January 2, 2024 • 46 mins
According to legend, around 1100, a woman disguised herself as a man and was unanimously elected Pope. The ruse lasted until she gave birth while riding her horse through the streets of Rome. The story isn't true, but how the story came to be, and why it persisted, becomes its own history of Christianity in Europe and the power of propoganda.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised. In twelve
fifty five, a pope in northeast France hand wrote a
strange tale hoax in Rome, a woman becomes pope. According
(00:27):
to the Chronicle, in around eleven hundred, a woman disguised
herself as a man in order to rise through the
ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, from notary to cardinal and
all the way to pope. This woman pulled off her
scheme for a while, until one day she the pope,
(00:49):
was riding on horseback and went into labor, revealing her
deception to the Romans. The citizens of Rome dragged her
by horseback and stoned her as punishment for breaking the rules.
This short, scandalous story raised a number of questions. Who
(01:10):
was this woman, where was she from? And how did
she make it through the gauntlet of Catholic politics without
getting caught? How did she get pregnant? If this happened
in eleven hundred, then why is this a female pope?
Objectively a massive deal only being reported for the first
(01:31):
time one hundred and fifty years later. Why is The
one detail we get about her time as pope that
she gave birth on horseback, which, while impressive and interesting,
doesn't seem to be the main headline of the story,
which again is that a woman was pope for the
first and only time in recorded history. This handwritten chronicle
(01:55):
from the monastery is even more ambiguous about the pope's
gender than you might imagine. While the headline explicitly calls
the pope in the story a woman, the text itself
never refers to the pope with any female pronouns, instead
opting for gender neutral pronouns like it and the neuter animated,
(02:17):
which is a Latin tense that defaults to male. The
publication notes that the story is quote to be verified,
seeming to hedge the scandalous nature of the story. In
spite of these inconsistencies, the story of the alleged popess
(02:37):
spread among the medieval Catholic world, with various authors filling
in their own details about the legend. The popees became
an english woman from Maines. As a young woman, she
fell in love with a scholar and accompanied him to Athens.
While she was intellectually voracious, the Athenian professors wouldn't let
(02:59):
her into their classrooms, and so she disguised herself as
a man and moved to Rome. Admired for her vast
knowledge of scripture, she so successfully embedded herself in the
Catholic Church that she was unanimously elected Pope. She served
in the position for two years until she suddenly gave birth,
(03:19):
traveling from Saint Peter's Basilica to Saint John Lantern, which
uncovered her deception. Carved busts reveal her name Johannes the Eighth,
or Pope Joan, but there is still one massive problem
with that more detailed history. There is no actual evidence
(03:43):
to prove that Pope Joan ever existed. The story I
just told about the englishwoman from Maines. It became the
most popular version of the legend, but that story was
cobbled together from hundreds of different accounts with wildly desparate details.
Some versions of the Pope Joan story take place in
(04:06):
the year nine hundred, others in eight hundred and fifty,
others in eleven hundred. In some accounts, Joan is named
agnes Anna or Gilberta, and the length of her papacy
varies from two months to two years. One would think
that such a scandal would have produced some documentary evidence.
(04:30):
She might have been depicted in paintings or sculptures, or
mentioned in articles or letters, But there were no references
to her to be found. So I have to be
the unfortunate bearer of bad news on this story and
make it very clear to you, the listener, that it
is incredibly unlikely that a female pope ever existed. One
(04:55):
would think that this lack of evidence would deter people
from spreading the story, but the opposite happened. There wouldn't
be a single source questioning the validity of the Pope
Jone story until three hundred years after the initial chronicle
was published in twelve fifty, and Jon's legend would continue
(05:15):
to spread for centuries after that, surviving debunking after debunking.
In fact, Pope Joan became a kind of Catholic forest gump,
popping up throughout pivotal moments in the history of the
Catholic Church and playing central roles in religious conflicts. She
even spread far beyond the church into secular life, popping
(05:40):
up in plays, novels, and even card games. How did
the almost certainly false myth of Pope Joan manage to
survive for almost a millennium in spite of shoddy evidence
and multiple debunkings. In this episode, we'll try to solve
the mystery, tracing the story of a woman who, as
(06:04):
Catholic scholar Tom Noble put it quote, never lived, but
who nevertheless refuses to die. I'm Danish Schwartz and this
is noble blood. To solve the mystery of how and
why the legend of Pope Joan spread, we should look
(06:27):
more closely at the first mention of her, the Monastery
Chronicle from twelve fifty five. Unfortunately, we don't know much
about it. The author of this text was a Dominican
monk named Jean de Maii, but scholars don't know much
about him other than that he wrote this article and
(06:47):
one other book of legends. We don't know where he
got his information about Pope Joan from, or what his
intentions were for this story, or if he believed the
story himself, but Maille's role as a Dominican monk gives
us a clue. Maye wasn't alone in reproducing sketchy rumors.
(07:09):
In fact, it was a matter of principle for friars
to document as many stories as possible, no matter how apocryphal.
It didn't even seem to matter whether or not the
author believed the story they were reporting. Jean de Meili
wrote about plenty of legends he didn't personally believe. For example,
(07:30):
he wrote an account of the Nativity where Salome, one
of Jesus' disciples, wanted to confirm Mary's virginity before she
gave birth, so Salome felt her up, which caused her
arm to wither away. At the end of the piece,
Meilee concludes that this event probably never happened. This might
(07:53):
raise the question if Malee didn't believe the story himself,
then why did he spread it? After all, all, the
Salome story, like the Pope Joan story, was not widely known.
Mainly wasn't debunking a popular rumor. He was simply telling
the story and then mentioning that he didn't find it plausible.
