⋙ Read Gratis Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

Download As PDF : Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

Pope Joan A Novel Donna Woolfolk Cross 9780345416261 Books

As a young girl, I was fascinated by the Middle Ages but quite aware of the restrictions placed on women. If I had lived in that time, "princess" is about the best thing I could aspire to play at. So I used to play that I was a woman disguised as a man in order to be a knight. So, the story of Pope Joan was my kind of story. Joan grows up in the backwaters of 9th century Europe, and despite the social restrictions on women, learns to read Latin and Greek. In this story, she takes on the identity of her brother, John, when he is killed in a viking raid. She rises through the ecclesiastical ranks and surprisingly becomes pope! Through the story, there is a love story, explaining why Pope Joan was discovered pregnant - and it's quite poignant even though you know where the story is going if you know any of the history of Pope Joan.

I really couldn't put this book down. I would find myself reading into late hours of the night, missing sleep, to keep on with the story. Joan was such a likable character, and the details of the dark ages milieu had me glued to the page.

The author has a nice epilogue that describes which events are historical and which are not, and where she re-ordered events in order to tell a good story. I appreciate that kind of scholarship. Although this novel is mainly fiction, the author did do a ton of research and it read very authentically to me. I have a Medieval Studies minor on my bachelors degree, and actually spent some time at a monastery while taking a class called "Medieval Monasticism". So I'm not exactly an expert, but I do somewhat know this topic.


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

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.
As a young girl, I was fascinated by the Middle Ages but quite aware of the restrictions placed on women. If I had lived in that time, "princess" is about the best thing I could aspire to play at. So I used to play that I was a woman disguised as a man in order to be a knight. So, the story of Pope Joan was my kind of story. Joan grows up in the backwaters of 9th century Europe, and despite the social restrictions on women, learns to read Latin and Greek. In this story, she takes on the identity of her brother, John, when he is killed in a viking raid. She rises through the ecclesiastical ranks and surprisingly becomes pope! Through the story, there is a love story, explaining why Pope Joan was discovered pregnant - and it's quite poignant even though you know where the story is going if you know any of the history of Pope Joan.

I really couldn't put this book down. I would find myself reading into late hours of the night, missing sleep, to keep on with the story. Joan was such a likable character, and the details of the dark ages milieu had me glued to the page.

The author has a nice epilogue that describes which events are historical and which are not, and where she re-ordered events in order to tell a good story. I appreciate that kind of scholarship. Although this novel is mainly fiction, the author did do a ton of research and it read very authentically to me. I have a Medieval Studies minor on my bachelors degree, and actually spent some time at a monastery while taking a class called "Medieval Monasticism". So I'm not exactly an expert, but I do somewhat know this topic.