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In the 9th century, as the story goes, a woman disguised as a man ruled the Catholic church. HofstraUniversity professor Craig Rustici ’86 was so intrigued by the tale that he made it the focus of his recently published book, The Afterlife of Pope Joan.
“The legend of Pope Joan was not committed to writing until the 13th century,” he says. “The book is about what happens after the story gets established. It looks at the various versions of the legend and the implications on social, political, and religious thought of each.”
Rustici was reminded of the legend as he was preparing to teach a class on gender.
“Often time scholarship grows out of teaching,” he says. “We were studying a play called The Roaring Girl in a class I was teaching. In doing my preparation I found a pseudo autobiography of the Roaring Girl and they were describing her as a real Pope Joan. I realized that the reader in the 17th century would have been familiar with Pope Joan’s legend, but that most modern readers don’t know it. To me that was an opportunity to recover a piece of cultural literacy.”
It took Rustici over eight years to complete the book, writing around his teaching schedule. A trip to the Cathedral of Sienna in Italy, which used to have a bust of Pope Joan, showed him that the book needed to deal with how the story varied throughout the years and how well it was accepted, based on the social and cultural issues of the times.
“In 1600 the bust got taken down because the story was considered scandalous,” he says. “Up to then there had been a tolerant attitude toward the story. That obviously got less tolerant with the Cross-Reformation. The Catholics and Protestants had heated debates about the story’s authenticity.”
Rustici has been recognized and honored for his scholarship on the subject, lecturing in several places prior to the publication of the book by University of Michigan. He intends for his next book to be about tobacco.
“I am interested in the range of responses to tobacco historically,” he says. “From the view that it is a drug that inspires to a panacea for curing to the anti-tobacco position, the responses have cycled through great change.”
Writing books requires Rustici to draw on much of his training as an English major. However, it is the teaching experience and role models for which he is most grateful.
“My Shakespeare professor, Professor[James] Lusardi, was extraordinarily theatrical and dedicated,” he says. “He actually led me to my specialty. In one class we went to Europe. It gave me a great grounding in the classical tradition.”
“I also found Professor[Suzanne] Westfall to be a great resource. She had a different style and was from a different generation, and so her teaching was more seminar-oriented. Also, she was more familiar with more recent developments in critical approaches.”
Rustici was a McKelvy Scholar at Lafayette, and his most memorable times were of being with his peers in that group.
“I had a few years at that residence,” he says. “It was a living group that was an alternative to Greek life. We met for discussions weekly. It was communal and highly intellectually nurturing.”
Noting that his education prepared him by providing good models for his own teaching, Rustici recalls that Westfall let him teach in her class. Later, after finishing his master’s at University of Chicago, he returned to teach at Lafayette for a brief time while finishing his dissertation.
“It helped me get my feet wet and make a living at the same time. I am quite indebted to Lafayette,” he says.