Film / Pope Joan

"God led me here on an unusual path."

— Johanna

Pope Joan (original title: Die Päpstin, "The Popess") is a 2009 German historical drama filmed in English, directed by Sönke Wortmann and starring Johanna Wokalek, David Wenham, John Goodman, and Iain Glen. It is based on the 1996 American novel of the same name by Donna Woolfolk Cross, which is an Adaptation Expansion of the Medieval legend of Pope Joan.

Johanna of Ingelheim (Wokalek), is a German girl with a bright mind who was born on the same day Charlemagne died. The daughter of the local priest (Glen), she manages to be educated at the Cathedral school in Dorstadt even though it is not customary for girls. Taken under the wing of the local Count Gerold (Wenham), the two fall in love. When Gerold and most men leave to fight in the Imperial army, Gerold's wife uses the opportunity to marry Johanna off and get rid of her rival.

However, the ceremony is crashed by Horny Vikings, and with most men away, they easily massacre the town. Johanna survives and flees, disguising herself as a man and entering the Benedictine Abbey at Fulda as Brother Johannes Anglicus. Here she lives as the assistant medicus until she's forced to flee again in order to keep her secret.

Johanna is taken in by another man named Arn and becomes a tutor to his daughter Arnalda. After some time she leaves on a pilgrimage to Rome and becomes a healer there. Her work brings her to the attention of authorities, who recruit her to cure Pope Sergius II (Goodman). She succeeds and is appointed his chief advisor and eventual successor, with nobody suspecting that she is a woman.

Reunited with Gerold, who has lost his family, they quickly become lovers, resulting in Johanna becoming pregnant. Gerold advises to flee but she wants to stay until Easter. Gerold is then killed by Johanna's political rivals and she dies in childbirth shortly after, exposed to the world as a woman.

Years later, bishop Arnaldo of Paris visits Rome and enters the Papal Archives to search for records of Johanna. Arnaldo is actually Arnalda, who has followed on Johanna's footsteps. Finding no mention of her, she writes down her story and inserts it in the Archives to honor her mentor. Heading outside, she wonders how many other women disguised themselves as men and are working as priests and bishops.

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This film provides examples of:

