Chagall's stunning stained glass, UK church

It is an ordinary laneway that leads to All Saints Church Tudeley in Kent, where an unremarkable church appears, although loved by locals. Enter the porch, lift the latch, push the heavy oak door and pass via the dark entrance into a realm of magic. Pools of mainly blue and gold light, flecked with crimson and green, shimmer on the ancient flag stones. They are the special stained glass windows by Marc Chagall on 3 sides that make this church unique. Why? It is a story of love, tragedy and art

modest All Saints Church Tudeley, Kent

Tudeley’s history is interesting. Until 1849 there was no large land owner close to this tiny village. Then in that very year, the Jacobean mansion Somerhill, the most important house around, was purchased by Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid. The years passed and the wealthy Goldsmid family expanded their estate and started taking a philanthropic interest in Tudeley affairs. But this interest did not include the little Anglican church since the Goldsmid family was Jewish. But all that was to change in the C20th when the Squire of Somerhill Sir Henry Goldsmid married an Anglican. Sir Henry kept his faith, but Lady Rosemary d’Avigdor-Goldsmid and the 2 daughters worshipped at church.

The Goldsmids lived a privileged, art-filled life. In 1961, Sarah and her mother visited an exhibition in Paris' Louvre where glass windows designed by Chagall for Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Centre synagogue were displayed. Both women were thrilled by these windows, and on her return to Britain, Sarah constantly talked about them. 

All Saints church Tudeley, memorial window above altar 
Meer

Alas two years later, Sarah (21) and 2 friends drowned in a sailing accident near Rye in Sussex. Grief stricken, but thinking of a lasting memorial to their daughter, the Goldsmids knew of Sarah’s awe of Chagall. Her parents approached the artist and asked him if he’d be willing to create the East Window in her memory. Chagall agreed.

Chagall was a very busy older man, plus there were two major problems to consider: 1. He’d never worked in England and 2. the Jewish artist had no experience of what might be acceptable in an Anglican church. Still, Chagall had always been interested in Christian motifs, and did agreed to the commission. Tiny Tudeley was en route to artistic fame. 

Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid met Chagall in Paris to discuss his design. Note that painter Chagall did not adopt the medium of glass until late in life. Perhaps as a lover of colour, he was only too well aware of what his palette could create. But Chagall already found a skilled glass craftsman in Charles Marq of Atelier Jacques Simon in Reims, who rendered the piece into glass. Marq interpreted Chagall’s windows as he had done with Hadassah windows, Jerusalem. Soon 2 workmen went to Kent to install the glass in a newly designed space over the altar.

Crucifixion, memorial window
Letter From England

Note that Chagall had been commissioned to design ONLY the church's East Window as a memorial; yet when he arrived for the dedication ceremony in winter 1967, he’d noticed that the church possessed 11 more windows, 7 with plain glass and 4 with coloured glass. If suitable arrangements could be made for the removal and reinstallation elsewhere of the existing coloured glass, then Chagall would create designs for ALL the windows. After much debate and many delays, All Saints Church Tudeley became the home of the 12 exquisite stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall, the ONLY church so honoured.

According to Jewish Chagall, the windows were inspired by Psalm 8; he found the Bible captivating. Each of the 11 smaller windows is a work of art in its own right. They tell the Biblical stories of creation and show the artist’s delight in the natural world and in live beasts. See Adam and Eve, moon and sun, branches and leaves, doves and ducks, fish and butterflies, ass and a small Chagall self-image. A simple church in an ordinary area was favoured with complex art!! 

Windows with deep blue with green leaf, angel, moon, 

Wiki 

The East Memorial Window over the altar told the tragic story of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid; her ascent to heaven was symbolised by light blue waves and glorious gold and angels. They were all beautiful windows, but it is the memorial window that is the most absorbing. Blue was the colour that Chagall enjoyed using to represent love and Sarah’s tragedy. In the lower section Sarah appeared rocked in the dark indigo waves, while a figure represented all the mourners. Her mother was there too, beside a ghostlike Sarah and her surviving sister. Then look up as the sea’s blue lightened to become sky. Here Sarah was seen again, on a horse, Chagall’s symbol of happiness, being carried towards a ladder. Sarah went up the ladder and a crucified yet triumphant Christ awaited her at the  window’s apex, above them all. Thus life’s suffering and grief shown in the lower panels became the love and resurrection in the upper sections. 

