Pope Joan (60 page)

In the weeks since her coronation, she had sensed Gerold’s growing unhappiness. It was difficult for them both, being near each other all the time. She, at least, had her work, a clear sense of mission and purpose. But Gerold was bored and restless. Joan knew this without his having to tell her; they had never needed speech between them to know what the other was feeling.

When Gerold came to her, she laid out her idea for the rebuilding of the Marcian aqueduct.

His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Near Tivoli, the aqueduct runs underground, tunneling through a series of hills. If that section has fallen into decay, it will not be easy to repair.”

Joan smiled as she saw his mind already beginning to engage with the idea, anticipating the problems involved.

“If anyone can do it, you can.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Gerold’s eyes met hers in a look of unmistakable longing.

She felt herself respond to him. But she dared not let her feelings show. To acknowledge their intimacy, even here in private, would be to court disaster. Matter-of-factly she replied, “I can think of nothing that would be of greater benefit to the people.”

He looked away. “Very well, then. Mind you, I’m not promising anything. I’ll look into it, see what’s possible. I’ll do all I can to see the aqueduct restored to working order.”

“That’s all I ask,” she said.

S
HE
was coming to understand in an altogether new way what it meant to be Pope. Though nominally a position of great power, it was actually one of great obligation. Her time was completely taken up with the burdensome round of liturgical duties. On Palm Sunday, she blessed and distributed palm branches in front of St. Peter’s. On Holy Thursday, she washed the feet of the poor and served a meal to them with her own hands. On the Feast of St. Anthony she stood before the Cathedral of Sancta Maria Maggiore and sprinkled holy water on the oxen, horses, and mules that had been brought by their owners to be blessed. On the third Sunday after Advent, she laid her hands upon each of the candidates brought forward to be ordained as priests, deacons, or bishops.

There was also the daily mass to lead. On certain days, this became a stational mass, preceded by a procession through the city to the titular church in which the service would be held, stopping along the route to hear petitioners; the procession and service took most of the day. There were over ninety stational masses, including the Marian feasts, the ember days, Christ Mass, Septuagesima and Sexagesima Sundays, and most of the Sundays and ferias in Lent.

There were feast days honoring Saints Peter, Paul, Lawrence,
Agnes, John, Thomas, Luke, Andrew, and Anthony, as well as the Nativity, the Annunciation, and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. These were fixed or immovable feasts, meaning that they fell on the same day each year, like Christ Mass and Epiphany. Oblation, the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair, the Circumcision of Christ, the Nativity of John the Baptist, Michaelmas, All Saints’, and the Exaltation of the Cross were also fixed feasts. Easter, the holiest day of the Christian year, was a movable feast; its place in the calendar followed the time of the ecclesiastical full moon, as did its “satellite” holidays, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Ascension Day, and Pentecost.

Each of these Christian holidays was observed with at least four days of celebration: the vigil, or eve of the feast; the feast itself; the morrow, or day following; and the octave, or eighth day subsequent. All told, there were over one hundred and seventy-five Christian festival days, given over to elaborate and time-consuming ceremonial.

All of this gave Joan very little time to actually govern, or do the things she deeply cared about: bettering the lot of the poor and improving the education of the clergy.

I
N AUGUST
, the arduous liturgical routine was interrupted by a synod. Sixty-seven prelates attended, including all the
suburbicarii
, or provincial bishops, as well as four Frankish bishops sent by the Emperor Lothar.

Two of the issues addressed at this synod held particular interest for Joan. The first was intinction, the practice of bestowing Communion by dipping the eucharistic bread into the wine, rather than partaking of them separately. In the twenty years since Joan had introduced the idea at Fulda as a way of preventing the spread of disease, it had become so popular that in Frankland it was now almost universal custom. The Roman clergy, who were of course unaware of Joan’s connection with intinction, regarded the novel practice with suspicion.

“It is a transgression of divine law,” the Bishop of Castrum argued indignantly. “For the Holy Book clearly states that Christ gave His Body and Blood
separately
to His disciples.”

There were nods of agreement all around.

