Pope Joan

Pope Joan

by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Crown Publishers, 1996, Fiction, 422 p

Joan is born to a tyrannical church leader in 814 Frankland.  Joan has an eager mind and an academic aptitude in a time when women were expected to only keep house and care for children.  She convinces her brother to teach her how to read, and catches the eye of a progressive scholar who teachers her Latin and Greek.  When her brother is killed in a Viking raid, Joan decides to cut her hair and assume her brother's identity so that she can continue her studies at a monastery.  There she learns healing lore and her medical skills eventually lead her to become the physician to the Pope.  Fate further takes her hand and leads her to be elected to the Papacy.

I found this title on our library's "Good Reads" book list and couldn't resist.  It is a fictionalization of a real historical legend that there once was a woman who briefly became Pope.  Many scholars discount the story and the Catholic church denies it, but some scholars argue that there are enough historical clues to make it plausible. The novel has many elements that I really enjoyed.  Joan is a complex and endearingly flawed character.  Her relationship with Gerold is likewise complex and believable. I am fascinated by that time period, which the author  has carefully researched and (in an end note) calls the darkest of the dark ages.  I am a bit of a medieval humanities geek, but I think a lot of people who like historical fiction would enjoy this book.