The Fake “Pope Joan” Who Mythically Dressed as a Boy to Become a Cardinal and Then a Pope
Amongst Italians Who Have Increasingly Lost Their Faith in Recent Years
The Film Has Risen to No. 3 at the Box Office
The Myth of a Female Pope Originated in a Mediaeval Latin Quip
Long since disproven as a fake, a motion picture on “Pope Joan” has titillated Italians to the point of making the film the third-highest-rated film at the box office. The mediaeval myth concerns an Englishwoman who purportedly dressed herself as a man and became the first “female pope.” Johanna Wokalek stars as Johanna von Ingelheim, who was exposed when she gave birth during a procession though the streets of Rome. The American actor John Goodman stars as Pope Sergius, and David Wenham, an Australian last seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as her lover, a knight named Gerold.
According to the myth, “Pope Joan” disguised herself as a boy in order to enter a Benedictine monastery, calling herself Brother John Anglicus. She became a cardinal and was eventually elected pope in 853 after the death of Pope Leo IV, posing as pope for nearly three years before her deception was found out. The Romans, shocked and angered to find that the Holy “Father” was in fact an “Unholy Mother,” stoned her to death. Amongst Italians who have increasingly lost their Faith in recent years, the film reached the top 10 of most popular movies in Italian cinemas during the week of June 13, 2010. [Some information for this Commentary was contributed by the U.K. Telegraph.]
It turns out that the myth arose when someone was trying to make a play on words in Latin. The narrow Roman street, where Joan was supposed to have been exposed as a woman in the papal procession, is called the Vicus Papissa, named after the wealthy family of Giovanni Pape. Years after the Papes were gone, a visitor joked that Vicus Papissa meant “the street of the woman pope [papissa]” instead of what it really means, “the street of Mrs. Pape”!
Source: Traditio