A-E

• 0% Approval Rating: Anastasius. Not even his own supporters like him, seeing his ambition to become Pope as just a bid of power by his family. But they will keep supporting him if they also benefit.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: A Viking cuts a bible in half and decapitates a man in just two swings.
• Abusive Parents and Domestic Abuse: Johanna's father is a zealot who terrorizes her, her brothers, and mother.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the novel, Joan goes into premature labor after finding Gerold's body. In the movie, this is more of a coincidence, or induced by paranoia about an impending attack at best.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • In the novel, Johanna and Johannes go by the English version of their names, Joan and John.
  • Brother Valentinus is Brother Gottschalk in the novel. This change is puzzling, since Gottschalk is a historical figure.
• Adapted Out: Besides many minor characters, the novel includes three popes before Joan (Gregory IV, Sergius II, Leo IV) but only Sergius appears in the movie.
• Advertised Extra: John Goodman appears for about half an hour out of two hours and a half.
• Advertising by Association: "From the producers of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer."
• The Alcoholic: Sergius II is a gouty drinker when Johanna meets him. She gets him off wine in order to cure him.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The Papal guards wear Imperial Roman helmets (Galea) which were abandoned before the Fall of Rome.
  • A battle between Lothair and Charles the Bald has the former using the red Oriflamme as banner and the latter the fleur-de-lis on blue. In reality, both were used by the French, and not adopted until the 12th century despite being retroactively associated with Charlemagne.
  • In the 820s, Matthew tells Johanna the story of St. Catherine of Alexandria and gives her a carving of her, which becomes a Tragic Keepsake after his death. Historically, while St. Catherine was among the most popular saints in The Late Middle Ages, her tomb was only 'rediscovered' around 800 A.D. in the Sinai Peninsula and would have taken longer for her worship to spread in Europe. This was likely a deliberate artistic choice because her story is extremely similar to Johanna's and she was most popular at the same time the Pope Joan legend was.
  • Gerold mentions that the Norsemen have taken Paris (which they did in 845) prior to the sack of Dorstadt (834) and the Battle of Fontenoy (841).
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Johannes comes to resent that his life seems dictated by Johanna, first being sent to Cathedral school because she wanted to go and then to Fulda when they are forced to leave because of her. Of course Johanna is being misblamed here, since the ultimate responsible for putting them in this path was his father being deadset on having a son join both places.
• Arranged Marriage:
  • Richilde arranges for Johanna to marry a blacksmith's son in order to get her away from Gerold.
  • In the TV version, Gerold says that Richilde and him were bethrothed as children and never loved each other.
• Artistic License – History:
  • If Anastasius was the antipope of the same name, as believed by some historians and portrayed in the movie, he actually didn't make his bid for the Papacy until 855, years after he fled the city in 848 and was excommunicated in 850, with no chance to occupy the Apostolic Palace. Anastasius's definitive fall from grace was unrelated: in 868, a relative of his murdered Pope Adrian II's wife and daughter and Anastasius was essentially fired and excommunicated (again?) as the instigator. Even then, he was not locked in a monastery but lived in exile at Lothair II's court. This plot point is a result of the movie condensing the pontificates of Sergius II and Leo IV in just one.
  • The Liber Pontificalis was not written by a single author. In the 16th century Anastasius was attributed all biographies between Damasus I and Nicholas I, but 20th century historians reduced his authorship to Nicholas I and Adrian II only.
  • Arnalda writing down Johanna's story and inserting it into the Vatican Archives is based on a real 9th century manuscript in the Archives where an unknown hand added a footnote about Pope Joan at the bottom of the page. However, for stylistic reasons, the addition is thought to have been made centuries after the manuscript, not just decades.
• A Taste of the Lash:
  • Johanna is viciously caned by her father for refusing the destroy a Greek book given to her by Aesculapius. She still bears some marks as an adult.
