favorite part of Pope Joan is Boreau's consideration of "The Popess'" in the first Tarot decks (pp. 172-173). These 15th century decks were commissioned by the Visconti family of Milan and proudly employed the likeness of ancestral cousin Manfreda as a trump card. And why Manfreda Visconti as Pope?
It seems that in the 13th century there lived a woman named Guglielma who cultivated a backlash against women's exclusion from the traditions of the church. She acquired many disciples, chief among them Manfreda Visconti, who held Guglielma to be an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. Guglielma, Visconti maintained, had died and revived a la Jesus, disavowing the existing Roman Catholic hierarchy in favor of designating Visconti as her personal vicar (Pope) in the short span of time between Guglielma's resurrection and disappearance. This was, as Boreau puts it, "a radically feminized Christianity." Manfreda went on to name women cardinals (her servant Taria, included) held services, and otherwise "took her place in a glorious gallery of eminent men." In short, Manfreda oozed chutzpah. She was cool. She had major... cojones.
Bottom line, Manfreda Visconti represented a stereotypical threat to the hegemony of the church power structure, a threat of dilution and diffusion to competing practice and ideology. Small wonder the church was so vigilant in its desire to weed out heresy. Heresy is how new churches are born. And, as anyone with a Twitter account will tell you, followers are power. What with a more or less constant available population of potential parishioners, evangelism’s a zero-sum game, so every new convert to some other religion means one less for yours. Any Pope who would hold tightly to power must speak softly and carry a big ferula. Against such established power base, Joan never stood a chance.
January 29, 2015
Skimmed this one for info re: "Pope Joan" by D W Cross. The novel was more interesting. Boureau is very scholarly & might appeal to literary theologians. Much more detail than I could stick with. Glad the library had it, tho.
October 9, 2007
The topic is really quite interesting, but the book is not structured in a welcoming manner. I had much more fun discussing it in class than I did reading it.
October 15, 2008
Wthat an interesting book. Who knows if a female was really ever the Pope in disguise. It was an interesting read - I can remember every detail, I read it a few years ago.
December 29, 2019
Todo empezó como un festejo carnavalesco, y a partir de ahí, ya no se pudo detener...
Honesto, erudito y revelador: he aquí las características de este magnífico ensayo sobre una de las leyendas religiosas más arraigadas en la tradición cristiana (para gran pesar de las feministas posmodernas), la de la "papisa Juana".
El autor nos conduce a los orígenes "prehistóricos" de esta leyenda, hallando sus raíces en la antigua celebración de las saturnales romanas, cuando, entre fines de diciembre y principios de enero, se llevaban a cabo festejos de tipo carnavalesco donde las categorías sociales eran invertidas: durante esos días, los amos se permitían volverse esclavos y viceversa, el pueblo tenía permitido reírse y parodiar a autoridades y celebridades, realizar fiestas y jolgorio, todo ello dentro del marco preciso de un festejo de corte religioso.
La celebración es absorbida por la Iglesia (de hecho, todavía se conserva la fiesta de carnaval en el mes de enero, pero ahora como una forma de licencia social permitida en el ámbito religioso previa a la Cuaresma y la Semana Santa), y al menos hasta el siglo IX d. n. e. era común que la curia participase de forma activa, permitiendo al pueblo "parodiar" la toma de posesión papal en San Juan de Letrán, una procesión a lomos de un asno por las calles de Roma con un "doble" del Papa sentado dando la espalda a la procesión.
Cuando la Iglesia debe afianzar su poder ante los reyes europeos (amparada en la -falsa- donación de Constantino), el ceremonial de toma de posesión evoluciona y el Papa va "alejándose" más y más de aquel contacto popular; surgen solemnidades extrañas a los ojos del pueblo (como ver sentarse al pontífice en sillas que representan los poderes espiritual y terrenal), cargadas de simbolismos incomprensibles al vulgo pero evidentes a los ojos de los poderosos de aquella época. Resultado: el pueblo continuó su festejo, pero agregando al mismo ahora nuevos elementos que parodiar, entre ellos, la inversión de sexo de la figura central, el Papa.
Durante algunos siglos el festejo siguió su andadura pero a nivel estrictamente local, sin representar nada más que una fiesta carnavalesca. Sin embargo, a partir del siglo XIII comienza a cobrar vida en las crónicas escritas la "historia" de una mujer que, travestida de hombre, llega a ser Papa. El primer autor es Juan de Mailly, quien, reconociendo que es tan solo una leyenda, deja pendiente el confirmar la veracidad de la historia. Sin embargo, esta escapa a su control y el rumor, la tradición popular, cobra vida en manos de Martín el Polaco; a partir de allí, se vuelve imparable, y cada historiador de la historia de la iglesia va agregando "picos y colas" más y más fantasiosos que legitiman, irónicamente, la "veracidad" de lo que era una parodia. El tiempo borra este elemento y va tomándose "ad pedem litterae", hasta llegar a nuestros días como una historia con santo y seña, ubicación temporal y detalles variados, incluido aquel de confirmar el sexo de los papas, por si acaso... ninguno real, por desgracia.
Un elemento que criticar al autor es que a lo largo de su exposición realiza muchos "altos" para introducir "excursus" o disgresiones para contextualizar este o aquel aspecto histórico, lo que puede provocar cierta confusión o distracción en el lector. Nada insuperable: un poco de exigencia y concentración permiten superar este aspecto.
Vale la pena el tiempo invertido en esta lectura, todo un ejercicio intelectual iluminador y revelador. Quizá decepcione a alguna feminista, que ya ondeaba la leyenda de la papisa Juana como bandera reivindicadora de la capacidad de la mujer y de la opresión masculina. Es una lástima: deberá buscarse otro personaje más cierto, como Hipatia, por ejemplo...
