Human Explanations

These two books, apparently dissimilar, have one thing in common. Both authors approach the mysteries and authoritative structure of the Roman Catholic Church with a view to finding some plainer human explanation of her nature and function than the Church herself would give them. I must confess I prefer the mythopoeic creation of Royidis to the laboured reasonings of Jaroslav Pelikan. Pope Joan is a hilariously funny book, in the anti-clerical style of Rabelais and Boccaccio, though lacking the volcanic gusto of the first master and the cynic wisdom of the second. The Greek Orthodox Church authorities who banned the book and excommunicated Royidis must have lacked a sense of humour. It is pleasing to note that the French Catholic press, gave the book a good welcome (in the Sixties of the last century) for its very real literary qualities and did not rise to the bait of an imaginary female Pope.

It seems that Royidis was a little in love with his creation and could not be dissuaded from the view that she had actually existed. She did exist, of course – not on the Fisherman’s throne, but in the caverns and half-light of the mediaeval mind where fact and folk-tradition lay inextricably mingled – and what humorous man could grudge her that reality? The anti-clerical humorous tradition is a safeguard against the solemn follies of bookmen. It eases the stresses that the demand for holiness imposes on brittle human nature, shows the man below the surplice, casts out the cruel Calvinist or Jansenist logic and gives the saddle-galled Ass in us a chance to kick and bray.

There is no point in setting down here a chart and synopsis of the wanderings and love-life of Johanna. They are riotous, often erotic, never obscene, and loaded with pseudo-theological gunpowder. I commend the book to any sane reader, excluding bigots, prudes and children, and any who still accept as gospel the ravings of ‘Maria Monk’. Royidis could not have had a better translator than Lawrence Durrell, the wittiest and broadest- minded novelist of our time. Very likely Durrell has improved on the Greek original.

Jaroslav Pelikan is a solemn and well-meaning writer. He takes us on a conducted tour of the Church. He writes – ‘Neither Mary nor Pilate is important as a figure in history except for the role each of them played in the career of our Lord.’ He laments the division of Christendom and recommends that Protestants and Catholics should learn more from each other’s faith and practice. He has not quite grasped, however, the difference between a formula and a family – that the first requires only a brain to conceive it (an electronicpage 447 one might do) while the second requires a father and mother and children living in the difficult freedom of mutual love. His intentions are wholly good. But I wish he had been given at birth a little of the salt and Greek fire of Royidis.

1961 (237)