Pope Joan, Donna Woolfolk Cross
Pope Joan, Donna Woolfolk Cross
4 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Pope Joan

Author: Donna Woolfolk Cross

Narrator: Barbara Rosenblat

Unabridged: 19 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/16/2009


Synopsis

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.

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. 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. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak—and his identity—and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom—wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price …

“Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama—love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets. Cross has written an engaging book.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on August 22, 2024

Powerful, moving and inspiring! POPE JOAN is the amazing story of a woman born out of her time - an intelligent, ambitious survivor who uses her wits and womanly nature to live in an utterly ruthless, sexist man's world and rise to the highest pinnacle of her beliefs and her calling. Her courage, her......more

Goodreads review by Sammy on June 12, 2007

Before I started reading this book I gave a brief summary to some of my friends who saw that I had just bought it and were wondering about it. That got us into a heated discussion about how completely outrageous it is for a woman to dress up as a man. How it's pretty much impossible to get away with......more

Goodreads review by Annette on July 01, 2021

Pope Joan is seen by some as pure legend and some argue that “history provides many examples of deliberate falsification of records” in order to cover such historical figure as female Pope. Nevertheless, what this book offers is a vivid portrait of the harsh reality for women in the Middle Ages and......more