The Most Celebrated Popess

There are so many Christian popess figures, and I have time to post only a few of each type. I am inclined to ignore the most famous popess, Pope Joan, as she is perhaps the least relevant to Tarot. Most of the known popess figures in art and literature are allegorical, like the popess in Tarot. This is in contrast to figures which represent a particular individual, whether historical, legendary, or mythological. However, as a supposed Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Joan is another well-documented rebuttal to the view that a popess is inherently non-Christian. Just as importantly, she is the only popess likely to be familiar to most historians. Therefore, as part of my series of posts on the many and diverse female popes in art and literature, she must be included. Moreover, there is one example which merits special attention – we will save her for last.

Before getting to Joan, passing mention needs be made of another popess, Sister Manfreda (Maifreda da Pirovano). Like Pope Joan, Manfreda was not an allegorical figure. Although burned as a heretic in 1300, Sister Manfreda was also a Christian, a nun of the Humiliati order, claiming to represent the true Christian faith. There are no depictions of her sporting papal attributes, neither keys nor papal tiara. The most intriguing aspect of Manfreda concerns one particular Tarot deck, a lavish Milanese deck from about 1450. The Popess in the Visconti-Sforza deck is enthroned, wears the magnificent papal tiara and holds a great processional staff, while wearing very plain robes with a specially knotted cincture. Gertrude Moakley offered a thesis to explain these conflicting attributes: the Visconti-Sforza Popess was conflated with Manfreda, who was also related to Matteo Visconti, of the family by whom the deck was commissioned. This is not wholly convincing, but it is much better than any alternative yet proposed. There is little more to be said about Manfreda as female pope.

The legendary, i.e., fictional, Pope Joan, (Papesse Jeanne, L'Anti-Papesse, Päpstin Johanna, Johannes Septimus, Johannes VIII Femina ex Anglia, Papa Fœmina, etc.) was invented in the 13th century. The earliest versions placed her life in the 11th century, and the writers had not yet invented a name for her. Later writers named her, added other details, and moved her life farther back in time to the 9th century. This folklore was appealing on various levels, most obviously in terms of misogyny. Women are bad; here is another example. This would be reason enough for Boccaccio to adopt it as counterbalance to his (faint) praise of women. More generally, Pope Joan was a parable of pride and the virtue of knowing one’s place. More subversively, the story was a rude thing to say about the hierarchy of the Church, that someone so wholly inappropriate as a woman could rise to the very highest level. For these and other reasons, the legend was widely accepted as fact, and her tale was included among the popular (and routinely illustrated) biographical encyclopedia of Boccaccio as well as in historical chronicles, including the famous Nuremberg Chronicles. This picture is from a copy of Jans Enikel’s Weltchronik.

Pope Joan in the Weltchronik, c.1420.

In terms of the history of popess illustrations, Tarot’s Popess is among the oldest. However, as the Enikel Weltchronik illustrates, some depictions of Pope Joan pre-date even Tarot. Our next example is from a 1403 French manuscript, a translation of De Claris mulieribus. The third dates from the first quarter of the 15th Century. It is from a Laurent de Premierfait translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus: Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes.

Pope Joan, c.1403

Pope Joan, early 15th C.

Later editions of Boccaccio were printed, and some included woodcut illustrations. This example is from a German version of De mulieribus claris, from about 1474.

Pope Joan, c.1474.

Pope Joan continued to be illustrated through the centuries. In Friedrich Spanheim’s 1694 Histoire de la Papesse Jeanne, the frontispiece has a very sexy version of Pope Joan, her barely-concealed breasts shocking the assembled clerics, enthroned and crowned with the triple tiara, holding a main de justice scepter. A 1758 edition of Histoire de la Papesse Jeanne has additional illustrations, including an artistic composite of images from Giacomo Filippo Foresti’s 1497 version of De mulieribus claris and the Nuremberg Chronicle image of Joannes Septimus. (See Van Rinjberk’s Mysterious Papesse for a discussion of these and other images.)

Pope Joan in Spanheim, 1694.

Pope Joan in Spanheim, 1758.

