Pope Joan: further reading
A week ago I gave an hour's talk on the medieval legend of Pope Joan (see post on EKU@MIT). At the class I gave a handout listing a few books for further reading on the subject. At least a couple people who weren't at the class have asked since then, so I post this list. NB: this is not a full bibliography by any means, just a few titles that have something to recommend each of them.
Stanford, Peter. The Legend of Pope Joan: in search of the truth. (Henry Holt, 1999; pub. in Great Britain as The She-Pope: a quest for the truth behind the mystery of Pope Joan, 1998) A fairly lightweight treatment, at least in scholarly terms; Stanford really wants to believe in Pope Joan, but can't quite bring himself to. The subtext of him working out his troubled relationship with the Catholic church sometimes gets in the way of his main text. I include this mainly because it's the book that turned me on to the subject.
Boureau, Alain. The Myth of Pope Joan / trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. (Chicago, 2001) Dismisses the possibility of an historical Pope Joan a priori, but goes into quite deep scholarly treatment of parts of the subject, like the Testing for Testicles ritual, and the history of the Gugliemites. Unfortunately, writes in the French tradition of historiography that favors using the most opaque metaphors the writer possibly can.
Pardoe, Rosemary and Darrell. The Female Pope: the mystery of Pope Joan. (Crucible, 1988) Midway in scholarship between the two previous; comes up with some novel interpretations that are either left-field or common sense, I can't always tell which. Out of print, but fortunately available online.
And what the hey, there's always Wikipedia - I don't think this includes anything I didn't say in the class, but then this post here is already for people who weren't there.
Stanford, Peter. The Legend of Pope Joan: in search of the truth. (Henry Holt, 1999; pub. in Great Britain as The She-Pope: a quest for the truth behind the mystery of Pope Joan, 1998) A fairly lightweight treatment, at least in scholarly terms; Stanford really wants to believe in Pope Joan, but can't quite bring himself to. The subtext of him working out his troubled relationship with the Catholic church sometimes gets in the way of his main text. I include this mainly because it's the book that turned me on to the subject.
Boureau, Alain. The Myth of Pope Joan / trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. (Chicago, 2001) Dismisses the possibility of an historical Pope Joan a priori, but goes into quite deep scholarly treatment of parts of the subject, like the Testing for Testicles ritual, and the history of the Gugliemites. Unfortunately, writes in the French tradition of historiography that favors using the most opaque metaphors the writer possibly can.
Pardoe, Rosemary and Darrell. The Female Pope: the mystery of Pope Joan. (Crucible, 1988) Midway in scholarship between the two previous; comes up with some novel interpretations that are either left-field or common sense, I can't always tell which. Out of print, but fortunately available online.
And what the hey, there's always Wikipedia - I don't think this includes anything I didn't say in the class, but then this post here is already for people who weren't there.