THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: A new film based on the legend of Pope Joan – an Englishwoman who purportedly disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female pontiff in history – has sparked debate in the Roman Catholic Church.
The film has fuelled disagreements over whether Pope Joan really existed or, as the Church has always maintained, she was a mythical figure used by the early Protestant Church to discredit and embarrass Rome.
For a Church that even in the 21st century remains staunchly opposed to the idea of female priests, a female Pope was anathema.
To make matters worse, the deception is said to only have been found out when Joan gave birth during a procession through the streets of Rome.
The medieval epic stars a German actress, Johanna Wokalek, as the female Pope, the American actor John Goodman as Pope Sergius and David Wenham, an Australian last seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as her lover, a knight named Gerold.
It is based on a highly contentious story – that in the ninth century, a baby girl was born in Germany to English parents, who had moved to the Continent as Christian missionaries.
According to the legend, she grew up to be an unusually intelligent young girl and, frustrated by a lack of opportunity for women, disguised herself as a boy in order to enter a Benedictine monastery, calling herself Brother John Anglicus.
She studied for a while in Greece before arriving in Rome, where she so impressed the Vatican with her abilities that she became a cardinal and was eventually elected pontiff in 853, after the death of Pope Leo IV.
She supposedly ruled as head of the Church for nearly three years, before her deception was found out. >>> Nick Squires, in Rome | Sunday, June 20, 2010