  • Valentinus is lashed just for thinking about leaving Fulda.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Anastasius gets away with murdering Pope Sergius, murders Gerold, and becomes Pope after Johanna dies. He is deposed and imprisoned, but succeeds in erasing Joan from History.
• Bait-and-Switch: When the Fulda abbot calls the monks to report on each other's faults, the one that has seen Johanna menstruating comes forward... to report Valentinus for a different offense, as he bought Johanna's explanation that she cut herself.
• Bald of Evil: The tonsure can't hide that Anastasius would be balding on his own. Funnily enough, his father keeps all his hair.
• Bamboo Technology: Johanna and Gerold buy a Greek parchment with instructions to build a system that can power gates with water, and build different sizes models based on it. She later uses it to fake a miracle and make Lothair's army submit to the Pope.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: Historians give no credence to the existence of Joan, as she is not mentioned until the 13th century, and was at first claimed to have existed at the end of the 11th before settling on the mid-9th. The tale might have started as allegory or satire before being mistaken for factual by later generations.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Johanna is sheltered by Arn after she deserts Fulda Abbey because she saved his family from being branded as lepers.
• Book Dumb: Johannes has trouble reading and is uninterested in some of Aesculapius's classes, but he's not stupid and is also a natural-born swordsman.
• Bully Magnet: Johanna finds a new bully everywhere she goes. Usually this is because they find her quest for knowledge threatening, though Richilde is mostly motivated for fear that her husband is unfaithful with her.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Johanna tells her elderly father that he was the ruin of her family after he nonchalantly talks about her mother dying in childbirth.
• The Casanova: Invoked and Exploited in-universe by Richilde, who tells Johanna that she's just one of many of Gerold's conquests in order to get rid of her. In reality, he's trully in love with her and has no other love interest in the movie.
• Chekhov's Gun: Johanna gives her necklace to Arnalda, which is used at the end of the movie to reveal that she is the real identity of Arnaldo.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Arn, who saves Johanna in gratitude for her saving his family earlier, and his daughter Arnalda, who is revealed to the Narrator All Along.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Johanna builds a bigger version of the water mechanism she learned as a child to prevent an imperial sack of Rome. It also clues Gerold about Johanna's identity and reunites them.
  • Johanna can tell if a woman is pregnant from the taste of urine, which she later uses to identify her own pregnancy.
• Child by Rape: Johanna's mother dies in childbirth after her husband's rape makes her pregnant for the fourth time. It would be unsurprising if all three surviving children were born this way.
• Child of Two Worlds: Johanna is the daughter of an English Christian fundamentalist father and a secretly Pagan mother (said to be Saxon in the book).
• Civil War: The Franks go to war against each other when Lothair disputes the division of the Empire in his father's will.
• Comically Inept Healing: The Pope has a bad cause of gout, but can't heal because he keeps being given meat and wine, and he can't rest because there is a crowd praying for his recovery next to his bed 24/7.
• Composite Character: In the novel, the Evil Chancellor running Rome while Sergius II is sick and plying him with unhealthy food is his brother Benedict, not Anastasius. Sergius later becomes depressed and drinks himself to death for his failure to prepare Rome for a Saracen attack; the pope who is poisoned is his Adapted Out successor, Leo IV.
• The Conspiracy: Johanna's life and pontificate are concealed by her enemies after her death.
• Corrupt Church: Anastasius, the son of a Roman nobleman, runs the Church like a business while Sergius is ill. This includes selling an orphanage to a man who wants to turn it into a hotel in exchange for "donations".
• Country Mouse: Johannes and Johanna in Dorstadt. Gerold's wife, Richilde, outright calls Johanna a "country bumpkin" when they first meet.
• Cunning Linguist: Johanna has a natural talent for languages. She learns Latin phonetically just from hearing her father and older brothers, which makes it easier for Matthew to teach her, and learns to read Greek from Aesculapius before she even makes it to Dorstadt.
