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