“My lord Bishop speaks truly,” Pothos, the Bishop of Trevi, said. “The practice has no precedent among the writings of the Fathers, and therefore must be condemned.”

“Should we condemn an idea simply because it is new?” Joan asked.

“In all things we should be guided by the wisdom of the ancients,” Pothos answered gravely. “The only truth of which we can be sure is that which has been vouchsafed in the past.”

“Everything that is old was once new,” Joan pointed out. “The new always precedes the old. Is it not foolish to scorn that which precedes and cherish that which follows?”

Pothos’s brow furrowed as his mind wrestled with this complex dialectic. Like most of his colleagues, he had no training in classical argument and debate; he was comfortable only when quoting authority.

A lengthy discussion followed. Joan could, of course, have imposed her will by decree, but she preferred persuasion to tyranny. In the end the bishops were won over by her reasoning. The practice of intinction would continue in Frankland, at least for the present.

The next issue to be addressed was of deep personal interest to Joan because it involved her old friend Gottschalk, the oblate monk whose freedom she had once helped to win. According to the report of the Frankish bishops, he was again in serious trouble. Joan was saddened by this news but not especially surprised; Gottschalk was a man who courted unhappiness as ardently as a lover pursues his mistress.

Now he stood accused of the serious crime of heresy. Raban Maur, formerly Abbot of Fulda, since promoted to Archbishop of Mainz, had gotten wind of some radical theories Gottschalk had been preaching regarding predestination. Seizing the opportunity to wreak revenge upon his old nemesis, the archbishop had ordered Gottschalk imprisoned and savagely beaten.

Joan frowned. The cruelty with which supposedly pious men like Raban treated their fellow Christians never ceased to astound her. Pagan Norsemen aroused less fury in them than a Christian believer who stepped the slightest bit aside from the strict doctrines of the Church.
Why
, she wondered,
do we always reserve our worst hatred for our own?

“What is the specific nature of this heresy?” she asked Wulfram, the leader of the Frankish bishops.

“First,” Wulfram said, “the monk Gottschalk asserts that God has foreordained all men to either salvation or perdition. Second, that Christ did not die on the cross for all men, but only for the elect. And lastly, that fallen man can do no good apart from grace, nor exercise free will for anything but evil.”

That sounds like Gottschalk
, Joan thought. A confirmed pessimist,
he would naturally gravitate to a theory that predestined man for doom. But there was nothing heretical, or even especially new, about his ideas. St. Augustine himself had said exactly as much in his two great works
De civitate Dei
and the
Enchiridion.

No one in the room appeared to recognize this, however. Though all reverenced the name of Augustine, evidently none had taken the trouble to actually read his works.

Nirgotius, Bishop of Anagni, rose to speak. “This is wicked and sinful apostasy,” he said. “For it is well known that God’s will predestines the elect but not the condemned.”

This reasoning was seriously flawed, as predestining the one group inevitably implied predestining the other. But Joan did not point this out, for she also was troubled by Gottschalk’s preaching. There was a danger in leading people to believe they could not earn their own salvation by avoiding sin and trying to act justly. After all, why should anyone trouble to do good works if Heaven’s roll was already made up?

She said, “I concur with Nirgotius. God’s grace is not a predestining choice, but the overflowing power of His love, which suffuses all things that exist.”

The bishops received this warmly, for it accorded well with their own thinking. Unanimously they voted to refute Gottschalk’s theories. At Joan’s instigation, however, they also included a condemnation of Archbishop Raban for his “harsh and unchristian” treatment of the erring monk.

Forty-two canons were passed by this synod, dealing mostly with the reform of ecclesiastical discipline and education. At the end of the week, the assembly was adjourned. All agreed that it had gone very well, and that Pope John had presided with unusual distinction. The Romans were especially proud to be represented by a spiritual leader of such superior intellect and learning.

T
HE
goodwill Joan accrued from the synod did not, however, last very long. The following month, the entire ecclesiastical community was jarred to its foundations when she announced her intention to institute a school for women. Even those of the papal party who had supported Joan’s candidacy were shocked: what manner of Pope had they elected?