• Deadly Decadent Court: The Papal Court in Rome.
• Deadly Euphemism: When Lothair is told that the "miracle" was performed by a medicus who just gained unexpected influence over the Pope, he suggests that "then perhaps he should be made to disappear." Anastasius replies with "why chop off only a branch, when we can fell the entire tree?", meaning to kill the Pope.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Johanna assumes her brother's identity after he is killed.
• Death by Adaptation: In the novel, Gerold's oldest daughter Gisla is last seen being abducted by the Vikings. In the movie, she is younger and dies along with her sister and mother.
• Death by Childbirth: Johanna's mother's fate and eventually her own.
• Demoted to Extra: Gerold's daughters have no lines in the movie.
• Demythification: The movie firmly places the legendary Pope Joan in the 9th century (moreso the source novel) and offers a plausible biography of her. For instance, rather than being educated in Athens by her lover as in some versions of the legend, she has a Greek tutor in her German hometown years before meeting that lover and going to Rome, and never visits Greece.
• Dies Different In Adaptation: In the most common version of the legend, Joan is killed by the Roman mob when she's exposed as a woman after giving birth. Here she dies in childbirth. However, other versions simply say that she died after giving birth, without specifying a cause.
• Dirty Old Monk: Johanna's father rapes her mother, and the Dorstadt bishop receives her and her brother with a young woman on her lap.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The position of main antagonist in the movie passes from Johanna's father to Odo and Gerold's wife Richilde, before setting on Anastasius.
• Disguised in Drag:
  • Johanna disguises herself as a man after Dorstadt is sacked and maintains the disguise while living at Fulda. Forced to leave the monastery to avoid exposure, she drops the disguise for a time. When she goes to Rome she resumes the disguise and rises through the Vatican ranks to become Pope.
  • Arnalda follows in on Johanna's footsteps, embarking on a church career as a man and eventually becoming a bishop. At the end of the movie, she wonders how many disguised women are working as clergy.
• Dude Where Is My Respect:
  • The messenger from Dorstadt who comes to pick Johanna for Cathedral school makes Johanna's father shut up while showing the ring that identifies him as an authority.
  • In a reference to the Truth in Television conflict between the Pope and the Emperor through much of Medieval history, Sergius II demands that Lothair kneel before him in public as a sign of respect, while Lothair wants Sergius to kneel before him instead.
  • Johanna's father constantly demands obedience from his family for being the husband and father.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Johanna's father burying Matthew by himself is about the only remotely nice thing he does in the entire movie.
  • Gerold buries Johannes with his daughters after all are killed by the Vikings.
• The Dung Ages: Subverted.
  • Johanna is born in a hut occupied both by people and livestock, in a hamlet with a few similar buildings (not bigger because of budget restrictions, obviously). However the movie does not pretend that this hamlet is Mainz (Joan's hometown in the legend) or even Ingelheim (both of which were decent-sized towns), but just a nameless hamlet outside of the latter. Dorstadt is a well built town (though its market wouldn't pass modern hygiene laws), and Rome is a massive city in spite of its diminished Ancient glamor. People not toiling in the fields are not covered in dirt but well kept, and the rich wear very nice clothes with garish colors.
  • Johanna realizes that a poor lone mother with nasty wounds is not a leper because her symptoms are different, saving her from ostracism and being taken away from her children. They live in terrible conditions not because they don't know better but because they can't fix their home, and they improve after Johanna helps them with it. At no point is it implied that their previous condition was considered in any way normal.
• The Emperor: Lothair, King of Italy and Emperor of Middle Francia.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Every named character Johanna meets in Dorstadt and every member of her family is dead by the end.
• Evil Chancellor: When Johanna arrives in Rome, Anastasius is running the Papacy from behind the scenes and actively plotting to become Pope himself.
• Exact Words: When the Pope asks Johanna if she keeps the vow of chastity, she claims to have no interest in women.

