LOOKING FOR POPE JOAN

[BayCityProgressive]

Could a female Pope really have existed? I don't put anything past the Catholic Church...I consider myself more of a gnostic Christian and I believe the Catholic Church has hid many many things. This is now the subject of a best selling book and a movie is being produced. the book has sold over 2 million copies in Germany alone. Apparently this is common knowledge in Europe. Whether it is true or not it will make one hell of a movie. What's everyone else think???

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1453197&page=1

[politicat]

1. I've been following this for years...

First learned about her in a history class and kind of fell in love.

The absence of evidence doesn't mean that she really existed, nor does the evidence that does exist mean she did, either. In a world of slow communications and no independent journalism, there were a lot of rumors that went around that people took as truth and we historians now have to root out and make sense of.

90% of me wants to believe that she existed, and that we will someday find definitive evidence that she didn't die gruesomely in the streets of a miscarriage, that she just disappeared and that her writings will be found sewn into the binding of some manuscript on polishing ebony for crosses in some remote monastery in the middle east. That same 90% of me believes that any writings she did leave behind have already been scraped, if not destroyed, and they only way we are going to find them is the same way we found the Archimedes papers - computer aided enhancement.

90% of me believes that women of courage did what it took to get out of their ordained places and that yes, some disguised themselves as men. It's been more common that most of us realize throughout history (and the reverse) -- several of the pre-medieval graves that have been excavated in SE Russia contained bodies that were either entirely ambiguous with regards to pelvic structure or were at odds with the names of those who are recorded to be in those graves. Thus, for me, logic says that yes, women took on the roles and life-styles of men, and probably a few men with strong needs to be feminized took on the roles and life-styles of women.

The very empowerment of women that a female pope would have embodied is the 10% buzzkill. If you take the world view of the people of Rome at the time - that GOD prompts man to pick the right pope, that GOD speaks through the pope, that GOD would not allow someone to occupy the Throne of St. Peter who did not meet with GOD's approval - and then have them learn that the person they had picked was a woman... The logical response would not be to turn on her. It would be the opposite - to venerate and shout from every hilltop that GOD loves women, too.

And that's where I run into the problem with the legend. The world that Joan would have inhabited was a world before the doctrine of free will, so everything that happens is God's will. So if she existed, why did not people at least venerate her and make her a saint, a patron for women.... Because the gruesome miscarriage story has a rather tacked on, nasty feel to it that reminds me of Kitty Kelley more than the New York Times.

[DearAbby]

2. I had heard and studied some about this

I believe it may have happened. With the list of popes and anti popes it gets confusing. Rumor has it, it was the reason for the seatless throne.

A hole in the seat so the testies can be felt(?) to make sure. If I am not mistaken it was in the 6th century. Dark ages.

[Matariki]

7. this is what i heard in art history class when studying in Rome

however I have no idea how verifiable it is -

the seatless chair is above a grate in the floor and the Cardinals gather in the room below and ceremoniously utter the phrase (in latin) "yes he has balls".

I wish i knew if this were actually true or not because it cracks me up.

[genie_weenie]

3. A Pope Joan Movie was made in 1972

starring Olivia de Haviland and Liv Ullman. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0069110/

My understanding, of the Pope Joan legend, is alot of it grew out of the real life of a woman named Marozia. This was in the late 800s/early 900s Rome of course being reduced to barbarity, One of her husbands became Pope Sergius II (904-911), her son was Pope John XI (931-936) her grandson was John XII (955-964)

[Justpat]

4. In the book The Uppity Women of Medieval Times

by Vicki Leon, there is a piece on Pope Joan.

According to the book, "Between 855 and 1300, legend has it, several bold females went for the big miter. Joan,
the first wanna-be, came from a German-English background, and got to pope city via Athens, where she'd gone
with her lover to study. Her awesome knowledge of Scriptures supposedly got her elected Pope John VIII in 854,
and two years in office, Joan experienced a miracle. Unfortunately, it was the miracle of birth-and it happened
while on procession along a busy Roman street. Promptly stoned to death, the pregnant pope made a great bad
example for centuries. Various chroniclers in Joan's time vouched for her existence, but her historicity has been
quarreled over ever since."

This chapter goes on to say that there was a Pope Manfreda of Milan who was supposedly the first in a line of
female popes but says that she and her followers were persecuted to the max and Manfreda was sent to the stake
in Lombardy.

It goes on to say: "The post-pope trauma caused by these impertinent females brought about a new open air policy:
now papal candidates had to sit naked above a hole in the floor; from the view room below, the selection committee
would holler joyfully, "He has testicles, and they hang just fine. (It sounds a bit more dignified in Latin.)"

[knitter4democracy]

5. Don't know.

I do know that the Eastern Orthodox Church used to have deaconesses until the 1300s and that we have a committee working on how to bring them back. We also have groups looking into historical references of women priests, but I doubt they'll get all that far for another hundred years or longer.

I wouldn't be suprised, as God works in mysterious ways.

[HereSince1628]

6. I think the Religion/Theology forum had a several threads on this

when the show ran a month or so ago.