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Outline Plan for Flight of Pope Joan’s Daughter |
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1. Central personal conflicts: |
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a. Personal crisis
between father and daughter – he is sent to kill her for Church to hide
his forbidden love with Pope Joan and protect them from exposure of allowing
woman to be the leader of the Catholic Church. |
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b. Sibling rivalry
- brother’s manipulative attempt to continue to control his younger brother’s
choice of an adventurous secular life for his own ambition to launch a coup-de-tat
for leadership. |
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c. A barren surrogate
mother, ex-church courtesan, feels a contradictory love and resentment for
her child that she rescued and yet suffers isolation in her self-imposed
banishment. |
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d. Two commissioned emissaries
from Rome unravel the contractory assignments that are given to them that
automatically sets them in opposition to each other. |
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2. Three major political struggles as background: |
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a. Aftermath of
Charlemagne’s conversion by the sword and fear by the Moslems, Jews and
pagans to openly express any religious ceremony. |
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b. Early political
maneuvering of the Irish to avoid slaughter by Vikings in their blunder
of the British Isles. |
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c. Isolated underground
catholic trends that offered refuge from persecution. These glimpses later
form the basis of the Cathars, Erigena’s followers and the blending of dervishes
dance, cabalist’s relativism and kell satirical art. |
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3. Four significant scenes where story is woven: |
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a. Library of the
Vatican – initial scene shows manipulation of librarian and his hidden role
in assassination of Pope Joan and his separate deals with Joan’s lover sent
to hunt the daughter that was smuggled out of Rome.
He also has his brother sent for because he does not completely trust
the hired assassin to fulfill the murder of his daughter.
He also has a financial motive to get a sample of Irish Oak Ink and
plays on the mercenary nature of his brother to make profit out of the adventure. The library is also the scene where the characters
of the brother, the hired assassin and his daughter are confronting the
librarian after they piece together the fragments of the murder mystery.
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b. Major Aran Island
on the west coast of Ireland – the setting is near the old sacred Druid
construction. The two families
one mixed Spanish Arab and maid of Pope Joan and the Spanish Arab family’s
younger brother, wife and child who is promised to wed the daughter.
The edicts of the Church, the persecution of non-existent Druid remnants,
and their new sex-laws precede the blessing of new rulers and their collection
of new taxes and property. |
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c. The home of
John Scotus Erigena’s – a description of his great talents and his problems
of church dogma against reincarnation and tolerance of pagan rituals and
sheltering of married priests and care for pregnant unwed mothers. He offers to hide Joan’s daughter.
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d. A monastery
in upper Italy – the whole story is told in a flashback of the assassin
who has just helped his daughter escape trial and certain death and escape
with the librarian’s brother as they make their way back to Erigena’s hideout. A scribe, an ex soldier with Charlemagne’s son, who knows
the father by reputation and has become a monk out of true love of god has
the dilemma of the Church’s duty to extol a confession, hide all the embarrassing
particulars and still care for the safety of those seeking sanctuary from
the arm of the Church. |
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4. Historical droplets sprinkled in the adventure. |
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a. Humor – the
edict on prohibiting eating of beans, against spirits, against constant
repeating of admonition of priestly acts of a variety of carnal excesses.
Peasants asking for multiple blessings of all religious trends. The
Irish attempt to divert the Vikings by misdirecting their search for booty.
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b. Cruelty – the
killing of unwanted babies by nuns and burying them outside the convent.
Symbiotic secret deals for land grants, taxes and weapons and inventions
in return doling titles of king to local petty tyrants who used Church rule
to crush rebellion. The docile
propaganda to the peasants left them unable to deal with foreign mercenary
invasion. |
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c. Mystery – the
story of the black Madonna, the cult of Magdalene and the convivencia in
Spain between all 3 faiths. |
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d. Education -
Embryo of modern trends of: |
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Class struggle muted in satire |
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Nationalism rivalry within local fiefdoms |
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Political intrigue adaptive to pragmatic survival |
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Science – rediscovery of Ptolemy’s map, herbal medicine, combination
of Arab paper and Irish Ink for transcribing.
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5.Thin
red thread of motive: Monarchial
rulers no matter what their calling attempt to hide their crimes even to
the point of irrerevant acts of contrition after a begrudgingly urged confession
to save a dwindling empire gets exposed by the disparity of their rigid
policy designed to reclaim their hegemony against the irristable flow of
historical changes and the maturity of a reluctantly educated population.
Sometimes the fall of the monarchy is a tragic loss as in the case
of Pope Joan that represented a forward advance in civilization. Most of the time the fall of the monarchy, even if it
wraps itself in patriotism or God or both is a welcome advance if that fall
is a result of a movement from the most down trodden. |
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