In the sun, enjoy the window’s glory and notice the light swirling through the glass. The colours addressed vital consciousness directly, telling of hope and delight in life. The story was tragic but had been made into rather beautiful blue windows with glass and light. In a perfect testament of a mother’s love for her lost child, mother had commissioned a perfect memorial window.

Depicted in the sea, at the bottom of the memorial window, the drowned girl floated in the water. Then look up at a beautiful depiction of her resurrection. Sarah had loved to ride horses. For Chagall, horses and donkeys represented happiness, and, for him, red was the colour of joy. Sarah was riding a  red horse in Paradise!

Sarah riding a red horse in Paradise 
Letter From England

The church is open to art-lovers on Mons-Sats; on Sundays everyone is welcome to the church service.

Myer: great Russian-Australian retailers

Russian Elcon Baevski (1875-1938) was born in Krichev to Hebrew scholar Ezekiel Baevski, went to a Jewish primary school, then high school and later managed his mother's drapery business. In 1896 Elcon migrated to Australia, working in Melbourne with a relative, Lazer Slutzkin. Simcha Myer Baevski (1878-1934), the youngest of the 11 siblings, attended the same schools as his brother, then he too managed his mother's store. Simcha fled poverty in Belarus and joined Slutzkin's business.

Sidney and Elcon took the family name Myer, moved to rural Bendigo and in 1901 established their drapery store. Sidney ran a rural trade in fabrics, on foot then on horse-cart. The brothers formally became partners in new premises in Pall Mall Bendigo, and in Mar 1902 Elcon married Rose Marks. 

Myer evolved from a drapery to a Bendigo department store

ABC News

Bendigo’s 1856 synagogue was replaced later by a larger, solid brick synagogue, so families had a religious centre. But the brothers’ partnership struggled because Elcon opposed Sabbath trading. He returned to Melbourne, opening clothes production in Flinders Lane. Sidney bought him out and remained in Bendigo, but they were still close. In 1905 Sidney married Hannah Flegeltaub at Ballarat.

In the Bendigo drapery, Sidney followed new fashion trends and presented stock attractively. He also advertised boldly, appealing to women's shopping habits. By 1907 Bendigo's busiest drapers had 60+ staff and expanded its premises. In 1908 Sidney bought Craig Williamson Drapery for £22,000, and a fast sale of its stock repaid his creditors.

Late 1909 Sidney travelled overseas to study British and European merchandising methods and to establish contact with exporters. In 1911 he purchased Wright & Neil, a Bourke St drapery, paying £91,450. He raised staff wages and closed up for a fortnight's stocktaking and ordering! In June, full-page newspaper ads promoted the long Myer sale.

Soon Sidney took over more Bendigo shops, then opened other Melbourne and Adelaide shops. Then Elcon rejoined his brother and managed 2 Bendigo shops. Modelled on San Francisco's Emporium, the new £70,000, 8-storey building opened in July 1914 with a popular gala sale. Myer grew the business, occupying a broad City area between Bourke and Lonsdale Sts. The area included 10 buildings built by Sidney, designed by commercial architects HW & FB Tompkins.

When war tragically erupted in 1914 and damaged trade, Myer opened a London office to deal with suppliers, sourcing more products locally and even manufacturing. It aided Sidney's plan to maintain imports in WW1. Elcon travelled to London again, to organise shipments of cloth. He joined the Army Service Corps, serving in UK and then at the front. In 1915 he built a clothing factory and bought Doveton Woollen Mills in rural Ballarat in 1918.

Myer Emporium, Bourke St, 2007

The retailer evolved from being a drapery into a department store in Bendigo, Wiki

The success of their retailing was also due to their classy window displays. The new Bourke St windows attracted customers, using theatrical sets and models to display goods. Designed by famous commercial buildings architect Nahum Barnet in 1892, two extra buildings were bought by Myer.

In mid-1919 Sidney visited U.S, getting divorced in Nevada and converting to Christianity. In Jan 1920 he married young Margery Merlyn Baillieu and had 4 happy children.

By 1920 Myer Emporium had 200 departments, famous for its motorised delivery vans! Myer's Australia Ltd brought together all firms solely owned by Sidney, with a capital of £2 million; and the London subsidiary was unified. In 1921 warnings of a post-war slump overseas prompted Sidney to predict the collapse of import prices and cut his losses with a Million Pound Master Sale. It cost £500,000+ but, by restocking the cheaper imports, he traded out of crisis.

Sidney offered 73,000 staff shares of £1 each, and 200,000+ shares among his managers (plus paid vacations, access to a sick fund, holiday homes were built) and a free hospital went in-store. He ran annual staff balls, football & cricket matches, a Christian Fellowship and choral society shows.

 

From 1925, a separate section was devoted to display design and installation. The Lonsdale and Little Bourke St building facades showed Classical and Beaux Arts styles while the Bourke St facade had an Inter-war Art Deco style. The present Bourke St façade (8 storeys) was completed in 1933. By 1925 the Bourke St front increased with the first section of an 11-storey Lonsdale St store opened with £3 million capital. In 1926 Myer opened Melbourne's first Cash and Carry grocery, plus self-service cafeterias.

Sidney was managing director, with a large committee. In 1927 the Co's net profit was £328,000 and shareholders received dividends of 17%. In 1928 Myer took James Marshall department store of Adelaide, placing Myer Emporium SA Ltd under his nephew Norman. Furthermore Myer bought out Webb Table Ware Merchants 1930, then WH Rocke smart furniture dealers 1931!

Sidney had ethical employment beliefs, and in times of financial strain here, instead of reducing worker numbers, he lowered wages and increased worker numbers! With the terrible Depression, he launched a £250,000 rebuild of his Bourke St shop in 1931, to increase employment. He’d already anticipated Scullin government's tariff embargoes and import restrictions, so reduced his overseas buying and started a Made in Australia Week. He limited profits to 5% so no retrenchments were needed!

The objects of his philanthropy were sometimes cultural, rather than charity. In 1926 he gave 25,000 Myer shares worth £50,000 to Melbourne Uni! Then he formed the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1932, and created a trust fund for them with 10,000 Myer shares. Sidney was on Royal Melbourne Hospital’s management committee; in 1933 he was chosen for the executive committee of Victoria's Centenary Council and raised £20,000+; and he gave an ambulance to the Victorian Civil Ambulance Service. What a great man.

Sidney died of cardiac failure in Sept 1934 and his will placed 1/10 of his wealth in trust for the charitable, philanthropic and educational needs of his community. The business was left to nephew Sir Norman Myer and Baillieu Bails Myer’s brother Ken Myer.

New windows were installed to Bourke St in 1955, the Myer Christmas windows commencing with 1956’s Olympic Games, and each year, a new theme was created. The Bourke St Myer Christmas window displays were visited by generations of children as their Christmas holiday ritual.

One of the Christmas windows for children after 1956

Mother's Little Explorers

 

Myer Mural Hall used a Streamline Moderne dining room for 1000 people, completed in 1933 on the 6th floor. It is a large space with a décorative plaster ceiling, balconies and wall panels. At one end the mannequin stairs led down from 2 balconies to the landing for fashion parades. The Hall was decorated with 10 murals by famous neo-classical artist Napier Waller (1893-1972)

half the Myer Mural Hall, completed in 1933 on the 6th floor

wedding reception, Tripadvisor

He donated to: Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne Uni and Yarra Boulevard, roadwork for unemployed men. And when the Children's Hospital had to close wards, he donated £8000. His love of classical music meant he gave £1000 annually to concerts by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

He was succeeded by Elcon, with Norman Myer as managing director. Elcon presided over the completion of the modern Bourke St shop. Elcon was also active in many charitable causes eg the Alfred Hospital board and St Kilda Synagogue Board. Alas Elcon died in 1938 of cancer, and was buried with Jewish rites in Boxhill cemetery. His estate was probated at £114,353. Elcon left 2 sons of his first marriage and by his 2nd wife Myrtle Fisher (married 1929).

Bails Myer, born in San Francisco in 1926, was Sidney and Merlyn’s youngest of four children. Bails followed dad in the retail trade, after being a WW2 officer in Royal Navy. When Sir Norman died in 1956, Bails and brother Ken started an ambitious expansion strategy for the company. In 1960 they set up in a giant shopping centre, Chadstone. The brothers believed that the future of retail depended on bringing shopping to the masses, in the suburbs. Correct! Myer store became the retail heart of country’s largest mall!

Myer Chadstone, 2025

Tripadvisor

Bails was also involved in Myer Emporium’s acquisition of the Lindsay’s retail chain in Geelong. That business re-emerged as Target under Myer’s ownership and became another famous Australian retail brand. But in 1983, Bails went back into Myer’s management as a recession strangled Melbourne’s retail trade. This was just when Myer was in a corporate tussle with Grace Brothers. Myer won, securing ownership of the significant NSW department store owner in 1983. Bails led the group’s merger with GJ Coles and Myer Emporium, to create Coles Myer in 1983-5, the ?biggest deals in Australian corporate  history.

In 1994 Bails retired to focus on his interests in the arts and philanthropy, as a trustee of Victoria’s National Gallery. He also worked with the Myer Foundation, a trust that had started in 1959 by Sidney’s sons; it had distributed $300+ million since then. Re scientific studies, Bails became president of Howard Florey Institute and executive member of CSIRO. He also played a key role in the early 2000s in the refurbishment of the Sidney Music Bowl, built to honour dad’s legacy. He died (96) at home in 2022. My grandfather was correct; of all immigrants, Russians added the most to Australian culture.

Sidney Myer Music Bowl summertime venue

has been wowing crowds opened 1959.

Visit Victoria

Massacre in Brazil today, by Tom Phillips

I met my first Brazilian friends during my Gap Year abroad in 1966. They were the kindest, best educated and most moral people I had ever met. And we kept writing for years, even after we had all married and left our homelands. But this week, I had to rely on a guest author from the most reliable newspaper:  "This was a slaughter, not an operation" by Tom Phillips in Guardian, Thu 30 Oct 2025

Day had yet to break over Vila Cruzeiro but already dozens of corpses were splayed out along the favela/slum’s main drag after more than 130 people were killed during the deadliest police operation in Rio’s history: grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies that had been dragged out of nearby forests and dumped on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street.

Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after they were killed in pre-dawn assault

The Guardian 

Erivelton Vidal Correia, head of the local residents’ association, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night spent hauling bullet-riddled local men down from the hills, brought 53 down himself. Correia collapsed as he described his relentless nocturnal hunt for the dead after Rio suffered what was one of the biggest police massacres in modern Brazilian history. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, not even in the Gaza Strip does this happen … I can’t bear to see any more corpses, he wept, covering his face with the surgical gloves he was using.

Rio officials said on Tuesday that dozens of people, including 4 police officers, had been killed after a force of 2,500 launched a pre-dawn assault on Alemão and Penha, the vast patchwork of favelas of which Vila Cruzeiro is part. By early Wednesday the public prosecutor said the death toll had risen to 132, higher than in São Paulo’s notorious Carandiru prison massacre in 1992, when 111 prisoners lost their lives. Between 4.15-9am, when government body collectors finally arrived, the Guardian witnessed pickup trucks delivering dozens of corpses to a Vila Cruzeiro square named after St Luke the Evangelist.

I’ve never seen anything like this … I still haven’t managed to comprehend what has happened. I feel empty. I have no words, said Raull Santiago, a favela activist, as another cargo of corpses arrived. This sent local women scrambling in search of their missing husbands, brothers or sons.

Many of the dead men, most in their late teens, 20s and 30s, are likely to have been members of the local Red Command drug faction, which Tuesday’s operation was intended to target. Most of the corpses were unclothed but a few wore ghillie suits, camouflage clothing used by snipers, hunters and nature photographers to be conceal in foliage. But there was fury among the scores of people who had flocked to the plaza and who claimed police had summarily executed the young men instead of detaining them. Irrespective of whether these people were involved in the local drug trade or not, we don’t have the death penalty in Brazil. They should have been arrested, he said.

Murderers! Murderers! cried Cida Santana, recalling how her son Fabio had messaged her at 3pm on Tuesday to tell her he had been shot in the foot and was trying to surrender to police. 16 hours later Fabio’s corpse was shrouded under a blood-stained floral rug with what looked like knife wounds to his chest. My God! Work a miracle, God! Santana begged, as she collapsed on to the ground beside her child. But there was to be no resurrection for her son, nor for the dozens of other bodies lined up beside him outside a sushi restaurant with bullet wounds to their limbs, torsos and heads. One had been dec-apitated, the person’s head stashed inside an olive green pouch that was placed on the ground. Several men had badly broken bones or puncture wounds in their flesh.