F-L

• Fake Wizardry: Johanna can close a door shut using waterpower. She uses this to convince Lothair's army not to sack Rome. Lothair sees through the ruse, but his army buys it in bulk and he has to lay down arms. This also tips Gerold about Johanna's secret identity as he recognizes the trick from having seen it before.
• Family Theme Naming: Johanna follows her brother Johannes.
• Farts on Fire: A drunkard gets his ass lighted on fire when Johannes and Johanna first arrive in Dorstadt.
• Fingore: The Dorstadt messenger is killed by a brigand on the way back, who then cuts his finger to steal his ring.
• Forbidden Love: Johanna and Gerold have feelings for each other, but he is married and she is a commoner. They embrace their relationship in secret when they meet again in Rome.
• Foreshadowing: Johanna's skill as a healer is tested by giving her a urine sample and telling her it came from the Pope. She identifies it as a pregnant woman's urine and says that the Pope must be pregnant. At the end of the movie she is the Pope and pregnant.
• The Fundamentalist: Johanna's father is against any knowledge that doesn't come from the Bible.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Anastasius brings Johanna to heal Sergius under expectations that he will be regarded as Sergius's savior and pave his way to succeed him. Of course, it is Johanna who gets all the credit. Then he conspires with Lothair to have Sergius submit to him, but Johanna's mechanism makes his army take it for a miracle and forces Lothair to kneel before the Pope - which results in Sergius promoting Johanna to Anastasius's position and Lothair being mad at Anastasius.
• Good Shepherd:
  • Despite their vices, the Dorstadt bishop and Pope Sergius II come off as generally decent men.
  • Johanna herself becomes one after she is elected, working to improve the lives of her flock despite the danger she is in.
• Go Out with a Smile: Johanna dies while smiling at an open gate very similar to the gate of the Lateran Palace, which looks like the Gate of Heaven.
• Hate Sink: Johanna's father is a hypocritical Christian zealot, abusive parent and husband, who hates women and any knowledge not coming from the Bible.
• Heir Club for Men: Johanna's father's greatest dream is to have one of his sons go to the Schola and become a monk in Fulda. He is repeatedly dismayed when his daughter learns Latin behind his back, goes to the Schola, and eventually becomes a monk in the guise of a man.
• He-Man Woman Hater:
  • Johanna's father is introduced refusing to ease his wife's painful childbirth, citing Scripture and claiming childbirth is women's work, therefore lowly. He's of course disappointed when Johanna is born a girl, even though he already has two sons, and refuses to educate her. He only allows Aesculapius to take her in as a pupil on the condition that he also takes Johannes, who isn't talented or interested in studying.
  • Schoolmaster Odo tries to dissuade the bishop from accepting Johanna in the school (after he has already done it), arguing that women are not suited for study because they can't think logically, becomes a Sadist Teacher and snitches on her to Richilde out of spite.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Johannes dies while saving Johanna's life from the Vikings.
• Historical Domain Character: Legendary Pope Joan aside, the movie includes Emperor Lothair I, Pope Sergius II, Anastasius Bibliothecarius (identified with Antipope Anastasius, as do some historians), his father Arsenius, and the Abbot of Fulda Rabanus Maurus (left unnamed in the movie). "Brother Valentinus" is named Gottschalk of Orbais in the novel (also a historical figure).
• Historical Villain Upgrade: While the real Anastasius might have been the leader of the pro-Imperial faction in the Vatican and tried to make himself Pope with the Emperor's support, he didn't murder Sergius II or occupy the Lateran Palace by force.
• Honest Advisor:
  • Johanna becomes this to Sergius after treating him for a nasty case of gout. She is the one who gets him to eat better in order to make him healthier.
  • Gerold is one to Emperor Lothair.
• Horny Vikings: The first Viking attack on Dorstadt is depicted. The movie skews from stereotypical portrayals of horned helmets and Pelts of the Barbarian, giving the Vikings largely the same arms and armor as the Germans instead (with a few more half-masked helmets and axes if anything). This is even incorporated into the plot: because Vikings and Germans look the same, the locals don't realize that they are Vikings until one literally walks up to the bishop and decapitates him in front of everone. In the novel Johanna even thinks that the Vikings look more like the Saxons than their Frankish overlords.
• Humiliation Conga: Johanna's father loses his firstborn, wife, becomes destitute, goes to Fulda with the intention of becoming a monk with his surviving son, only to learn that that son is dead too and his daughter whom he hates and has for a sinner is usurping his identity. He promptly suffers a heart attack.
• Hypocrite: Johanna's father refuses to help his wife give birth, even if it kills her, arguing that he has faith on God's hands. But when the midwife points that it will be difficult for a man to raise his two boys by himself, he springs to follow her instructions.
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: Involuntary, post-mortem version when Johanna takes her brother's clothes and admission letter to Fulda so she can assume his identity.
• Important Haircut: Johanna cuts her hair short with a knife in order to pose as her brother and join the Fulda monastery.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Johanna's father starts the movie with a firstborn son perfectly suited to follow on his steps, but he dies, leaving him with Johannes, who is dyslexic, and Johanna, who is a girl.
• It's All My Fault: Happens offscreen with the narration claiming that Johanna had thought of Matthew's death as a divine punishment for discussing pre-Christian Germanic Mythology with her mother, before realizing that he had died from the family's lack of (medical) knowledge.
• Kids Are Cruel: The boys at the Cathedral school cover Johanna in ink when the bishop praises her caligraphy and extorts them to follow her example.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The Dorstadt bishop, after realizing too late that the armed man in front of him is a Viking.
  "Behold the word of God! And dare not enter-"
• Klingon Promotion: Anastasius is deadset on becoming the next Pope, outright murdering the sitting one when he gets the Emperor's blessing.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Gerold is a literal knight in (scale) armor in Lothair's army (and later the Papal guards) as well as a Nice Guy with no apparent vices.
• Left for Dead: Johanna is knocked out by a Viking's shield during the raid, keeping her from being killed off for real or abducted.
• Local Reference: Subverted. This is a German movie filmed in English and starring mostly British actors, with a main character that is a German woman with an English father who becomes Pope in Italy. However, all of these elements are present in the Medieval legend.
• Locked Away in a Monastery:
  • Brother Valentinus was locked at Fulda by his father's choice, not his own, and is punished when he states his will to leave.
  • Anastasius becomes Pope after Johanna dies. He doesn't last very long in office before being deposed and imprisoned in a monastery.
• The Lost Lenore: Unknowingly, Gerold and Johanna become one to each other, longing to be together for years after thinking they will never see each other again.
• The Low Middle Ages: The story takes place between 814 and 887 A.D. (897 in the book).

