the afterlife of pope joan

the afterlife of pope joan

The Afterlife of Pope Joan Deploying the Popess Legend in Early Modern England Ann Arbor

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2006 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2009 2008 2007 2006 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rustici, Craig M., 1964 The afterlife of Pope Joan : deploying the Popess legend in early modern England /. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11544-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-11544-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Joan (Legendary Pope) 2. Church history Middle Ages, 600 1500. 3. Women History Middle Ages, 500 1500. 4. Popes Legends. 5. Catholic Church England History. I. Title. BX958.F2R87 2006 262'.13 dc22 2005026030

for my first teachers, charles and patricia, and my best collaborator, jean.

Acknowledgments I am indebted to several institutions and individuals for help in completing this project, and I apologize in advance to those whom I may have omitted due to limited space or faulty memory. Research leaves from Hofstra University enabled me to advance this work. I received assistance and access to invaluable resources from the staffs at several libraries and special collections departments: the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, State Library of Pennsylvania, Huntington Library, British Library, British Museum, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, as well as libraries at Hofstra University, Dickinson College, Messiah College, Iona College, Princeton University, and the Catholic University of America. In particular, I am indebted to Charlotte Henneberger for extraordinary and extraordinarily gracious assistance. Readers of this book s afterword will quickly recognize that I could not have pursued its analysis of the 1972 lm Pope Joan were it not for the generosity of the movie s screenwriter, John Briley, and assistant producer, Daniel Unger, who answered my inquiries and provided copies of the shooting script. A portion of chapter 2 was published as the essay Ceste Nouvelle Papesse : Elizabeth I and the Specter of Pope Joan, in Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003). An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as Gender, Disguise, and Usurpation: The Female Prelate and the Popish Successor, in Modern Philology 98.2 ( 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved). I am grateful to Ashgate and Modern Philology for permission to reproduce that material here. I have bene ted from insightful responses to presentations and papers from audiences at Hofstra University and participants in several Shakespeare Association of America seminars led by Lynn Enterline, Carole Levin, and

viii Acknowledgments Christina Luckyj. Conversations with Lisa Merrill have helped me better understand how scholarly writing nds an audience. Jerome Delamater has graciously answered my queries regarding lm studies, and several colleagues have advised me on translation challenges: George Greaney, Sabine Loucif, Ilaria Marchesi, and Gail Schwab. Others Scott Harshbarger, John Klause, Kevin LaGrandeur, Sabina Sawhney, and Shari Zimmerman have offered valuable comments on draft chapters; Lee Zimmerman has been especially generous in sharing his talents as a critical thinker and attentive reader, thus enabling me to make the writing in several chapters more clear and forceful. I am also deeply indebted to LeAnn Fields for the con dence she placed in this project. I am especially grateful to my father, Charles, arguably the most poorly compensated research assistant in America. Finally, I offer loving thanks to Jean for her patient support and to Liam for giving me such good reasons to look at things afresh.

Contents Introduction 1 1. Debating Joan Images, Ceremony, and the Gelded Text 40 2. Comparing Joan The Whore of Babylon and the Virgin Queen 62 3. Diagnosing Joan The Hermaphrodite Hypothesis 85 4. Canonizing Joan Necromancy, Papacy, and the Reformation of the Book 106 5. Playing Joan Popish Plots in the Theatre Royal 126 Afterword 153 Notes 159 Works Cited 181 Index 199