00000nam a2200000 a 4500 Woolfolk Cross, Donna aut Verfasser/-in long-buried secrets violence duplicity Pope Joan Random House GmbH 2009 For a thousand years her exisence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die - Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised hersel as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak - and his identity - and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Angelicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, an politics. Triuphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom - wielding a power greater than an woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price...... 9780307452368 9780307452368