Our final Pope Joan is the only one with any significant iconological relation to Tarot. The lowest trumps in Tarot represent all Mankind, although the details of their individual interpretation are subject to debate. The prisoners in Petrarch’s Triumph of Love are also taken to be universal, or very nearly so. In both works, these are the ultimate protagonists of the subsequent hierarchy of allegorical triumphs and eschatological dénouement. A Venetian artist who was illustrating Petrarch’s Triumphs in 1488 added Pope Joan to the prisoners in Cupid’s triumphal procession. Cupid even gave the popess pride of place, in the front of his retinue. This is doubly appropriate since she is not merely a victim of Love but also an exemplar of the sin of Pride.

Pope Joan in Petrarch’s Triumph of Love, 1488.

September 12, 2012 postscript:

There is another aspect to Pope Joan’s connection with Tarot. A couple years ago, Marco noted a direct parallel between Boccaccio’s description of Joan’s great crime, (being a female priest and administering the sacred rites), and a preacher’s condemnation of Tarot’s Popess in strikingly similar terms. This was in the so-called Steele Sermon, circa 1500. According to Boccaccio, Joan was able to maintain her role as a male cleric until she presumed to “deal with all the sacred mysteries and proffer them to others, something which the Christian religion does not allow to any woman”.

Boccaccio’s Tale of Pope Joan
Concerning Famous Women, trans. by Guido Aldo Guarino, 1963

The author of the Steele Sermon, who misunderstood much about the Tarot trump cycle, condemned the Popess for “that which the Christian faith denies” to women. The similarity with Boccaccio’ famous account suggests that the anonymous preacher mistook Tarot’s Popess for Pope Joan and condemned her for the same offense. If that is the case, then we have an early example of the inability or unwillingness to consider the trump cycle allegorically, and/or jumping to a false conclusion based on preconceptions. These traps remain dangerous five centuries later.

October 22, 2012 postscript:

There are a great many images of Pope Joan available, in books and online. Above I posted some of the earliest as well as the single one which is genuinely relevant to Tarot, along with a few others. There is another one which merits posting, however. It is from a 17th century book; the full title gives the gist of the thesis: A Present for a Papist, or, The Life and death of Pope Joan: plainly proving out of the printed copies and manuscripts of popish writers and others, that a woman called Joan was really Pope of Rome, and was there deliver'd of a bastard son in the open street, as she went in solemn procession. Written by Alexander Cooke, it was published in London in 1675. The frontispiece was essentially reproduced in the 1740 edition, shown below, except for being reversed L-R.

It is noteworthy because of the doggerel, which conflates the two "bad girls" in the pantheon of Popess figures, Pope Joan and the Whore of Babylon. Such conflation of a primary subject with a secondary one is a common feature of early Tarot cards.

Allegory is Allegory

Kaplan’s 1986 explanation of allegorical personifications was simple and correct. In terms of a female figure with papal attributes, it works exactly the same whether you are a Roman Catholic creating an honorific allegory of the Church or a Protestant creating a pejorative satire, denouncing the Church as the Whore of Babylon. So, not surprisingly, in the 16th Century Protestants came to use the popess in essentially the same manner as Catholics, as an allegory of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Luther Bible was a complex production. The New Testament was published in 1522. It included 21 woodcut illustrations from the workshop of Lucas Cranach, including an infamous Whore of Babylon wearing the triple tiara of the Roman Catholic pope. It’s a beauty.

Luther’s Old Testament was completed in 1534, and a combined Bible was published. This included over a hundred woodcut illustrations from the same workshop. The Whore of Babylon in this version was different, but still wearing the triple tiara of the Roman Catholic pope. Some of these were later hand-colored by other artists, as in these two examples. (The perfectly matching details of coloring indicate that these are two reproductions of the same original page, but I’ll include both.)

Another famous anti-Catholic popess is from William Blake, nearly three centuries later. The crucial identifying attribute is again the triple tiara.

Here is an allegory of The Empire of Rome, an illustration from c.1590, which uses the same Whore of Babylon motif including the Roman Catholic attribute of papal headdress. The text explains that the Empire of Rome is described in this manner, as the Whore of Babylon, in the Bible.

Finally, returning to the image from Luther’s Bible, we have it reproduced on a painted Limoges enamel dish, circa 1580, in the British Museum. It is worth noting that we have members of all estates, from emperor and pope on down, seduced by the Whore. This conventional motif was not present in the woodcuts on which this plate was based.

A Popess for Pope Pius

Another spectacular example of the popess allegory is the great Battle of Lepanto painting by Vasari. (There are actually two, but we will ignore the other one.) This was pointed out to the Tarot community by Stuart Kaplan, who explained the import of it very well.

