| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 612.1 | | UHUH::REINKE | Formerly Flaherty | Tue Mar 02 1993 09:14 | 4 |
| Wow, Dorian, that's amazing. I'd never heard of Pope Joan before,
but would also be interested in learning more.
Ro
|
| 612.2 | evidence but not strong evidence | CVG::THOMPSON | Radical Centralist | Tue Mar 02 1993 09:41 | 10 |
| A story I've heard a number of times. If true, it happened during
a particularly turbulent time for the Roman church. Church historians
claim it's not true last I heard. (But they would the skeptics say. :-))
Stranger things have happened but it makes better myth than history.
The story does come up regularly in discussions involving feminist
women arguing for more (or different) involvement for women in church
governance.
Alfred
|
| 612.3 | | HURON::MYERS | | Tue Mar 02 1993 10:57 | 13 |
| For what it's worth, my source shows Benedict III (the alleged Joan
was a Benedictine) as reigning from 855 to 858. Benedict was followed
by St. Nicholas I (the great), from 858 to 867.
Potentially offensive material to follow...
Personally, I think this myth was started because Benedict was a bit
"light in the loafers", so to say. I fringe group at the time tried to
cover up the fact that Benedict had a propensity to sing show tunes at
the most in appropriate times by spreading a rumor that Benedict was
really "Joan", a woman living incognito as a Benedictine monk. The
official record, however, chose to gloss over the entire affair.
|
| 612.4 | | SDSVAX::SWEENEY | Patrick Sweeney in New York | Tue Mar 02 1993 23:23 | 19 |
| re: .0 "Pope Joan" by Emmanuel Royidis, trans. by Lawrence Durrell.
I'm interested in seeing what sources Royidis used.
re: .2 What evidence do you have that there is truth to this myth?
858 AD was not a time of turbulence for the Church but a time of
ascendancy as the Holy Roman Empire had been founded but 58 years
earlier and there was a great deal of cooperation between the Pope and
the Emperor.
re: .3 Not only is this not the truth, but it isn't even the correct
expression of the myth. First of all it was Pope St. Leo IV who was
a Benedictine monk, not Benedict III. Next according to the myth, it
was a Pope elected as "John" who was discovered to be a woman, hence the
appellation "Joan".
There is no contemporaneous record of such a Pope. The papal election
of 858 is also an especially poor setting for such a myth as the
contemporaneous records of that period are complete and can't
reconciled with the myths of several centuries later.
|
| 612.5 | | HURON::MYERS | | Wed Mar 03 1993 08:50 | 18 |
| re .3
In the first half of my .3 I was suggesting that the myth of Joan being
a Benedictine may have been a corruption of fact that "Benedict" was
the name of the Pope during which time Joan was alleged to have reigned
(856-?). I can see, however, that my poor sentence construction could
lead to ambiguous interpretation. I believe that the papal names and
reigning date are correct as listed.
I regret that I omitted adding 53 requisite "smiley faces" (i.e. :^) )
to the latter half of my .3. I should have been aware by now that
humor is not always smiled upon (Get it! Humor... smiled upon..?
That's called a pun.) Let me say, for the record, that I know nothing
of the Pope Joan myth; nor do I care. I was only engaging in a little
impish jesting...
Eric
|
| 612.6 | | LGP30::FLEISCHER | without vision the people perish (381-0899 ZKO2-2/T63) | Wed Mar 03 1993 09:38 | 10 |
| re Note 612.5 by HURON::MYERS:
> Let me say, for the record, that I know nothing
> of the Pope Joan myth; nor do I care. I was only engaging in a little
> impish jesting...
There are certain subjects about which one might wish to show
greater delicacy in one's humor.
Bob
|