Customer Reviews

Pope Joan

5 star:		(232)
4 star:		(79)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Some have heard of the infamous Pope Joan, the woman who disguised herself as a man, and achieved the highest status of the time...The Pope, but many have not. Donna Woolfolk Cross has brought the legend of Pope Joan to life. The novel is written in a fictional sense, but weaves many of the little known facts into the tale. You decide for yourself...

Joan was considered a very abnormal woman who's desire to learn was ungodly and considered sinful. A woman's place was to be subserviant to men. The reader will experience the struggle and conflict that Joan experienced as she embarked on her journey of higher actualization. To say that Joan was immune from seeking and wanting love would be untrue. The reader will follow Joan as she reconciles her feeling for her one true love.

The characters have been created with amazing detail and are a very good representation of the time. One can create a visual image of the atire; the struggle to meet basic needs; and mostly the status and order that prevailed among the classes.

I highly recommend Pope Joan, both to the individual and to any book club. This novel was truly engrossing, it offers a different perspective than the traditional patriarical view of past times. Pope Joan will spark conversations, heighten your awareness, and remain in your memory for a very long time.

I just finished this book and loved it! I was alittle skeptical to continue when I first started it as I am easily upset about references to torture and medieval lifestyles. I am so glad that I continued reading. Unfortunately, the scenes of torture and representations of women as being lowlier than dogs was fact in this era (ninth century) and an important part of the story. They provided the basis for understanding what drove Joan to make the decision to live her life as a man. She was a woman filled with a passion for learning and exploring all that life had to offer the men of her time, but was forbidden for women to know. She was brave in the face of danger, had a keen and intelligent mind, and yet always exhibited an underlying femininity as she nurtured the sick, the poor and the children and when she spoke of her love, Gerold. She not only wanted to better her own life, but was committed to helping those around her as well.

I am not Catholic and was completely unaware of her so-called legend. It is still debated as to whether or not she existed; some believe that the Catholic Church has deliberately removed her from any records of the time to avoid having to deal with the embarrassment of her rise to be Pope (the author spends a short time at the end of the book presenting this debate). I, for one, want to believe she existed. She represents all that is good in people and proves that we can attain our goals if we truly believe in them.

Definitely, recommended reading!

I really did want to like this book. The author is a good storyteller, does a wonderful job of evoking a real sense of the period (no shirking of historical research here), and the idea of a female pope is a fascinating one. One can imagine that spiritual women denied access to the church, or clever women denied access to learning, might indeed have sought to escape the confines of their gender.

But somewhere between Joan/John outarguing Greek philosophers, becoming a famous healer, inventing intinction, miraculously surviving beatings/viking raids/plague, inventing modern courtroom procedure (witnesses, questioning), establishing orphanages, saving peasants from floods, cleverly applying her knowledge of hydraulic engineering to save the Vatican from an invading Frankish army, saving the pope from [...], exposing ecclesiastical corruption, and thwarting a raging city fire, I found it harder and harder to keep suspending disbelief. This Pope Joan is a liberal, feminist, secular humanist, Dark Ages superhero rather than a living, breathing, believable woman of her time. The author takes such pains to eliminate anachronism in all other aspects of the novel: perhaps that is why John/Joan's highly anachronistic behavior & beliefs seem so grating in contrast.

John/Joan's enamorata Gerold is also a disappointment. There is no attempt at character development here. Think Ken to Joan's Barbie, Ned to Joan's Nancy Drew ... the tall, lusty, handsome, resourceful hero of any one of a thousand cheesy romance novels.

Finally, I was disappointed by the author's overreliance on deus ex machina (sp?). Far too often she relies on improbable plot twists, timely intercessions and amazing coincidences to move her plot forward. I don't want to spoil the plot for potential readers - but I will say that Joan always seems to be behind the right wall when there is a useful conversation to be overheard, Viking raids have never been more conveniently timed, and old friends/allies have a way of miraculously appearing just when they are most needed.

I guess I'm saying that while this is an entertaining book, it is certainly not a great book. Be prepared to enjoy it for the story & the history, but not necessarily for the literary merit.

Having received the greatest esteem from my reading peers, Pope Joan was a must read for me. From the onset of this tale I was enthralled. It delves into a subject that has long been a mystery in the Roman Catholic Church. Was a woman ever Pope?

Woolfolk-Cross weaves a tale of a headstrong, intelligent young woman who will let no man stand in her way--- even if she has to conceal her true identity. Joan is faced with many obstacles, but uses her womanly nature to her advantage. Woolfolk-Cross paints a portrait that is difficult not to see. The essence of the time period-one extremely difficult for women-is very clear.

Joan is a woman blessed with strength, courage, and a lust for knowledge. Her determination to be a strong and independent woman is encouraging and translates even to today's world.

