The streets of Rome during the high Middle Ages were a crucible of political panic, theological anxiety and rumour. According to enduring folklore, a solemn papal procession weaving past the ancient stones of the Colosseum ground to a sudden, horrified halt. Beneath the gold-embroidered vestments of the reigning pontiff "Pope Juan," an unexpected collapse into labour exposed a biological reality the patriarchal establishment found deeply threatening: the Pope was a woman. 

In one variation of this ecclesiastical myth, a nun named Agnes was dragged from her cloister to act as a puppet sovereign under the ghost title of "Pope  John XX" – a figure of convenience whose existence was subsequently erased from the official Liber Pontificalis. Whether read as a historical 'typo' or a persisting piece of political satire, the mythology of the skipped number and the hidden female pope illuminates a structural reality that has governed Christendom for two millennia: the institutional panic surrounding the presence of women at the high altars of spiritual authority.

Yet this institutional amnesia stands in stark, subversive opposition to the very foundations of the Christian narrative. Long before medieval scribes weaponised historical errors to expunge female names from the lineage of Peter, a definitive theological blueprint had already been drawn in a private home in Bethany. When Mary of Bethany shattered an alabaster jar of pure nard – an  extravagant act of devotion worth a labourer's annual wage – she crossed an invisible threshold into a strictly male domain. As the disciples recoiled in pragmatic fury, dismissing her radical liturgy as a financial waste, Jesus offered a stunning defence that became an eternal decree:

Wherever this  gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.

For centuries, this promise existed in suspended animation, fulfilled in the quiet intimacy of individual memory and regional pulpits, but systemically denied representation within the global church. The historic rise of women like Sarah Mullally to the pinnacle of ecclesiastical governance depicts the material fulfilment of that ancient, radical promise. The appointment of women to the highest echelons of the Anglican Communion acts as an institutional redemption of Jesus’  pledge to Mary of Bethany, transforming an ancient declaration of personal dignity into a modern reality of structural authority. 

The ghost of John XX

To evaluate the structural transformation represented by the modern female episcopacy, one must first dismantle the architecture of historical exclusion that preceded it. The legends of "Pope Juan" (Joan) and the phantom reign of "Pope John XX" are not mere historical curiosities; they are psychological profiles of a patriarchal hierarchy in crisis. 

The standard myth of Pope Joan, popularised by the thirteenth-century  Dominican chronicler Martin of Opava in his Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum, places a woman on the throne of St. Peter in the mid-ninth century. Posing as a man under the name "Johannes Anglicus," this brilliant German woman from Mainz allegedly traveled to Athens, mastered theology and ascended through the Roman Curia to be elected pope by unanimous consent following the death of Pope Leo IV in 855. For over two years, the myth claims, she governed the Latin Church with intellectual distinction, until biology wrecked the performance. During a papal procession  from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, she went into sudden labor on a narrow street between the Colosseum and the Basilica of St. Clement, dying either in childbirth or at the hands of an outraged mob. 

Modern scholarship universally debunks the existence of Pope Joan, demonstrating that Pope Benedict III succeeded Leo IV without any two-year interval. However, the cultural utility of the myth lies in what it reveals about the medieval institutional imagination. It codified the ultimate patriarchal  nightmare – that sacred authority could be held, synthesised and dispensed by a female body. 

The alabaster jar of nard

Long before the medieval church began policing its lineages with bureaucratic vigilance, the foundational text of Christian scripture had already established a counter-narrative of radical female inclusion. The anointing at Bethany is an event of such theological weight that it is preserved across all four canonical gospels, yet its structural mechanics are most sharply articulated when comparing the accounts of Matthew, Mark and John. 

