Posted on 12/03/2007 8:37:11 PM PST by Alex Murphy
The story is as enduring as it is dubious: A millennium or so ago in Rome, the pope was riding in a procession when suddenly she–that's right, she–went into labor and had a baby.
Nonsense? Europeans in the Middle Ages didn't think so. The story of a pope named Joan, writes historian J.N.D. Kelly in his Oxford Dictionary of Popes, "was accepted without question in Catholic circles for centuries." Only after the Reformation, when Protestants used the story to poke fun at Roman Catholics, did the Vatican begin to deny that one of its Holy Fathers had become an unholy mother.
The tale faded in the 17th century but never died. While most Americans apparently have never heard of the story, it continues to fascinate people in Europe. In the last three years, 2 million Germans–and about 100,000 Americans–have bought copies of Pope Joan, a historical novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross, a New York writer who suggests that a 400-year clerical coverup kept her hero from being recognized as one of history's most famous women. Legions of Americans likely will become believers, too, if Hollywood's Harry Ufland, producer of The Last Temptation of Christ and Snow Falling on Cedars, shoots the Pope Joan movie he hopes to make next year.
During the Middle Ages, many versions of the "popess" affair appeared. Most accounts came from friars compiling church histories, though the Vatican later would argue that Protestant forgers tinkered with the text. A few medieval chronicles said Joan's great deception occurred in the 10th or 11th century. The report that gained the widest acceptance, written in 1265 by a Dominican friar from Poland named Martin of Troppau, set the unblessed event in the ninth century.
Papal momma. According to most versions, spectators watched in horror as the pope, trying to mount a horse, went into labor and gave birth to a son. Moments later, some reports said, the crowd tied her feet to the horse's tail, then stoned her to death as she was dragged along a street. Still other records showed her banished to a convent and living in penance as her son rose to become a bishop.
The female pope reportedly was born in Germany of English missionary parents and grew up unusually bright in an era when learned women were considered unnatural and dangerous. To break the glass ceiling, it was said, she pretended to be male. At 12, she was taken in masculine attire to Athens by a "learned man," a monk described as her teacher and lover.
Disguised in the sexless garb of a cleric, she "made such progress in various sciences," Martin of Troppau wrote, "that there was nobody equal to her." Eventually, it was said, she became a cardinal in Rome, where her knowledge of the scriptures led to her election as Pope John Anglicus. Martin of Troppau's account had her ruling male-dominated Christendom from 855 till 858, specifically two years, seven months, and four days. Her original name, according to some, was Agnes. Others called her Gilberta and Jutta. Many years after she died–assuming she ever lived–scribes began calling her Joan, the feminine form of John.
But by no name would she win a place in the Vatican's official catalog of popes. The church insists that its papal line, dating back to St. Peter, is an unbroken string of men. Scholars tend to agree. An array of reference books, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Oxford Dictionary of Popes, dismiss Pope Joan as a mythical or legendary figure, no more real than Paul Bunyan or Old King Cole. (Another Joan, the 15th-century martyr Joan of Arc, is honored by the church as a saint.)
The chief weakness of the Pope Joan story is the absence of any contemporary evidence of a female pope during the dates suggested for her reign. In each instance, clerical records show someone else holding the papacy and doing deeds that are transcribed in church history.
Another problem is the gap between the alleged event and the news of it. Not until the 13th century–400 years after Joan, by the most accepted accounts, ruled–does any mention of a female pope appear in any documents. That's akin to word breaking out just now that England in 1600 had a queen named Elizabeth.
The historical gap, some Joanites suggest, was deliberately created. Cross, the novelist, argues that clerics of the day were so appalled by Joan's trickery that they went to great lengths to avoid and eliminate any written report of it.
Busted. Once the story started, there was no stopping it. Some writers, including the 14th-century poet Petrarch, scorned Joan. But she also had backers. In Tuscany around 1400, her face was carved among the papal busts in the cathedral at Siena. It remained there, travelers said, until its replacement by the bust of a male pope two centuries later. God used her elevation, claimed one Renaissance writer, to demonstrate that women were equal to men.
Medieval accounts show the Vatican striving to avoid a repeat of its Joan episode. For several centuries, popes shunned the street where Joan allegedly gave birth. The pontiffs were said to regard the route as a scene of shame. The Vatican later would argue that the street was simply too narrow for a procession. In his 1999 book, The Legend of Pope Joan, British writer Peter Stanford reports visiting the Vatican and inspecting an unusual chair inspired by the trouble with Joan. The wooden throne, with a potty-style hole in the seat, is said to have been used until the 16th century in the ceremony of papal consecration. According to medieval accounts, each prospective pope would sit on the hole while an examining cleric felt under the seat. A moment later, the examiner would withdraw his hand and solemnly declare: "Our nominee is a man." Stanford, a former editor of London's Catholic Herald, argues that Pope Joan was a historical figure, although he doubts some of the story's details. Donna Cross agrees. "Where there's that much historical smoke, there must have been a fire," she says. "Something happened."