M-Y

• Marital Rape License: Johanna's father has no objection to raping his wife because the Bible says wives must submit to their husbands.
• Maternity Crisis: Johanna goes into labor during the Easter procession, while the only other person who knows she is a pregnant woman is away fighting for his life.
• The Medic: Johanna trains with the resident Medicus at Fulda and becomes an itinerant healer.
• Medieval Morons: Subverted and deconstructed. Johanna's father is an almost comical version of the trope, but it is soon apparent that only he is like this and other people don't think highly of him because of it. Some of the most misogynistic characters are also the most educated, and the arguments they use can be recognized as coming from Ancient authors instead of just the Bible. Ancient (including pre-Christian) knowledge is generally valued. The Pope's doctors being useless and the aqueduct being unfinished with the funds allocated to building new churches instead also bring the trope to mind... but there is a firm implication that the reason behind both is political corruption, not hostility to science.
• Mentor Archetype:
  • Aesculapius, the first adult to discover Johanna's potential, becomes her teacher in religion, philosophy, science, and languages.
  • Brother Benjamin takes over the mentor role at Fulda, teaching Johanna medicine.
  • Johanna becomes one to Arn, then his daughter Arnalda.
• Misblamed: Johannes blames Johanna for being sent to Cathedral school and then to Fulda Abbey. While Johanna did want to attend Cathedral school, it was in the end his father's obsession with having his son at both places that set them on that path.
• The Mole: Anastasius is the Emperor's man in the Pope's circle.
• The Mountains of Illinois: Dorstadt and Gerold's castle (presumably nearby) are shown to be in a hilly area. In reality Dorstadt was a commercial emporium in what is now Utrecht province in the Netherlands, which like the rest of the country is flat as a board.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Johanna becomes pregnant shortly after becoming Pope, which she must hide as part of her secret identity.
• Narrator All Along: The movie is narrated by Bishop Arnaldo, who is revealed to be Arnalda all grown up at the end.
• Never My Fault: Johanna's father takes no responsibility whatsoever for the deaths of his children and wife, and subsequent ruin of his household. In particular, he blames raping his wife on her tempting him like "Eve with the apple".
• No Name Given: Johanna's parents. In the novel, Johanna's mother is named Gudrun, while he is only known as "father" and "the canon".
• No-Sell:
  • The Viking leader cuts the gospels in half and murders the bishop when the latter yells him to behold the word of God.
  • Johanna sees through a Snake Oil Salesman's claim to be selling a flask of the Virgin Mary's breastmilk, arguing that if it was the real deal the milk would be long unwarm, spoiled, and he would ask more money for it.
• Not Worth Killing: While Johannes is riding to Dorstadt on the messenger's horse, a brigand kills the messenger. Johannes pulls a knife to defend himself, but the brigand just cuts the messenger's finger for his ring and steals the horse while watching Johannes from afar.
• No Woman's Land: This is Carolingian Europe. Women are legally subordinate to their fathers and husbands, their education is discouraged, and if they don't get raped and killed by their husbands they can be by travelers or raiding Vikings. However, like The Dung Ages and Medieval Morons tropes above, this is also nuanced by the existence of men who are willing to listen to women's opinions and help them, even if they have to bend the rules to do so. Some women like Richilde also have ways to exert their influence without going to the lengths Johanna does.
• Off with His Head!: Dorstadt's bishop is decapitated during the Viking attack.
• Outside-Context Villain: The surprise Viking attack kills every character known to Johanna in Dorstadt, friend or enemy.
• Patriotic Fervor: Anastasius and his father see the non-Roman "Johannes" as "a foreigner" and bring it as a reason he shouldn't be close to the Pope.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Vikings raid Dorstadt, taking the Church's relics and some girls with them.