Regardless of your religion, or your notion of religion this book is certain to appeal to you. It is not a book strictly for the religious, it is far from that. It is a tale of strength, which translates to all facets of life. Woolfolk-Cross has written a masterpiece, and a highly-researched one at that. Pope Joan exceeded my loftiest expectations.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

POPE JOAN is part historical fiction, part epic romance. It's a novel that is based on the legend of the woman who, for a few years, became Pope of the Roman Catholic Church back in the 9th century. In this version of the story, Joan is born to a Canon (member of the clergy) and a German heathen who was forced to convert to Catholicism when her village was pillaged and captured by the Roman Catholics. At an early age, against her father's wishes Joan learns to read and write, and is favored by Aesculapius, a travelling bishop of the Greek Church, who encourages Joan's reading abilities and eventually finds a way to continue giving her lessons.

She is taken to a school along with her brother to be further educated. Because she cannot live with the boys in their dormitory, she and her brother are invited to live with a nobleman named Gerrold and his family, and her life becomes intertwined with Gerrold's from that day forward. She is only 13 when she meets him, and he is twenty-five, but Gerrold is attracted to her, to his wife's dismay.

After her brother dies in a Viking attack that kills many others, including Gerrold's wife, Joan runs away and decides to take her brother's place in the monastery where he was to receive an education, and in order to do so she disguises herself as a young boy. From this point, she lives her public life as a boy, and later as a man, because as a woman she would never be able to live the life she had always dreamed about. As a woman, she was expected to be married at the proper age and to bear children for her husband. There were no other options for a woman of her day. But Joan had ambition and knew that the life of a woman was not for her.

Donna Woolfolk Cross tells a wonderful tale in the story of Pope Joan's short life and how she was able to work her way up to the top position of the Church. Her life was extraordinary by any standards and how she was able to fool the public and become Pope is close to a miracle. POPE JOAN is an ambitious novel, telling the fictitious tale of a woman that history has not quite determined whether she exists or not.

I first found this novel after seeing a documentary on the myth or truth of Pope Joan, and found that I wanted to know more of this amazing story. What I found was a well crafted and entertaining historical novel, and if I am none the wiser as to whether the story is truth or fiction, I am still well satisfied with the adventure and the characters.

It is a richly detailed story of medieval life, and a story of a strong young woman with formidable intellectual abilities, stifled by her womanhood in a male dominated world. In an effort to gain the education she so badly wants, she takes on the persona of her slain brother, and rises through the church ranks to that of Pope.

It may be a fanciful story, and it may not be. They say that truth is stranger than fiction. But in the absence of anything but shreds of myth, the story makes for very good fiction.

Our Reading Group recently read and discussed Pope Joan. The author, Donna Woolfolk Cross joined us via telephone for our discussion Everyone agreed that it was our "best ever" and Pope Joan our favorite book so far (we've been meeting monthly for over three years and this is the first book that everyone liked.) Some of us walk together in the mornings and we were still discussing it throughout our walk the next morning.
Having Donna join us was so informative - not only about the book and the period of history in which it is set, but also about the process of writing and publishing.
I won't give a synopsis of the book since that is readily available elsewhere but I will share that we found this book gave us a lot to discuss and brought to life a period of history about which we knew little.

Taking the legend of Pope Joan as a seed, Cross has written a plausible and very readable tale. It is a tale to strike terror and pride into the heart of any modern woman of intellect, for it is the story of an intelligent woman - born in the times when women were property, chattels, strictly limited in the roles they could play in society - who breaks free to attain one of the greatest positions of power in her world.

Joan is exposed to learning only by accident, through her brother's tutor. She must defy an abusive father, and a mother who would limit her for her own safety, in order to follow her compulsion to learn more. When her brother dies, she daringly takes his robes, and takes up his identity in order to go further in her studies, and in the church.

This is a well-told and touching story. The veracity of the legends behind Pope Joan is questionable, but that is irrelevant. IF Pope Joan was real, this is how it COULD have happened. And in that spirit, it is extremely well-done. A very satisfying book.

When I read historical fiction, I expect a story that will take me to a real time and place, yet infuse it with invention and a bit of fantasy. Pope Joan does just that. It fills in many of the questions about how life might have been for a woman in this exceptional situation. All the while I felt the tale was very believable. While some readers might find aspects of this story to be somewhat sensational, I feel this book balanced the history and education very well with an invented tale of what-might-have-been.

I'm truly greedy with my 5-star ratings, so don't let this 4-star rating fool you - Pope Joan came very close to getting a 5! I was in a bit of a reading slump and this is the only book that could pull me out of it, I finished the majority of it in one weekend.

Read about Joan Anglicus, living in 9th century Rome, a time and place where women were nothing more than the property of men, considered unable to think with any amount of intelligence or logic. Realizing that she will never achieve her dreams as a woman, she leaves a suffocating situation at home, disguises herself as a man and, against all odds, rises in the church to achieve the position of Pope.

This novel has adventure, a bit of romance (not too much, thank goodness), and best of all, the ability to sweep you away back to this much different time and place. Highly recommended.