The 'She-Pope': More Than a Legend?

The legend of Pope Joan is the story of a ninth-century German woman so devoted to learning and the Catholic Church that she disguised herself as a man and rose through the Catholic hierarchy. According to the legend, she was eventually elected pope. Her sex was only discovered when she died in childbirth, two years into her papacy.

The controversial story has been around for centuries, but the woman pope has received a great deal of attention in the past decade. An investigative work ("The Legend of Pope Joan" by Peter Stanford), a myth-shattering historical work ("The Myth of Pope Joan" by Alain Boureau), and a novel ("Pope Joan") have all recently come out in print. In 2001, Beliefnet's Rebecca Phillips interviewed Donna Woolfolk Cross, the author of the novel.

In your book, you seem fairly certain that Pope Joan really existed, or at least that there is some validity to the legend. Why do you believe the story?

I don't think we'll ever know for sure. But if you're asking me my best guess, I think probably so, just because there is so much historical smoke there, there must have been some kind of fire. Maybe not exactly the way the story has come down to us today, but it's hard to believe nothing happened there.

"Women have always been allowed to be mystics and visionaries and that kind of thing. Whereas Pope Joan, by contrast, is a woman who wielded power, secular power."

Why are readers so shocked to find out about the story of Pope Joan?

Even if you think of her as nothing more than legend, you can compare her to another person whose story is certainly nothing more than legend--King Arthur. King Arthur's story is such a comfortable story, religiously, politically, that it has been advanced and promoted to the point where most people, at least in the United States, think of it as history.

Joan's story, because it's an uncomfortable story, religiously and politically, and because it raises all kinds of difficult issues, instead of being promoted to the point where people think of it as history, has been smothered and obliterated to the point where most Americans have never even heard of her. I hadn't when I came across her story by accident.

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