c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Think life is difficult for women these days? Take a trip to the ninth century.

Donna Woolfolk Cross has written a novel called “Pope Joan” (Crown) that casts light on the darkest century of the Dark Ages.

“Pope Joan” is set in a time “when women were treated as perpetual minors” with no legal or property rights. By law, they could be beaten by their husbands. Rape was treated as a form of minor theft. “The education of women was discouraged, for a learned woman was considered not only unnatural, but dangerous,” Cross writes.

Out of this oppressive society, one bright beacon shone. In Germany, a gifted young girl named Joan (or Johanna) was born to a deacon and his wife in the middle of a wicked winter in the year 814.

Joan would grow to defy her culture. She learned to read and write. She disguised herself as a man, entered a monastery and climbed in ecclesiastical circles until one day she was appointed Pope John VIII, reigning for two years before her secret was discovered.

And what a secret it was. “Pope Joan,” according to Cross, died in childbirth following a torrid love affair with a knight.

Did “Pope Joan” really exist? The Roman Catholic Church claims she is only the stuff of legend, and Cross, who lives in Syracuse, N.Y., says she can’t prove otherwise.

Still, in eight years of research for the book _ which most bookstores have put on the fiction-literature shelves _ Cross stumbled upon evidence that leads her to believe Joan may have been more than mere legend.

Accounts of her papacy appear in the 14th-century writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio. In 1276, after a thorough search of papal records, Pope John XX changed his title to John XXI, in recognition of Joan’s reign.

“Given the obscurity and confusion of the times, it is impossible to determine with certainty whether Joan existed or not,” Cross writes in the afterword to her novel.

“Still, I thought (Joan) was worth writing (about),” Cross says. “I have enormous admiration for women, such as Joan, who take such risks, defy such odds, go against the total mindset of their time.”

Women in the ninth century were scorned at every turn. Church fathers called them “the gate of the devil,” Cross says. Women were banned from entering a church for 33 days after delivering a child _ 66 days if it was a girl.

“We should all just be grateful that we didn’t live then,” says Cross, who believes that _ given the pressures of the times _ “I would have buckled sooner than a woman like Joan. I admire those strong spirits, fueled by some inner truth … who manage to defy (their times), who say: `I am smart. I can do this. I am worthy.'” “Pope Joan,” eloquently written and spellbinding in its account of this legendary figure, seems to have struck a chord with contemporary readers. A film version is already in the works from New Line Cinema. The book has been on the best-seller list for several months in Germany where, Cross said, the historical existence of Pope Joan is widely accepted.

Cross, who has written four previous books of nonfiction, says she is gratified by the success of her first novel, but not surprised.

“I think Joan’s story, while an ancient one, is still relevant today for a variety of reasons. If we open our minds to the idea that a woman once served as pope … then it opens up the important and very hot issue of why women can’t be popes and bishops today,” says Cross, who is not Catholic.

The novel also underscores the idea that knowledge _ then, as now _ is the road to power.

“The way Joan rose to the height of her power and became everything she could be was to learn everything she could,” Cross says.“I think this is what women very much need to do in this terribly competitive and difficult world.”

Cross, 50, is an English professor at Onondaga College in upstate New York, where she lives with her husband, biochemist Richard Cross, and their 20-year-old daughter, Emily.

She says she stumbled upon Joan’s story by accident. While reading one night, she noticed a passing reference to a “Pope Joan.”

“I turned to my husband and said, `Oh my gosh, what a funny typo they’ve made in this book. They wrote `Pope Joan’ and of course they meant `Pope John,”’ she said. “I had never heard of this person.”

Searching for Joan the next day in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Cross found an entry, which defined her as legend.

“My jaw dropped open,” she said. “I thought, `My God, what a story!”’

Cross is now swimming in praise for “Pope Joan,” and the success of the book will allow her to leave her college teaching job and pursue a second historical novel. Though she won’t name her subject, she describes her as a 17th-century Frenchwoman “whose existence, thank goodness, is not in question.”

In writing “Pope Joan,” Cross says, she began pursuing a legend and wound up believing, in her heart, that Joan did exist.

“When I hear the fury, the upset with which people deny Joan’s existence,” Cross says“I tend to suspect that where there was this much smoke, there was probably fire.”

“Pope Joan” is more than a historical conundrum, however, and Cross hopes Joan’s story doesn’t get lost in a thicket of religious bickering.

“I would be so reluctant for anyone to think of this as an anti-Catholic book … or an anti-church book, either,” she said. “This is a book about a woman who searches for faith _ and finds it.”

END DOUD