Chapter 1 Summary

The infant Joan of Ingleheim is born in the year 814 to a Saxon woman named Gudrun and her English husband, the Canon of Ingleheim. The village midwife Hrotrud delivers baby Joan after a dangerous, complicated labor. The cold and hateful canon is severely disappointed to have a daughter, believing that, in addition to being worthless, women are the source of sin.

Pope Joan is the story of a medieval-era young woman who is intellectually brilliant and motivated in her desire to learn all she can about religion and medicine. Over time Joan, disguised as John Anglicus, is eventually afforded opportunities at levels of power that most men never reach. Her secret, the fact that she is a woman, is known to only one man, the knight, Gerold. This gifted woman's only opportunities to contribute to her changing world are dependent upon her fa...