His wife, Gudrun, is a young beauty to whom he was attracted beyond his will-and he hates her for showing him his weakness. His piety does not extend to his family members, especially the females. Her father is a canon, filled with holy zeal and capable of unconscionable cruelty.

It is the harshest winter in living memory when Joan is born to an English father and a Saxon mother. The time is 814, the place is Ingelheim, a Frankland village.

Instead, through her intelligence, indomitability and courage, she ascended to the throne of Rome as Pope John Anglicus. One of the most controversial women of history is brought to brilliant life in Donn Woolfolk Cross's tale of Pope Joan, a girl whose origins should have kept her in squalid domesticity. An enthralling, scholarly historical novel.' 'Brings the savage ninth century vividly to life in all its alien richness. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom-wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak-and his identity-and enters the monastery of Fulda. Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.īrilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. She is the legend that will not die–-Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. In this international bestseller and basis for the 2009 movie of the same name, Donna Woolfolk Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.įor a thousand years her existence has been denied. Cross has written an engaging book.' –Los Angeles Times Book Review ' Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama – love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross