Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Pope Joan

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

According to the records of the Catholic Church, there have been 266 men who have been pope. However, for centuries it was thought that there was another pope not on the list that was different from all of the others. What made this pope different is that the pope was a woman. Learn more about the legend of Pope Joan, both the fact and the fiction, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the records of the Catholic Church, there have been 266 men who have been Pope. However, for centuries, it was thought that there was one other Pope that was not on the list, and they were different from all the others. What made this Pope different is that the Pope was a woman. Learn more about the legend of Pope Joan, both the fact and the fiction, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow?

That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night,

this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Untangling the legend of Pope Joan is difficult because there are so many stories and many of them are conflicting. So the best place to start is to just start with the basics of the story as it's been passed down throughout the years. Sometime in the Middle Ages,

could have been in the 9th century or possibly the 10th or 11th, century, there was a girl born in England by the name of Joan, or Joanne or Joanna. However, the story is told, it's always a feminine version of the name John. For the purposes of this episode, I am going to stick with Joan. Joan was very intelligent, but education was denied to women in the middle ages. So, she disguised herself as a man and entered a monastic school in Manse, Germany. Or perhaps she was originally from Manse, again, it depends on the story. While at school, she excelled, was a top student. She learned Latin and Greek as well as the other liberal arts, which was at the core of an education in the Middle Ages. She eventually kept with the ruse of being a man and became a priest and worked her way up the church hierarchy. She may or may not have been involved with the man and followed him to Rome. While in Rome, she became a highly respected teacher and during a papal conclave, she was chosen as Pope. The entire time, she had hidden the fact that she was a woman and everyone thought she was a man. Her papacy supposedly lasted

for two years and seven months. Her ruse was eventually discovered one day during a procession from St. Peter's to St. John's Lateran when she gave birth in front of everyone in Rome. Or she gave birth while trying to mount a horse. It depends on the story. Either the public stoned her to death upon the discovery, or she died in childbirth. Either way, the Catholic Church supposedly covered up the existence of Pope Joan and denies she was ever a pope to this day. For several centuries, this story was accepted as fact in much of the Catholic world. There were many authors who spoke of it as matter-of-factly, and the cathedral in Siena, Italy, even had a statue of Pope Joan alongside statues of other popes. The statue, however, was ordered taken down by the sitting

pope in the year 1601. So, the big question is, where did this story come from, and exactly how true is it? The first mention of a female pope occurred sometime around the year 1250. It was mentioned by a Dominican friar by the name of Jean de Maille, who lived in Metz, France. He wrote a book called the Chronica Universalis Metness. In it, he wrote the following, quote, concerning a certain pope, or rather a female pope, who was not set down in the list of popes or bishops of Rome because she was a woman, who disguised herself as a man and became, by her character and talents, a curial secretary, then a cardinal, and finally pope. One day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth to a child. Immediately, by Roman justice, she was bound to,

by the feet to the horse's tail and dragged in stone by the people for half a league, and where she died, there she was buried, and at the place it is written, Petre Pater Patram, Papié Proteopatram, which means, O Peter, Father of Fathers, betray the childbearing woman Pope. End quote. The events which he described supposedly took place around the year 1099, a full 150 years before he wrote it. It should also be noted that there is no name attached to the

female pope that he described. There weren't a lot of books written back in the 13th century, and the monasteries were the primary centers of learning. Books would be copied and passed around to different monasteries. So it isn't surprising that the next several mentions of this also come from Dominican monks. The story was next told by a monk named Stefan of Bourbon in his book Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, and then by another Dominican named Martin of Vopava in his book Chronicon Patificum at Imperatorum. Here is what he wrote. wrote in the late 13th century, and the embellishments he added to the story. Quote, John Anglicus, born in Mance, was a pope for two years, seven months and four days, and died in Rome,

after which there was a vacancy in the papacy of one month. It is claimed that this John was a woman, who as a girl who had been led to Athens, dressed in the clothes of a man by a certain lover of hers. There she became proficient in a diversity of branches of knowledge until she had no equal. And afterwards in Rome, she taught the liberal arts and had great masters amongst her. her students and audience. A high opinion of her life in learning arose in the city, and she was chosen for Pope. While Pope, however, she became pregnant by her companion. Through ignorance of the exact time when the birth was expected, she was delivered of a child while in procession from St. Peter's

to the Lateran, in a lane once named Viasakra, the Sacred Way, but now known as the Shund Street between the Coliseum and St. Clement's Church. End quote. In this telling of the story, the Pope now has a name, her demise becomes different, and there are more than the same. more details. In particular, he says that the Pope was John the 8th, which would have put it in the 9th century sometime around the year 882, almost a full 200 years before the original story. The tale of Pope Joan kept getting spread over the years and throughout the Renaissance. One of the surprising things about how the story spread is how little resistance there was to it. Most people just accepted it as fact. There was even a rumor that after the election of a new pope,

the Cardinals would check under the robes of the new pope to make sure. that they were male. Eventually, the church came out and publicly declared the story of the female pope to be false. Oddly enough, it was a Protestant historian who debunked the story. David Bondell, who was a French historian and preacher, realized that the story didn't fit. The gap between when the events supposedly took place and when the story first appears was over 350 years. He figured it was a commentary or satire about Pope John the 9th, who was very young, and likewise, there was a 16th century Italian historian who thought that the story might have been about John the 12th who had a mistress named Joan. While the story eventually died down, it never

quite went away. There are still people today who believe it's true. However, it is pretty much the universal consensus among historians that the legend is false. If you think about it, it's really hard to wipe a pope from history. If you remember back, I did an episode on the Roman concept of Demnatio Memori, which was erasing someone from history. Every mention of them, every image of them, was to be destroyed. There were even former emperors who had a Dimnotio Memorai decree placed upon them after they died. However, it never worked. It was impossible to destroy all the coins and everyone's knowledge of what they already knew to have existed. If Pope Joan had existed and had been in office for two and a half years, then there would have been

letters sent to various kings, bishops, and monasteries across Europe. There are literally no contemporary written references to a female pope. However, there are many references to the popes that did exist during the same time period. Cloins would have been minted for the new pope as the ruler of the papal states. None of them exist. Moreover, if a pope were found to be a woman and she actually gave birth in such a dramatic movie plot fashion in the middle of a public procession, it would have been an incredible scandal and word would have spread throughout Europe. How did she hide the pregnancy for nine months? And why would she go out in public just when she is ready to give birth. Even opponents of the church and the Pope in the 9th and 10th centuries

never brought up Pope Joan in their criticism of the church. In the end, the story of Pope Joan reminds me a little bit of the legend of King Arthur. He is a person for whom there is little historical evidence. Over time, the story of King Arthur became more and more elaborate, with entire novels being written about him and an entire mythology behind it. The same is true with the story of Pope Joan. Movies and novels have been created telling her story. So there almost certainly wasn't a Lady Pope back in the Middle Ages. There's no contemporary evidence for it. It would have been impossible to cover up,

and the stories that do exist aren't consistent and appeared centuries after the fact. Nonetheless, you have to admit, it does make for a pretty interesting story. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.