“Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama—love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets. Cross has written an engaging book.

In the ninth century, a brilliant young woman named Joan disguised herself as a man so that she could follow her lover into the then-exclusively male world of s

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE ENGLISH WOMAN WHO FOOLED THE VATICAN. The legend of Pope Joan - the woman who, dressed as a man, headed the Catholic church in th

The controversial legend of Pope Joan--an Englishwoman who disguised herself as a man and became a pope in the ninth century--is the subject of this in-depth in