So, if a woman didn't become pope, what did happen? Joan's detractors can only guess, but a favorite hunch is that somebody a long time ago tried to be funny.
On the narrow Roman street in question–the Vicus Papissa–records from the 10th century show the well-to-do family of Giovanni Pape owning a home and a chapel. Years after the Papes were gone, it's suggested, a visitor joked that Vicus Papissa meant "the street of the woman pope." Over time, the wisecrack was embellished to include the outcome of a papal pregnancy, a tale riveting enough to become part of the church chronicles.
What Vicus Papissa really means, the skeptics say, is "the street of Mrs. Pape."
When one frequents a forum such as this on a daily basis and reads multiple postings by the same author per day, I'd contend that it is impossible not to a) get to know the poster's personality and b) develop an understanding of his/her motives. Unless of course, one has no critical faculties nor intelligence. It's not judgment. One simply reads what is put out by the individual in question.
You can protest somebody's judgment about a poster but it's usually been made as the result of deja vu. On any given day, there may be nothing remarkable about a person's behavior. However, over the course of months and years, certain patterns appear. The same things are repeated, the same issues are returned to. The same reactions occur. A picture begins to emerge.
Of course, we're not allowed to voice what we've seen and learned but that's OK. We all know how the game is played by now and most of us understand what's happening.
You really need to continue pinging me despite promises to the contrary, since you continue to talk about me despite promises to the contrary.
Uh...I, to the best of my recollection, never asked for this topic to be placed “under the ban,” though I probably would be less than saddened if it were. I merely sought the rationale for posting a 7 year-old article about such an inherently divisive topic, and further questioned the citation - in order to create a juxtaposition of sorts - of five other threads, which at least were current-events related when they were first posted some years ago.
As for questioning motives, well, what is one to think when a 7 year-old article is posted that is thoroughly detached from any issues in current news, the movies, etc.? I merely asked for an explanation. How far back does an article have to go, and how unnecessarily incendiary does it have to be, before it should be clear to a potential poster that the potential gains are far outweighed by the losses incurred on the Religion Forum? Consider that many seekers and fence-sitters are on this site, and the inter-religious sniping they see here is most unseemly. We don’t do very well in this regard even in legitimate areas of contention; the quality of debate often (on both sides of an issue) quickly turns to mud slinging and “Yeah, well so are you!” types of “discourse.” How much worse, in the aforementioned seekers’ eyes, are threads that clearly are out to serve no good purpose? Doesn’t this sort of thing make us ALL look bad?
No. I think you're oversimplifying the issue. When something comes up in the media (be that "Pope Joan," "the Da Vinci Code," "the Golden Compass," or even despite his being taboo here, Jack Chick), it merits discussion, especially if it's in the context of analyzing and arguing against it. Each of the five articles mentioned previously about "Pope Joan" are in this context: one informing about a book, one calling to action in response to a question on Jeopardy, and three clearly debunking the myth in response to it being in the MSM stories.
This whole paragraph is just a backhanded way of attributing motives to a poster by questioning the motives of the poster.
Yet the basic facts of the paragraph are true.
From the best that I can tell, by ordering us to not "make it personal" the RM is asking us to give posters the benefit of the doubt as to their motives by sticking to the issues. We all make judgments; that's part of being human. Not "making it personal" is a way to keep those judgments to ourselves to keep relative peace here on the forum. That said, sometimes, some posters make it very very difficult to do that.
None of these posts are done in isolation; FR is a community, and members of a community have personalities that, as time goes on, are easier to discern. Sometimes this is beneficial, sometimes it isn't, but either way it's inevitable.
Context is everything. What a poster posts, when the poster posts, and what else has been posted in recent memory are all important. I think Marshmallow's analysis in 39 explains the situation very well.
But I'm not the RM, so take my 2 cents worth as just that.
So, should we all muck up FR's bandwidth by posting seven year old articles? If this article was current, it would be one thing, but when people go to the trouble to scrounge up something from seven years ago just to poke a stick at the Catholics on the forum...well..I don't see the logic there.
The Pope Joan rumor, on the other hand, was widely believed for nearly four centuries, from the 1200’s through the late 1500’s. Evidently it did not become a tool for bashing Catholicism until well after the Reformation which began in 1517.
In other words, the history of the rumor is of general interest and is therefore subject to discussion on open threads in the Religion Forum. That the Catholic Church officially debunked the rumor nearly five centuries ago does not negate the interest in the rumor.