At times, as pickup trucks continued to deliver the dead, a stunned silence fell over the mob. No one had ever seen bloodshed on this scale, not even veteran crime reporters. Rio’s deadliest police attack had been a 2021 raid on another Red Command centre, Jacarezino when 28 people were killed. It’s surreal, said Antônio Carlos Costa, a church leader-human rights campaigner, calling for the immediate removal of Rio’s governor, Cláudio Castro. He is an ally of Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Costa called the killings a historic humiliation for Brazil just before next month’s Cop climate summit in the Amazon city of Belém. At other moments, onlookers exploded in rage as they took in the nightmarish scene. Shell-shocked friends and relatives of the deceased ripped off the sheets covering their mangled bodies and demanded journalists film the butchery to show the world.

Police officers escort surviving "criminals" arrested at Vila Cruzeiro favela.

Irish Times

Help us, please, implored Cláudia Silva 53 shaking with rage as she denounced what she and others called a genocide. When they come in here, they kill even the rats, she said of the police. This was a slaughter, not an operation. They came here to kill, said Cida Santana as she sat on a blood-covered bin liner next to her son’s corpse. In 30 years working in the favelas this is the greatest act of savagery, the biggest massacre he’d seen, said lawyer Pinheiro Fróes who’d come to support the families of the dead.

Claudio Castro continued to defend the operation amid a growing chorus of outrage, including from the UN’s human rights office which was horrified by the killings. Rio’s governor celebrated a harsh blow to the heavily-armed drug traffickers who have seized control of many of Rio’s hundreds of favelas over the past 40 years. The only victims yesterday were the police, Castro said of the four officers killed during Tuesday’s intense gun battles with criminals he called narco-terrorists. As the governor spoke, Edmar Augusto 50, a priest with a purple stole draped over his shoulders, sprinkled holy water on the 50+ bodies that had accumulated at the entrance to the favela.

We don’t want war. We want peace, Augusto told the favela’s mourners, his voice breaking with emotion. So many families are crying. And I want to cry with them. Society cannot stay silent, the priest bellowed, staring sky-wards to recite the Lord’s prayer. As he waited for another carload of bodies to arrive, community leader Correia recalled how two decades earlier a group of local evangelical missionaries had warned that the favela would one day suffer a momentous bloodbath. We didn’t believe them. We never believed it would happen. But they prophesised it and it came to pass.

**

Poor, poor Brazil :( I hope my old friends' siblings and colleagues survived. 

Pope Joan, 850s AD. Who???

Was a female pope, disguised as a Deacon, elected in 855 AD? Apparently Pope Joan wore robes to express her piety, and to conceal her gender. After centuries of denial from the Vatican and after the Protestant Reformation, the Pope Joan story became popular. But historians continued to ask if this truly happened? Was there space in the papal timeline for her to fit in? Saint Leo IV died in June 855, Benedict III was elected in Sept 855 and Pope Nicholas I in 858. And while the length of each papal reign was historically proven, was a woman’s name later removed?

Joan was inaugurated as Pope, year?

History Extra

Note the first direct historical mention of Joan appeared c300 years after she lived! At the height of the myth’s popularity, ?fabricated relics were prized items, suggesting a possibility that a devious craftsman made fake coins referencing the female pope. Looking at coins attributed to Pope John VIII, (r872-82), Smithsonian’s Meilan Solly and Marguerite Spycher found those minted earlier bore a different monogram than those minted at his reign’s end. Spycher analysed papal monograms displayed on medieval silver coins to determine if they revealed any physical evidence for Joan’s reign. She found clues about Joan and although a lot of this information has been wiped from history, there was new evidence eg coinage with monographs for each Pope. The church couldn’t easily remove coins.

Chroniclers of the Middle Ages reported stories, inscriptions and statues, building Pope Joan legends. But the name Joan was not fully adopted until the C14th; other names commonly given were Agnes or Gilberta. 

A statue in Rome supposedly of Pope Johanna.

Siena Cathedral, 

PopeHistory.com

The concept that a woman could lead the church entirely contradicted church doctrine and tradition; the Holy See was run exclusively by men. And after Pope Joan, the church introduced a ritual that every new elected pope had to sit on a special toilet chair and checked for male genitalia!! Of all popes, the male-female split has been 267 to 0. But that did not stop the medieval story. 

