According to medieval legend, Pope Joan was a female pope.

According to the legend, an English woman, educated in Mainz, dressed as a man and, due to the convincing nature of her disguise, became a monk before becoming a pope at a time when the method of selecting popes was haphazard. She took the name Pope John.

She was sexually promiscuous and became pregnant by one of her lovers. During an Easter Procession near the Basilica of San Clemente, over-enthusiastic crowds pushed around the horse which was carrying the 'Popess'. The horse reacted, almost causing an accident. The trauma of the experience led 'Pope John' to go into premature labour.

She was dragged feet-first by a horse through the streets of Rome, and stoned to death by the outraged crowd. She was buried in the street where her identity had been revealed, between the Lateran and St. Peter's Basilica. This street was (supposedly) avoided by subsequent papal processions - though when this latter detail became part of the popular legend in the 14th century, the Papacy was at Avignon, and there were no papal processions in Rome.

Supposedly, since that time, any candidate for the pope undergoes an intimate examination to ensure he is not a woman (or eunuch) in disguise. This involved sitting on a chair which has a hole in the seat. The most junior deacon present then feels under the chair to ensure the new Pope is male.

"And in order to demonstrate his worthiness, his testicles are felt by the junior present as testimony of his male sex. When this is found to be so, the person who feels them shouts out in a loud voice testiculos habet ("He has testicles") And all the clerics reply Deo Gratias ("Thanks be to God"). Then they proceed joyfully to the consecration of the pope-elect" - Felix Hamerlin, De nobilitate et Rusticate Dialogus (ca. 1490), quoted in The Female Pope, by Rosemary & Darroll Pardoe (1988).

As with myths generally, a small amount of truth exists, embellished with layers of fiction. Such a seat did exist; when a pope took possession of his cathedral, St. John Lateran in Rome, he traditionally sat on two ancient chairs of porphyry, the sedia stercoraria. Both had holes. The reason for the holes remains a mystery, but as both the seats and their holes predated the Pope Joan story, and indeed Catholicism by centuries, they clearly have nothing to do with a need to check the sex of a pope. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman bidets or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonial by popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims (as they did also with their latin title, Pontifex Maximus).

The myth of Pope Joan was conclusively rubbished by David Blondel, a mid-seventeenth century protestant historian, who, through detailed analysis of the claims and suggested timings, showed that no such events could have happened. Among the evidence discrediting the Pope Joan story, is

  • in the 'year of Pope Joan', 854, the actual pope was Leo IV.
  • Papal possessions did not travel down the processional route where the supposed birth took place at Easter.
  • No archival documentation exists of such an event.
  • The 'testicle seat' which popes supposedly sat on to have their masculinity ascertained long predates the era of 'Pope Joan' and has nothing to do with a requirement that a pope have his tecticles checked.

In fact the timing of the first appearance of the story suspiciously coincides with the death of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, with whom the papacy had been in conflict. The consensus of historians is that the 'Pope Joan' story is an anti-papal satire timed to link in to the papacy's clash with the Holy Roman Empire, centring on three mediæval Catholic fears;

  • a sexually active pope;
  • a woman in a position of dominant authority over men;
  • deception at the very heart of the Church.

However what may have started as satire, featuring in carnivals throughout Europe, ended up accepted as reality, to such a scale that "Pope Joan" was referred to by such notables as William of Ockham and featured in some lists of popes, notably in Siena Cathedral, where 'her' image features among real popes. It also conveniently linked in to confusion over the ordinals given to pope Johns; because John is the most widely used papal name, and some Johns were antipopes, confusion over what number belonged to which valid Pope John (and indeed which one was a real pope and which one an antipope) some lists suggest that one pope John is "missing". Others don't. But none suggests that the missing one is a woman. It was not until Blondel's seventeenth century study that the Pope Joan story became discredited as seen merely as an urban myth based on contemporary fears and attitudes.

Some hold that the High Priestess card in the Tarot pack (called La Papesse in French) is a depiction of Joan.

See Also Myths and legends surrounding the Papacy, Marozia

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