Also, the age of the article is immaterial. Many articles on the Religion Forum date back a century, several centuries, two millennia or more.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do NOT make it personal!
I agree with your post and with Marshmallow’s.
The impressions do emerge, whether or not it is allowable to comment on them.
You are correct. I have mistaken you for somebody else and I apologize for that. I was following too many threads/conversations yesterday for my poor mind and got confused. I promise to do better in the future.
Again, sorry for my confusion.
In a perfect FR world, we could all agree to keep our more contentious threads relevant to our actual theological disagreements, and then try to keep those disagreements "civil" in tone. The mud-slinging and ill-will we too often manifest is a poor witness indeed to the many lurkers on this site who are still finding their way to God. I just wish that we would all stop dredging up the "gotcha" types of stuff that don't adress legitimate differences of opinion, but only serve to make some other group look bad. Members of Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Mormon and Noachide groups all stand guilty at the bar when it comes to this. In the end, God cannot be pleased with any of us. Perhaps we all need to remember that when we're tempted to posting those sorts of threads and making comments on them..
Dittos and amen.
It’s especially true regarding the effect that the baiting and contentiousness has on lurkers-—who are, BTW, very likely to be just as sharp-minded and perceptive as the active posters are.
What?! I’m glad I never heard of him.
Those whacky Protestants.
Is that a fact? (hint: click each letter to see many of the non-Roman Catholic Posts by Alex in the last couple of days
So, do you stand by your statement? I'm sure your mother would be soooooo proud if you publicly retracted you statement. ;-)
Actually, the overarching majority of Alex’s posts are not Anti-Catholic, even the ones that are about Catholicism (uncomfortable sometimes, yes, but rarely Anti-Catholic)... that’s why I’m so surprised he posted this one.
I am not a Catholic, and I have never heard of the "pope Joan" story before, nor do I normally get involved with the rivalries that occur between denominations in this forum. I mention this only to illustrate that I have a different perspective that perhaps most of you do. Or as they say in my part of the country 'I ain't got no dog in this fight'.
When I first came across this thread I presumed that it was from a parody site like 'Lark', but then realized that it was not, since it caught my interest I decided to read the article. The first two things that I noticed were that the word "pope" was not capitalized in the title and that the first sentence, "The story is as enduring as it is dubious: A millennium or so ago in Rome"... In those few words the author equated the story with that of myth or urban legends. He then goes on to tell the story from both sides with little personal comment.
What I took from the article was that it was an amusing story that had zero credibility and has been throughly debunked throughout history. So when I read the user posts, I was taken aback by the cries of anti-Catholic and the dog piling on Alex. The only reason I could glean for this was that Alex has had numerous confrontations with Catholics in the past so this post must be slanderous to Catholics as well.
I have to wonder how many actually read the article and how many just saw Alex's name posted on the article and presumed that there must be an anti-Catholic motive? How many were upset just because it was Alex that posted this?
Magisterium -""The mud-slinging and ill-will we too often manifest is a poor witness indeed to the many lurkers on this site who are still finding their way to God. I just wish that we would all stop dredging up the "gotcha" types of stuff that don't adress legitimate differences of opinion, but only serve to make some other group look bad. Members of Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Mormon and Noachide groups all stand guilty at the bar when it comes to this. In the end, God cannot be pleased with any of us. ""
I will agree with you that this entire thread is a poor witness, but I must say that to the casual observer (one that does not know of Alex's past posting history) the poor witness in not Alex but those that dog piled on him instead. I am not trying to justify anything that Alex may have done, nor am I taking sides. I am just trying to show everyone that God has not been glorified in this thread by either side.
Perhaps it is because I am Baptist, but I try to look for the lesson in every story. There are a couple of lessons here, one in the past and one today. Both deal with how we use our words. Words have meaning and they have the power to build up or to tear down. Someone in the past fabricated a story about a woman pope. They may have done it for amusement or it may have been malicious, we do not know. What we do know is that this story has been used for hundreds of years to malign the Catholic Church. I doubt the original story teller ever considered the power of his words or that they would still be around a thousand years later. And here we are today. Could it be that in our bickering and our poor witness that we have exhibited here, we have created a legacy that might be around as long?
Magisterium -""Perhaps we all need to remember that when we're tempted to posting those sorts of threads and making comments on them.""
Perhaps we should also remember that our words are not just being recorded here in this forum, but in heaven also. And we will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word that we have spoken. (Matthew 12:36)
I argue that every thread posted in this forum no matter the intent or motive of the poster, can be turned around to glorify God. But it can only be done if we choose to do so. If we choose use our words (and use them carefully) to His glory then God will be pleased.
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