In the accounts of Matthew and Mark, the woman remains technically anonymous, framed purely by her disruptive liturgical action. In Matthew 26:6-13, the setting is the house of Simon the Leper: 

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his  disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. (Matthew 26:6-9, King James version) 

In first-century Judea, theological spaces were rigorously segregated. For a woman to enter a formal dining area where men sat at meat, shatter a sealed alabaster vessel and pour an exotic, valuable substance directly onto the body of a rabbi was a profound violation of social  and religious boundaries. The disciples’ reaction, couched in the language  of fiscal responsibility and utilitarian charity, was an instinctive pushback against sacred duty that bypassed their emerging  institutional hierarchy. They recognised, with immediate clarity, that this woman was performing an independent prophetic liturgy. 

Jesus’ response, however, completely upends their objections: 

When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman?  for she hath wrought a good work upon me... For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you,  Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall  also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her. (Matthew 26:10, 12-13, KJV) 

In this single declaration, Jesus performs a dual radical act: he defines her  work as "beautiful" and issues an immutable, global decree of perpetual remembrance. More significantly, he recognises her actions as explicitly prophetic – she is the only figure in the passion narrative who correctly understands and prepares for his death, executing a high-priestly function of anointing before the institutional priesthood had even formalised its sacraments. 

The Gospel of John explicitly dispells this anonymity, pulling back the veil of institutional erasure to identify the woman as Mary of Bethany. Despite this scriptural clarity, the church historically compartmentalised the  narrative; it happily read the text in the liturgy while denying its institutional  realisation, keeping Mary’s memory alive in the abstract space of the Word while locking her spiritual descendants out of the halls of governance. 

The fulfilled promise

The steady ascent of Sarah Mullally through the hierarchical structures of the church of England represents the literal breaking of this historical jar. A former Chief Nursing Officer for England, Mullally’s career has long synthesised deep pastoral care with heavy administrative and state governance. When she was appointed Bishop of London in 2018, she  did not only occupy an administrative office, but also destroyed one of the most formidably fortified glass ceilings in the global church, taking charge of the historic and political heart of the Anglican establishment. 

As leadership transitions continue to reshape the global Anglican Communion, the formal installation of women into the highest seats of  spiritual jurisdiction, culminating in the inevitable path towards the chair of St. Augustine at Canterbury, signals a fundamental, tectonic shift. This is not an achievement of secular liberalism, nor is it a concession to corporate diversity metrics. It is an organic, structural reclamation of the gospel's original blueprint. 

The induction of female primates into spiritual authority alters the texture of ecclesial governance. Just as Mary’s spikenard filled the entire house, challenging the rigid categories of the disciples, the modern female episcopacy infuses the body politic of the church with a long-suppressed theological reality, bringing the marginalised prophetic voice of Bethany directly into the centre of institutional lawmaking.

When a woman stands in the cathedral precinct holding the primatial crozier and issuing decrees that shape the moral and legal frameworks of a global communion, the church ceases to be a system that hides its "Agneses" and "Juans" in the shadows of historical fiction. 

The historical trajectory from the mythical, vaporised throne of Pope John XX  to the highly tangible, institutional authority of modern female archbishops reveals a profound, underlying truth about the nature of spiritual legacy. Human structures may skip numbers, alter records and build complex administrative barriers to maintain an illusion of a monochromatic, monogendered authority. They may privatise women's devotion, confining them to the cloister, the hospital or the local parish. But, they cannot permanently suppress the trajectory of an absolute promise. 

Jesus’ defence of Mary of Bethany was an explicit, legal and theological recognition that women are not merely passive recipients of grace or quiet financial supporters of ministry, but also primary authors and executors of the sacred narrative. Every time a woman ascends the steps of a historic see, the church moves one step closer to a total, radical reconciliation with its own  historical origins. 

These modern appointments do not represent a departure from ancient tradition, instead they are its ultimate, long-delayed fulfilment. They  prove that the radical dignity extended to a woman with an alabaster jar in a crowded room in Bethany was never intended to remain confined to the  page. It was a structural mandate, designed to echo through the centuries, breaking open the closed institutions of the world, until its fragrance finally filled the highest halls of Canterbury. 

Faisal C.K. is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. The views expressed are personal. 

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