Peter Costello looks at an enduring legend
A film about Pope Joan, the legendary woman said to have been elected to the Papacy in 855, has been premiered in Italy to the consternation of some in the Vatican, who see it as an attack on the church. The German producers of the film are being provocative, but the officials of the Curia have risen to the bait.
The film draws on an extraordinary medieval legend. Directed by SÎnke Wortmann and staring Johanna Wolalek as Joan, the screenplay is an adaptation of the 1996 novel by American academic Donna Cross, a ''best-seller'' in Germany.
Her ''inspirational'' heroine was likened by one critic to a Bronte character, a prefiguring of the modern liberated woman. She suggests that in the patriarchal Middle Ages an intellectual woman could flourish only as a fake male.
Fictional
That novel was not the first fictional treatment of the theme. The most celebrated is The Papess Joanne by the Greek writer Emmanuel Royidis, first published in Athens in 1866.
(Pictured Right: actress Johanna Wolalek as pope Joan)
An anti-clerical satire of the Orthodox establishment in Greece, it led to the excommunication of the author, but went on to become a classic of modern Greek literature. Translated into English in 1953 by Lawrence Durrell, it has also appeared in other languages, often with the author's long historical essay in defence of his thesis, which Durrell cut out.
But what is the historical truth of what the film portrays? As with many medieval legends the early sources are confused. The earliest accepted version is that of Marianus Scotus, an Irishman, writing around 1068 in Germany.
However, a much earlier historian Anastasius, who wrote a history of the Popes down to Nicholas I, says explicitly that 15 days after the death of Leo IV in 855, he was succeeded by Benedict III. No room there for a female Pope.
Extract
Some later copies of Anastasius, however, have inserted at this date an extract from a later historian Martinus Polonus, the Cistercian confessor to Gregory X.
He says that as a young English woman Joan disguised herself as a man and ran away with her learned lover. After wandering through Germany, she finally settled in Athens. She qualified as a clerical lawyer and achieved such renown that she moved to Rome, where after the death of Leo, she was elected Pope, taking the name of John.
However, she fell back into her earlier lax ways. To the scandal of the city, she collapsed in the street during a procession between the Coliseum and St Clement's church and was delivered of a child. Dying then, or later stoned to death (the tale varies), she was buried in shame after a reign of two years, five months and four days.
Bartolomeo Platina, in his celebrated 1479 history of the Popes, repeats the story on the authority of Martinus and others, adding however, that it was taken from uncertain and obscure authorities. ''I have inserted them briefly and simply, not to be charged with mulishness.''
So the legend was not, as some in Rome now seem to think, an invention of Protestant controversialists, but was spread by a string of Catholic chroniclers.
In fact, it was a Protestant historian David Blondel, in a thorough examination of the case published in Amsterdam in 1649, who blew the whole myth apart.
His conclusions have been generally accepted by modern historians. Little more has been added to the matter since.
It seems, however, that the legend was already in circulation in the 12th Century, long before Martinus. It was alluded to by a companion of St Dominic, Etienne de Bourbon de Belleville. He, however, places the affair in the year 1099.
Was the legend invented then? Dollinger in the 19th Century suggested it arose from a curious statue in a by-street in Rome, to which the folktales became attached, including, it was said, a prohibition on any Pope traversing it.
But in seeking the source of the legend, we should perhaps look not to Rome, or to England or Germany. Taking the hint from the place of Athens in the tale, we should look to the Orthodox East.
Leo IX, writing in 1053, stated he had heard, but could not believe, that in the Church of Constantinople not only eunuchs, but even a woman, had sat on the bishop's throne. Robert Bellarmine, too, thought the tale had come from Constantinople. It has been suggested that the effeminacy of Pope John VII (872-82) - near enough in time and name with the legendary Joan - in his weak dealings with the Orthodox gave rise to an Eastern idea of a womanly Pope in Rome. But these are only theories.
The attraction of the story to an anti-clerical like Royidis, or a feminist such as Ms Cross is clear enough. And in a day such as ours, where calls for women priests are heard from many controversialists, the story of Joan has for some an almost Arthurian appeal; the myth, so to speak, of ''a once and future'' female Pope.
But this whole rigmarole is not a folktale of the folk, but a legend of the learned. The story of Pope Joan lives not from mouth to mouth, but book to book. It belongs with that class of literary legends such Atlantis, the Holy Grail and the Lost Tribes of Israel. Despite the best debunking efforts of historians these legends live on.
And so the story of Pope Joan, moving from medieval myth to modern film, is likely to live on too. This being so, the best reaction of the authorities in Rome would be to ignore the whole matter, leaving history to historians and fictions to critics, and not to fall such easy prey to publicity seekers.
Peter Costello is Books Editor of The Irish Catholic.