Jordanes, the secundicerius, confronted Joan publicly on the matter during the weekly meeting of the optimates.

“Holiness,” he said, “you do great injury in seeking to educate women.”

“How so?” she asked.

“Surely you know, Holiness, that the size of a woman’s brain and her uterus are inversely proportionate; therefore, the more a girl learns, the less likely she will ever bear children.”

Better barren of body than of mind
, Joan thought dryly, though she kept the thought to herself.

“Where have you read this?”

“It is common knowledge.”

“So common, apparently, that no one has taken the trouble to write it down so all may learn from it.”

“There is nothing to be learned from what is obvious to all. No one has written that wool comes from sheep, yet we all know it to be so.”

There were smiles on all sides. Jordanes preened, pleased with the cleverness of his argument.

Joan thought for a moment. “If what you say is true, how do you account for the extraordinary fertility of learned women such as Laeta, who corresponded with St. Jerome, and who, according to his report, was safely delivered of fifteen healthy children?”

“An aberration! A rare exception to the rule.”

“If I remember correctly, Jordanes, your own sister Juliana knows how to read and write.”

Jordanes was taken aback. “Only a little, Holiness. Just enough to allow her to keep the household accounts.”

“Yet according to your theory, even a little learning should have an adverse effect upon a woman’s fertility. How many children has Juliana borne?”

Jordanes flushed. “Twelve.”

“Another
aberration?”

There was a long, embarrassed silence.

“Obviously, Holiness,” Jordanes said stiffly, “your mind is quite made up on this matter. Therefore, I’ll say no more.”

And he didn’t, at least not in that assembly.

“I
T WAS
not wise to insult Jordanes publicly,” Gerold said afterward. “You may have driven him into the arms of Arsenius and the imperialists.”

“But he’s wrong, Gerold,” Joan said. “Women are as capable of learning as men. Am I not proof of that?”

“Of course. But you must give people time. The world can’t be remade in a day.”

“The world won’t ever be remade, if no one tries to remake it. Change must begin somewhere.”

“True,” Gerold allowed. “But not now, not here—not with you.”

“Why not?”

Because I love you
, he wanted to say,
and I’m afraid for you.

Instead he said, “You can’t afford to make enemies. Have you forgotten who and what you are? I can protect you from many things, Joan—but not from yourself.”

“Oh, come—surely it’s not as serious as all that. Will the world come to an end because a few women learn to read and write?”

“Your old tutor—Aesculapius, wasn’t it?—what was it you told me he once said to you?”

“Some ideas are dangerous.”

“Exactly.”

There was a long silence.

“Very well,” she conceded. “I’ll speak to Jordanes and do what I can to smooth his ruffled feathers. And I promise to be more politic in the future. But the school for women is too important; I won’t give up on it.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Gerold replied, smiling.

I
N SEPTEMBER
, the school for women was formally dedicated. St. Catherine’s School, Joan named it in loving memory of her brother Matthew, who had first acquainted her with the learned saint. Each time she passed the little building on the Via Merulana and heard the sound of female voices reciting, she thought her heart would split with joy.

She was as good as her word to Gerold. She was politic and courteous to Jordanes and the other optimates. She even managed to keep her tongue in check when she heard Cardinal Priest Citronatus preach that upon resurrection women’s “imperfections” would be remedied, for all human beings would be reborn as men! Calling Citronatus to her, she offered in the guise of a helpful suggestion that eliminating that line from his sermons might help him achieve a better effect with his female parishioners. Couched in such diplomatic
terms, the suggestion went over well; Citronatus was flattered by the papal attention and did not preach the idea again.

Patiently and uncomplainingly Joan endured the daily round of masses, audiences, baptisms, and ordinations. So the long, cool days of autumn passed with no further incident.

O
N THE
ides of November, the sky darkened and it began to rain. For ten days the rain came down in great driving sheets, drumming against the shingled roofs of the houses so the inhabitants had to plug their ears to shut out the maddening noise. The ancient sewers of the city were soon overwhelmed; on the streets water collected in growing pools that met and joined in quick-moving streams, turning the basalt stones into a treacherous slipping ground.