In medieval and Renaissance art, a female figure was often allegorical, whereas the male figure was used to represent a specific mythical or historical man. Thus, since Samson evoked the quality of great strength, the Strength card in several decks portrays a female figure with the attributes of Samson, a pillar and a lion skin. The Popess may represent the papacy itself, without reference to any particular pope or female leader. An example of a woman crowned with the papal tiara can be found in Giorgio Vasari’s picture commemorating the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto. The alliance of Spain, Venice, and the papacy is represented by three women embracing, with the “popess” wearing the triple tiara and holding the two keys traditionally belonging to the pope.

Kaplan even included a small B&W picture of the relevant detail from the painting. The nature of personification allegory may have been news to the arrogant, ignorant, and flaky world of Tarot enthusiasts in 1986 when that was published. However, given that the first two volumes of Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot are as well-known and essential to the study of Tarot history as are Dummett and Moakley, no one who pretends to an interest in the subject has had an excuse since then. I have posted on it before, but here we will offer a little more detail and a much better image.

Shortly after the victory at the Battle of Lepanto, the renowned artist Giorgio Vasari was commissioned by Pope Pius V to commemorate the event in the Sala Regia in the Vatican, a “prominent location in the administrative heart of the papacy”. The following description is from Selling and Rejecting Politics in Early Modern Europe (2007), by Martin Gosman and Joop W. Koopmans.

Two large paintings in the Sala Regia, that were executed by Giorgio Vasari in 1572-1573, show episodes from the sea battle near Lepanto, in which the Christian navy crushed the Turkish fleet. This victory occurred on October 7, 1571, and consequently the paintings depict a very recent event. Giorgio Vasari carefully gathered as much information as he could, making his paintings a meticulous reconstruction of the course of the sea battle, of the geographical situation, the appearance of the ships and the military equipment of both armies, etc. Yet he also added allegorical elements, personifications of the Christian and Ottoman nations, and even the figures of Christ and his saints fighting against Muslim demons. Thus he not only made it clear who precisely were involved in this battle, but he also made it obvious that it was through divine assistance that the Christian army obtained the victory.

By showing the triumph of the Christians over the ‘infidels’, Vasari’s paintings were, of course, meant as propaganda of the ‘true’ Christian faith. This was highlighted by the visible presence of Christ and his saints, who take an active part in the battle and decisively chase the fallacious Turkish demons. References to biblical events, such as the defeat of the Egyptian Pharao and his army in the Red Sea, further emphasize the divine assistance, and make it clear that God will continue to help his people now and in the future, just as much as he had done in biblical times.

In creating this combination of an accurate visual report of what happened with an allegorical rendition of God’s eternal help and omnipotence, Giorgio Vasari had to be specific. Thus he could not avoid displaying that of all the ‘Christian’ nations in Europe (maybe Catholic is a better qualification in this case), only three had actually contributed to the Christian navy: Spain, Venice, and the Papal State, which were allied in the so-called Holy League. Personifications of these three nations consequently dominate on the foreground of the painting showing The Christian and the Turkish fleet on the eve of the Battle at Lepanto.

This is a different allegorical subject than the two sculptures detailed in the previous post. Here the popess represents the Papacy, while in the other two she represented the Church and Ecclesiastical Authority. But in all cases where a female figure wears the papal tiara, the subject is as emphatically Christian as one could even imagine. When the examples include allegories commissioned by popes to illustrate Christian subjects in the Vatican and especially at St. Peter’ Basilica, even Tarot enthusiasts should be able to grasp, perhaps dimly, the fact that this is Christian allegory.

Probably the greatest popess of all is the Triumph of the Church, by Peter Paul Rubens. There is a brief description at Web Gallery of Art, and a better one, albeit in Spanish, at the Prado page. The Wikimedia Commons page has the full-size image (3295 x 2717 pixels) from the Prado site.

The most striking popess in a manuscript may be Dame Doctryne from a copy of The Siege of Troy by John Lydgate. The Wheel of Fortune is held/turned by the Quene of Fortune. On the left, Dame Doctryne is accompanyied by two male figures, Holy Texte and Scrypture, and two female figures, Glose and Moralyzacion. They are shown helping people rise on Fortune's Wheel because, Lydgate says, scripture is about that which shall fall. Nobles, clerics, and commoners are shown falling. Once again, the popess is an essentially and emphatically Christian allegory.