From the first bishop of Rome, St Peter onwards, all Catholic Church heads had been men. Any baptised Catholic man could become pope; that was already an obstacle to any woman from being chosen, but women's task got harder. The process of electing a pope came with a lot of tradition and custom, and the last man to be voted in without being a cardinal first was Urban VI (1378-89). So whoever became the pontiff climbed up the church into the College of Cardinals. Not women! The Church officially accepted Pope Joan’s rule 855-8 AD, calling John VIII a historical fact. But NB the 400-year gap between when she sat as pope to the first written record.

More details about a female pontiff came from two C13th Dominicans in the Chronicle of the Diocese of Mets France by Jean de Mailly and On the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit by French Dominican Stephen of Bourbon. These were the first details of the Pope Joan myth. A woman was elected by posing as a man, and the truth of her identity came out. The nameless pontiff was a clever scribe who became a papal notary and later was elected pope; pregnant at her election. She gave birth in her public procession from St Peter’s Cathedral to the Lateran in 858 AD, where she was dragged out of Rome, unmasked and stoned to death. Or she died in childbirth and was buried on the spot. Soon the story appeared in literature eg works of Benedictine chronicler Ranulf Higden, humanist Giovanni Boccaccio and scholar Petrarch. See Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women, 1361, collection of biographies.  

She gave birth during a procession in Rome

Pinterest

Chronicle of Popes and Emperors, a C13th text by Polish Dominican monk Martinus Polonus created the best known details of Pope Joan’s narrative. Polonus wrote many details, from Joan’s birthplace to the length of her reign and place in the pontificate timeline, but was he sceptical of the truth? Chronicle of the Popes and Emperors claimed she was English who travelled to Athens with a lover, then headed to Rome. Martin dated the election in 855 and named her Joan! She’d fallen in love with an English Benedictine monk, dressed as a man and escorted him to Athens. Acquiring learning, she moved to Rome and became cardinal and pope. The story was widely spread in this Chronicle.

Joan’s story was accepted as fact by the 1415 Council of Constance. Scholars like the man who became Pope Pius II and Cardinal Caesar Baronius said the story was fake.

Yet Pope Joan’s bust was placed alongside the other pontiffs at Siena Cathedral. During the Reformation, as Protestants looked to undermine Catholic authority, her name was cited and used for Protestant arguments. Note reformer Jan Hus referred to Joan during his trial at Council of Constance 1415, rebutting the infallibility of the papacy. Until the C16th, suspicious were raised re the truth of Pope Joan eg by French jurist Florimond de Raemond and Italian friar Onofrio Panvinio.

The Calvinist David Blondel is credited with the most thorough debunking of the story with his 1647 work Whether a Woman has been Seated on the Papal Throne in Rome. Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605) had already removed her from official list of popes. But far from ending it, new life was breathed into the story for centuries.

Most historians and the modern Catholic Church dismissed the female pope. Southern Methodist University medieval scholar Valerie Hotchkiss suggested that medieval monks told exaggerated accounts of Joan’s life to each other. The implications of Joan’s story revealed much about the early church’s dismissive attitude toward women. 

Yet the evidence refuting Joan's existence added up. There was no source outside of the Catholic Church, until the Protestant Reformation references the existence of a female pope. Even the enemies of the Church seem silent on this, despite the perfect opportunity to denounce Catholicism. It’s not surprising that her legend still has staying power today: a alluring tale, turning a system of rigid oppression on its head to a brilliant woman who equalled her male colleagues. It might well have been Pope Joan who reigned under the title of John VIII for c25 months, between the reigns of St Leo IV & Benedict III.

Nursing her healthy baby

Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

Lots of popes followed their own rules. There have been at least 4 Popes who were legally married before taking Holy Orders: St Hormisdas (514–23), Adrian II (867–72), John XVII (1003) and Clement IV (1265–8). The legitimate children of John XVII and Clement IV all entered religious orders. Celibacy seemed voluntary; the most promiscuous Pope was ?Alexander VI (1492-1503), who had c10 illegitimate children. So it was easy for me to believe that Pope Joan was a woman dressed as a man in the cardinals’ conclave, summoned for elections. While most historians believed Pope Joan was a myth, invented by early critics of the Catholic Church, her story cannot be ignored. Heaps of stories, modern books and film, have immortalised her. 

Read The outrageous heretical legend of Pope Joan, 2018 by Jonny Wilkes,  and a long reading list from Academia