• Re-Cut: The extended TV cut, which adds more scenes or makes them longer to turn the theatrical film into a two-parter miniseries.
• Refused Reunion: Johanna's father comes to Fulda under the belief that his son is a monk there. When the abbot informs Johanna of her father's arrival she doesn't want to meet him, but is overruled and forced to.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Johanna is believed dead after the Viking attack on Dorstadt.
• Retirony: Johanna and Gerold die during the Easter procession, after which they were planning to leave Rome and live openly as a couple.
• Rich Bitch: Richilde, Gerold's wife, is the richest and most villainous woman in the story. Anastasius is an arguable male version.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Kinda - one of many media productions dealing with a Papal election that were made on the wake of John Paul II's death.
• Sadist Teacher: Odo, the schoolmaster at Dorstadt, doesn't want women to attent Cathedral school and makes up excuses to punish Johanna for being there.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Johanna's father convinces the Dorstadt messenger to take Johannes to the school instead of her, when the admittance letter names her instead, Johanna has enough and just leaves the family home for Dorstadt in the night.
• Secret History: The movie ends with an attempt by the Church to cover up the fact that Joan's reign ever happened, only for Arnalda to put it back in the Vatican Archives.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Matthew teaches Johanna Latin by sharing the lessons his father gives him with her.
  • Brother Benjamin knew for years that she was a woman disguised as a man. He only tells her when she has to flee.
• Secret Test: Upon being brought to the Papal residence to treat Sergius, the Pope's doctors give Johanna a urine sample and ask Johanna if she can use it to diagnose the Pope's health problems. Realizing that they gave her a pregnant woman's urine, Johanna informs the doctors that a miracle has occurred and the Pope is pregnant. This satisfies the Pope's doctors that they are not putting Sergius into the hands of a charlatan.
• Self-Inflicted Hell: If Johanna's father could just dial down his misogyny (and probably hypocrisy and narcissism), he could accept that God had taken Matthew with Him earlier and that He has no plans for his sons to attend religious school (as he is told by Aesculapius in regard to Johannes), be glad that his daughter wants to giver her life to serve Him too and move on with his life. And this is without getting into the implication that Matthew dies of pneumonia caused by staying under the rain outside while his father rapes his mother inside, or the ultimate death of his wife in childbirth after he denies her treatment, which leads to the breaking of his home life (as he had been warned about) and becoming a beggar in his old age.
• Setting Update: Though barely, the movie changes Joan's reign from the most common version of the legend, placing it after the death of Sergius II (847) rather than Leo IV (855).
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: A messenger from Dorstadt comes to take Johanna to Cathedral school. Johanna's father argues that it is a mistake and that he should take Johannes, but the messenger doesn't just accept his word and asks his mother. The father tries to intervene still, which makes the messenger tell him to shut up while showing him a ring that identifies him as an authority.
• Sinister Minister:
  • Johanna's father is pretty much devoid of any quality and a constant villain in the first part of the movie.
  • Anastasius covets the office of Pope and arranges the death of Sergius in order to clear his path to the throne.
• Smug Snake:
  • Johanna's father falls into hard times after his wife's death and walks to Fulda after hearing that his son Johannes survived the Viking attack and is a monk there. His intention is not to reunite with his son out of love but to be admitted as a monk himself in his final years, and he has no problem cursing his dead wife while stating this.
  • Anastasius is deadset on becoming the next Pope, trying his hand on every nefarious plot up to murdering the current Pope himself. All of his plans backfire. Even when he finally becomes Pope, his pontificate is short-lived and he ends being deposed and Locked Away in a Monastery.