Saludos!!!
Honesto, erudito y revelador: he aquí las características de este magnífico ensayo sobre una de las leyendas religiosas más arraigadas en la tradición cristiana (para gran pesar de las feministas posmodernas), la de la "papisa Juana".
El autor nos conduce a los orígenes "prehistóricos" de esta leyenda, hallando sus raíces en la antigua celebración de las saturnales romanas, cuando, entre fines de diciembre y principios de enero, se llevaban a cabo festejos de tipo carnavalesco donde las categorías sociales eran invertidas: durante esos días, los amos se permitían volverse esclavos y viceversa, el pueblo tenía permitido reírse y parodiar a autoridades y celebridades, realizar fiestas y jolgorio, todo ello dentro del marco preciso de un festejo de corte religioso.
La celebración es absorbida por la Iglesia (de hecho, todavía se conserva la fiesta de carnaval en el mes de enero, pero ahora como una forma de licencia social permitida en el ámbito religioso previa a la Cuaresma y la Semana Santa), y al menos hasta el siglo IX d. n. e. era común que la curia participase de forma activa, permitiendo al pueblo "parodiar" la toma de posesión papal en San Juan de Letrán, una procesión a lomos de un asno por las calles de Roma con un "doble" del Papa sentado dando la espalda a la procesión.
Cuando la Iglesia debe afianzar su poder ante los reyes europeos (amparada en la -falsa- donación de Constantino), el ceremonial de toma de posesión evoluciona y el Papa va "alejándose" más y más de aquel contacto popular; surgen solemnidades extrañas a los ojos del pueblo (como ver sentarse al pontífice en sillas que representan los poderes espiritual y terrenal), cargadas de simbolismos incomprensibles al vulgo pero evidentes a los ojos de los poderosos de aquella época. Resultado: el pueblo continuó su festejo, pero agregando al mismo ahora nuevos elementos que parodiar, entre ellos, la inversión de sexo de la figura central, el Papa.
Durante algunos siglos el festejo siguió su andadura pero a nivel estrictamente local, sin representar nada más que una fiesta carnavalesca. Sin embargo, a partir del siglo XIII comienza a cobrar vida en las crónicas escritas la "historia" de una mujer que, travestida de hombre, llega a ser Papa. El primer autor es Juan de Mailly, quien, reconociendo que es tan solo una leyenda, deja pendiente el confirmar la veracidad de la historia. Sin embargo, esta escapa a su control y el rumor, la tradición popular, cobra vida en manos de Martín el Polaco; a partir de allí, se vuelve imparable, y cada historiador de la historia de la iglesia va agregando "picos y colas" más y más fantasiosos que legitiman, irónicamente, la "veracidad" de lo que era una parodia. El tiempo borra este elemento y va tomándose "ad pedem litterae", hasta llegar a nuestros días como una historia con santo y seña, ubicación temporal y detalles variados, incluido aquel de confirmar el sexo de los papas, por si acaso... ninguno real, por desgracia.
Un elemento que criticar al autor es que a lo largo de su exposición realiza muchos "altos" para introducir "excursus" o disgresiones para contextualizar este o aquel aspecto histórico, lo que puede provocar cierta confusión o distracción en el lector. Nada insuperable: un poco de exigencia y concentración permiten superar este aspecto.
Vale la pena el tiempo invertido en esta lectura, todo un ejercicio intelectual iluminador y revelador. Quizá decepcione a alguna feminista, que ya ondeaba la leyenda de la papisa Juana como bandera reivindicadora de la capacidad de la mujer y de la opresión masculina. Es una lástima: deberá buscarse otro personaje más cierto, como Hipatia, por ejemplo...
Saludos!!!
September 10, 2018
Tremendamente exhaustivo y pormenorizado. Tanto que para un lector advenedizo como yo se vuelve farragoso y en ocasiones aburrido. Me parece más una tesis que un libro para el público general.
Resumiendo: muy interesante, pero para el lector aficionado sobran muchas páginas.
Resumiendo: muy interesante, pero para el lector aficionado sobran muchas páginas.
February 5, 2025
Perdí mi tiempo, es tedioso que te cuente el mismo punto de vista de la mano de distintas personas, nunca llega a contar la historia de Juana, todo recae en él misterio de cómo se aseguran de que sean hombres los papas, tedioso que parezca copy paste.
July 4, 2020
Reading a conceptual history by a researcher - historian - leaves some without interest in a myth that this book is established and organized around. Some of the facts were well documented, I found the insight in Jan Hus humorous, and of course quite sad at the oddity of throwing stones at Catholicism and Roman Pope documentation around this illusive myth Pope Joan. Some parts of the information written around her simple beginning to development as a viable leader in the Church-Jean de Mailly a Dominican - with story of Joan and herrise (?) the Church had to deal with oral stories popping out here and there in the Catholic regions. "Legendary themes" were coming to Church authorities-possible miracle-hoax-people needed sustaining ideology of the church so the Dominican Order gaining ground-the writing or compiling of this woman needed to be stated in some form of Church documentation. later
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 16, 2007
Whew! This book was my personal challenge. Never one that I would have picked out but I told myself I was going to read it! I actually enjoyed it. Although the book is based on religion, it did not feel as though I was reading a religious book. Enjoyed reading about Joan's life story.
March 30, 2007
Didn't get far into it.
June 27, 2007
this book discounts the interesting concept that a woman was once named Pope in the 9th century
well written & researched
well written & researched
June 3, 2008
Even though the book is fictional, I enjoyed reading about the early Christian church. It was very thought provoking and made me appreciate religious freedom and women's rights.
October 27, 2009
I enjoyed the read, interesting plot, eye opening to the times and made you think what other historical facts....
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