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2 results

  • 7 - The Myth of Pope Joan

  • from Part II - Women, Gender, Sexuality
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, University of Rhode Island, Robert A. Ventresca, King’s University College at Western University, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Florida Gulf Coast University, Miles Pattenden, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Papacy
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 221-245

  • Summary

    During the thirteenth century, stories began to circulate in Rome of the existence of a female pope. What likely began as popular satire was eagerly picked up by monastic chroniclers who had their own axes to grind. For the papacy, the existence of a female pope – most commonly called Joan – only became problematic after the Reformation, when Protestants saw an opportunity to use these medieval (and therefore Catholic) authorities to challenge the papal apostolic succession and identify the papacy with the biblical Whore of Babylon. The arguments employed by both sides are hugely revealing of how Catholics and Protestants saw themselves and each other. More recently, Pope Joan has moved into the realm of fiction: in film and literature she became a feminist icon. Transgender readings – Joan as man in a woman’s body, rather than a woman in a man’s garment – are bound to inspire new interpretations of her story.

Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation
  • Roasting Rome
  • Sarah Emanuel
  • Published online:
    12 December 2019
    Print publication:
    09 January 2020
  • Empire-critical and postcolonial readings of Revelation are now commonplace, but scholars have not yet put these views into conversation with Jewish trauma and cultural survival strategies. In this book, Sarah Emanuel positions Revelation within its ancient Jewish context. Proposing a new reading of Revelation, she demonstrates how the text's author, a first century CE Jewish Christ-follower, used humor as a means of resisting Roman power. Emanuel uses multiple critical lenses, including humor, trauma, and postcolonial theory, together with historical-critical methods. These approaches enable a deeper understanding of the Jewishness of the early Christ-centered movement, and how Jews in antiquity related to their cultural and religious identity. Emanuel's volume offers new insights and fills a gap in contemporary scholarship on Revelation and biblical scholarship more broadly.