Forged at XIIIe Century, the history of Popess Jeanne has long maintained the myth of a brief exception to the ecclesiastical rule. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani shows how the myth calls into question the accession of women to the priesthood and the fallibility of pontifical power.
In 854, an unprecedented episode in the history of the papacy would have taken place. A woman of an immense culture would have sat on the throne of stone. The narration of the deaf episode of the shadow to the middle of the XIIIe century. A literary tradition is set up from this date. The discursive mutations of such a legend, of XIIIe At XVIe century, reflect the vicissitudes of a double theme: the question of the accession of women to the priesthood and that of the fallibility of pontifical power. The extraordinary story of Popess Jeanne such that Agostino Paravicini Bagliani restores us the investigation through the sources is offered as an astonishing topicality within contemporary debates in and around the Catholic Church and the place of women within it.
The literary history of a legend
In 2021, A. Paravicini Bagliani published Papessa Giovanna: I Testi della Leggenda (1250-1500)an imposing 694 -page work, with “ The most complete harvesting to date of medieval sources, dealing with the legend of Papess Jeanne », 109 texts in total. This erudite volume was adapted in 2023 to a larger and more student audience, with a selection of texts. It is this second volume, which, by the care of the author himself, is translated into French, in an easy-to-handle form. It is structured in diptych: one hundred pages of presentation of the literary history of the theme and one hundred pages of selection of texts in Latin, with the French translation, the list of manuscripts and the commentary.
By its subject, the author is part of an already well -recognized historiography. In 1863, the great Ignaz von Döllinger had raised the theme in his Papen Fabeln with German learning typical of these years. Since 1978, the legend of Papese Jeanne has been known to historians thanks to the monograph of Cesare d’Onofrio, Papessa Giovanna: Roma e Papato tra storia e Leggenda who endeavors to insert legend into the urban history of Rome. In France, the resonance of Alain Boureau’s work on the theme, ten years later, in 1988, made it possible to familiarize himself with the file in his side of the ceremonial liturgies around the election of the pontiff. Then it was Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe (1988), Elisabeth Gössmann (1994) with a prospect of history of the genre, Peter Stanford (1998), Max Kerner and Klaus Herbers (2010) around the anti -romantic controversy of the German protest world, which in turn explore the historicity, the legend and the reception of the file.
What Agostino Paravicini Bagliani brings is a dive into the literary history of the legend from an almost exhaustive location of texts in manuscripts and with attention on the way in which copyists have gradually dealt with the subject (marginal annotations, interpolations, censures, iconography).
Moral feminization and stigma
To look closely, the file remains complex. In the strict sense, it is actually a double legend: on the one hand, that of the paper itself, and on the other hand, the legend of the verification of the masculinity of the Pope). Initially, the narration of Martin the Polish (v. 1277), a Dominican biographer of the Popess, laid the milestones of a narrative-stallion: the name of the female pope remained male (Johannes Or Johannes Anglicus), and the character’s historicity was proven. Now, quickly, we are witnessing an inflection of discursivity, over the decades: a progressive feminization of the character, to which we begin to attribute not only a female first name (Johanna), but also a feminine title (Papessa), is observed.
With feminization is stigma is played out. In Martin the Polish, the woman-pape was a non-canononic character therefore excluded from the pontifical succession, whose narration is not the subject of any moral judgment. On the other hand, with the posterior stories, the Jeanne Papese is presented as adultery, transvestite, lesser, even prostitute. Hence the Protestant Révoulois for the anti-Roman controversy and the proof of the fallibility of pontifical power ; Hence censorship on the Catholic side to eliminate the annoying legend for the memory of the papacy ; Hence the transition from historicity to the name of “ delusional fable To alleviate the harmfulness of the theme.
From one legend to the other: the verification rite
From John the English to Papese Jeanne, takes place an ecclesiological issue: the risk of a fallibility of the papacy. Fallibility in the election of a pontiff which we learn that it does not cover the conditions of canonical eligibility ; fallibility of a power likely of such “ manifest error »» ; fallibility of a power capable of ignorance ; fallibility of a power subject to uncertainty. Hence the requirement to verify the masculinity of the Pope, another source, in his own way, of fallibility.
Indeed, the second legend, that of the masculinity verification rite, which would have demanded from the Pope that he sits on the Sterord Siege (from stercusexcrement). “” The meaning of this symbol of humiliation, perhaps the most radical ever reserved for the Roman pontiff is obvious: after having reached the summit of glory and wealth, the Pope must remember his original human condition and self-humiliah (P. 89). The Pope, although elected of God, is a man subject to the necessities of nature. Above all, the ritual would have demanded that “ Two trustworthy clerics duly touch his testicles, as witnesses attesting to his male sex. If they found them intact, they touched them and shouted aloud: “He has testicles” and the clergy and the people replied, shouting “Deo Gratias» »(Felix Hemmerli, 1444-1459/61).
Pontificalia Habet : The formula attests that the Pope has well what allows him to be pope. Hence the satires and, to take over the word of Mikhail Bakhtine, the laughter of Rabelais in the Third party book (1542), where Panurge pronounces it in the negative: “ By this reason will never be Pope, because Testiculos non habet “(“ He has no testicles »).
Women and priesthood: memory as an instrument of exclusion
At the same time, the invention of legend says the concerns of time. Women cannot be ordered. The historical existence of this pontificate therefore embarrassments. The occurrence contradicts dogma. It must therefore be delegitimized. You have to dismiss doubt. Bonaventure to the 1250s raised the problem: “ Everyone agrees to say that women should not be promoted to orders, but There is a doubt on the possibility of doing it ». It was necessary to exclude the historicity of the episode to better exclude women from the priesthood and, above all, from the papacy.
As we know, the historical memory of the papacy is built by eviction and the dehistoricization. In other words, the construction of the official Roman speech is working to smooth the historical facts which would be disturbing or annoying in a few ways. What Francis Oakley calls “ Policy of oblivion »Or put in the shadow what hinders and rewrite the account of a linear chronology, for example that of the uninterrupted and canonical apostolic succession, that of the triumphant rise of a powerful pontifical power, etc. The memory of the church and in particular the papacy must be harmonious and coherent, at the cost of history itself.
Transvestment, gender standards and sexual identity
The anthology of the texts following the historical presentation of the double legend and its literary tradition is here presented. Thus, not anti-pope, rather a reversal pope, the file of the Papese Jeanne contains, depending on whether one apprehends it as a legend or as a proven and historical fact, of the implications heavy with consequences. On this reading, we could today consider that the character can readily encourage gender equality and the leadership feminine in ecclesial space. It offers an example of taking power by marginality and the possible resistance of the dominated in history. By referring to a historical figure which would have challenged the norms of gender and sexual identity, the movement LGBT Could he not also find an inspiration in his struggle for recognition ? The tracing of the literary tradition proposed by A. Paravicini Bagliani would finally allow to follow the historiographical manipulations in the dominant stories and the ouster of marginal voices. The question of travesty thus raises the question of the identity of genres and sexual orientations, even third sex.
Jeanne Papesse undeniably represents a threat to the Catholic ecclesial authority. Hence the alternative: decisive issue of its historicity or ideological necessity of its fabrication ? If a woman has really reached the highest duties of the Church, one day, how to continue to refuse the inclusion of women in the ecclesial government ? With this file, it is again to a fascinating plunged into the story of the church by itself that we are witnessing.