• The Smurfette Principle: Johanna is the only female admitted to the Cathedral school and later becomes the only female member of the Fulda monastery and the Roman Curia (although in secret).
• Snake Oil Salesman: A man claims to sell breastmilk from the Virgin Mary at Dorstadt's market.
• Sole Survivor: Both Gerold and Johanna become the one from their respective families.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the book, Brother Benjamin dies of the plague without learning Johanna's secret, and she escapes the abbey with nobody's help.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When reunited with "Johannes", Johanna's father disparages her late mother, blaming her as a temptress for him raping her and claiming that she went straight to Hell for praying to the Pagan gods in her deathbed.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: When his others plans backfire, Anastasius has Sergius II poisoned so he can succeed him. This also backfires.
• Tension-Cutting Laughter: Johanna makes everyone go silent when she claims that Eve must have been smarter than Adam, since she ate the fruit to gain knowledge while Adam only did it because Eve told him to. Gerold fakes a loud laugh to cut the tension, which is followed by the bishop and everyone else present.
• Timeshifted Actor: Every character who appears in the story first as a child is subjected to this, including Johanna, her brothers, Arnalda, and Gerold's daughters.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Johanna carries a carving of St. Catherine that Matthew did long after his death, before giving it to Arnalda.
  • Gerold keeps the flowers that Johanna gave him when he was called to arms, thinking she was killed or abducted by the Vikings.
• Traumatic Haircut: Johanna's father punishes her mother by cutting some flocks of her hair with a knife.
• Trial by Ordeal:
  • A scene present in the TV version only has Johanna's father submitting the midwife to a trial by water in which she drowns.
  • In the novel, Gerold, presiding of a trial, uses it as punishment. He's pretty sure the accused it guilty and figures that even if the blisters heal in time, it will be a lesson to him.
• Two-Person Pool Party: Johanna and Gerold first have sex one night at the river.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Lothair I claims the title of Emperor and disputes the division of his father's realm, going to war against his brothers to conquer the Rhineland and then marching on Rome to demand the Pope's submission. He doesn't care if his subjects don't understand the need for this (instead of campaigning against the Viking threat), nor stops his own army from pillaging them along the way.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Arighis nominates "Johannes" for Pope in an effort to prevent Anastasius from being elected, just as Johanna was warming up to Gerold's advice to flee Rome. This results on both being killed later on.
• Villainous Rescue: Johanna is saved from an unwanted marriage by a timely Viking raid that destroys the city - and almost her in the process.
• Welcome to the Big City: The montage as Joan first arrives in Rome and sees ruins, priests, rich, poor, sick, and slaves coming off a slave ship. The earlier arrival at the Dorstadt banquet is a downplayed version.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Anastasius is basically his family's representative in the Curia and follows the directions of his father.
• Wife Husbandry: Gerold takes Johanna in his home while she is still a child and falls in love with her when she becomes an adult. She reciprocates his feelings.
• Woman Scorned: Gerold's wife, Richilde, becomes this when she is told of her husband's desire for Johanna.
• Would Harm a Child:
  • Johanna's father canes her for refusing to erase a Greek book gifted to her by Aesculapius.
  • The Vikings kill Gerold's daughters and all the altar boys at the Cathedral.
• Wretched Hive: Rome. It is the largest and richest city in the movie but it is also full of ruins, inequality, poverty, slavery, xenophobia, corruption, and literal cutthroat politics.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: In the beginning, Arnalda notes that while Charlemagne is remembered as a great ruler, in 9th century Germany he's still seen by many as a recent, vicious conqueror.

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