Pope Joan

Pope Joan (1972)

Heresy ... or history ?

Based on the medieval legend of Pope Joan, who was made Pope for a brief period around 855 A.D. The movie presents her existence as fact, though it is questionable that Pope Joan really did exist, and portrays her relationships with other notables of the time.

Date of release
1972-08-16
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Michael Anderson

Casting

Interesting facts

Pope Joan is a 1972 British historical drama film based on the story of Pope Joan. Even though modern consensus generally considers Pope Joan to be legendary, in the film her existence is treated as fact.

Background

Roger Greenspun summed up the legend in The New York Times:In some medieval histories of the Roman Catholic Church there was a gap between the pontificates of Leo IV (847‐ 855) and his successor, Benedict III. Possibly to explain this gap, a legend grew up concerning a woman, Joan, born near Mainz, educated in Athens, who went to Rome disguised as a monk and so impressed Leo with her wit and learning that, thinking her a man, he appointed her his…

Although the legend has been discounted by church historians for centuries, it has been the source of several fictional accounts—none, I suspect, weirder than Michael Anderson's Pope Joan, which opened yesterday.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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