Pope Joan

This work by Lawrence Durrell is a 1954 translation of the Greek Papissa Joanna of Emmannuel Royidis which was written in 1886.

Joanna’s story begins with her humble antecedents – the daughter of an unnamed English monk (who is never named) and a buxom Saxon goose girl called Judith. Her father-monk is inspired to leave England and preach in the land of the great Charles (whom I am presuming to be Charlemagne), which he did as a wandering missionary for eight years until his “every hope of paternity” was cruelly removed. Whether through miraculously conception or rape, Joanna was born sometime in the year 818. And eight years later, following the passing of Joanna’s mother and a curious incident with a bare-breasted Abbess, Joanna’s father once more embarks on the missionary trail, this time with Joanna to accompany him.

We next come across the 16-year-old Joanna – the epitomy of young womanhood – encountering two saints, who not only regale her with tales of their ‘earthly” lives but provide her with a vision in which she finds herself ‘seated on such a high throne that her head, which wore a triple crown, almost touched the clouds; “. Joanna has the first image of herself in such an exulted position. And by the end of Part One we are travelling towards a convent at Mosbach dedicated to (and run by) St Blittrude.

Part Two encompasses: Joanna’s journey to the convent (fraught with danger as befits any worthy heroine); her time in the convent; her first meeting and developing relationship with one Father Frumentius culminating in her flight from the convent with her lover to the hermitage of Fulda where both as accepted as “monks”. Their relationship continues until they are found out and are forced to flee.