(08:15):
Pope Joan scholar Elaine Borough argues that Dominican writers of
that era emphasized quantity over quality. Part of this was
politically motivated. After the end of the Crusades, the Catholic
Church had more cultural power than ever, and they flexed
that power by trying to explain and account for anything
(08:38):
and everything, even traditions that seemed to challenge the Catholic
Church's authority. Reproducing rumors, even ones that cast doubt on
the authority of the Catholic Church or undermined biblical accounts,
made them less threatening. Recording rumors and apocrypha was also
a matter of religious doctrine. According to the Bible, Jesus
(09:02):
appeared in the middle of human history rather than in
the beginning, suggesting that a seismic divine event could occur
at any time. Therefore, it was crucial that Catholic writers
document any rumor because it may gain religious significance later.
In the minds of these writers, it would be way
(09:24):
worse to leave out a potentially significant event than it
would be to spread a rumor that turned out to
be irrelevant or untrue. Other Catholic writers would echo this
logic when reproducing the story of Pope Joan. For centuries
(09:44):
after that first story was originally published, it became something
of a self fulfilling prophecy. The story had become so
widespread that it would be weirder not to include it.
One Catholic writer, Platina, would say this explicitly when he
wrote his version of the story of Pope Joan in
(10:05):
fourteen seventy nine, writing that he wasn't certain that Pope
Joan actually existed, but he did not want quote to
omit too obstinately and tenaciously what everyone affirms. Peer pressure
wasn't the only reason the story gained traction. Another reason
the story spread was that it was useful in clearing
(10:28):
up some inconsistencies around papal infallibility. Around the time that
Pope Joan appeared in the record in the twelve fifties,
monks were pretty unhappy with the pope, Pope Innocent the Fourth,
who limited Franciscan monk's right to preach and hear confession.
This made the pope hugely unpopular, but he was difficult
(10:52):
to criticize because, according to Catholic doctrine, he was ordained
by God to rule. By suggesting that a woman could
have ascended to the papacy, the Pope Joan story showed
that the Church had made mistakes before, so it wouldn't
be out of the question if it allowed an unworthy
(11:13):
man like Pope Innocent to rule. In twelve seventy nine,
an archbishop Martin of Opava emphasized that reading when he
published another account of the female pope in his book
of Legends. He explained that Pope Joan was intelligent and
well respected, and that she was unanimously elected to the papacy.
(11:37):
Even so, her reign was invalid because a woman could
not be pope, suggesting that pope's could be illegitimate even
if they were elected fairly. It's worth noting that we
don't know for sure whether or not Martin of Opava
actually intended to include the Pope Joan story in his work.
(12:00):
Doesn't appear in early editions of the book, and the
story actually first appears in editions of the book around
thirteen oh four in different handwriting, leading many scholars to
believe the story was added later by a different writer. Still,
Martin of Opava's story became the definitive account of Pope Joan.
(12:21):
His book was a best seller, and it spread the
rumor throughout Europe, getting translated into several languages. It wasn't
just popular, it was also the first version of the
story that actually attempted to give historical evidence for her reign.
Opava gave the pope a name John, which would later
(12:43):
be feminized to Joan. He changed the date of her
reign from eleven hundred to the eight fifties, and suggested
that she ruled after Pope Leo the fourth. It's unclear
how he came up with these details. There was a
Pope John John the eighth in the eight hundreds. Like Joan,
(13:04):
his reign was brief. He reconciled a schism between Western
and Eastern branches of Catholicism through compromise, which many fellow
Catholics considered weak and quote womanish Opava may have conflated
criticisms of his quote effeminate nature into the idea that
(13:25):
he was actually a woman disguised as a man the
whole time. It also wasn't totally out of the question
for a woman to have sought political power through the
Church at that time. In the tenth century, there was
what people called a government of harlots, or later a
(13:48):
pornocracy in Rome, where a few wives and mistresses of
noblemen attempted to manipulate papal succession from behind the scenes.
A noble woman in Rome named Theodora advanced several men
to the papacy, one of whom she allegedly slept with
(14:08):
and another who had a child with her daughter, Morosia.
Morosia herself would later advance her own son to the papacy.
People mockingly called these women popouses, since these women seemed
to be the true source of political power and influence,
puppeting their popes to advance their own agendas. Many of
(14:32):
those popes were also named John, connecting those accounts to
Martin of Opava's story. These hypotheseses aren't perfect. The dates
don't line up. Opava thought that Joan reigned in eight
point fifty, while the quote effeminate Pope John the Eighth
held the throne in eight seventy, and Theodora and Morosia
(14:56):
rose to power in the nine hundreds. Still, they suggest
that there was a pervasive anxiety in the Catholic Church
about the influence of women and femininity in religious life,
which brings us to another reason the story of Pope
Joan proved useful to the Catholic Church. It discouraged women
(15:19):
from pursuing political power within the church. Another writer from
the twelve hundreds, at Tande bourbonc published a fiery polemic
about Pope Joan, suggesting she was a harlot who had
what he called quote the audacity or rather insanity to
become pope. According to him, Joan solicits the help of
(15:42):
the devil himself, who helps her achieve her political ambitions.
This version of the story has a clear moral the
Church should be wary of wily women with the audacity
to seek religious power, because it clearly means they are
in league with the devil. Opava and Bourbon's version of
(16:04):
the Pope Joan stories couldn't be more different. Opava's account
is even keeled, based in true or not what purports
to be historical detail, and it's slightly critical of the
Catholic Church, while Bourbone's account is salacious, over the top
and fiercely defensive of the Church, suggesting that the only
(16:27):
way a woman could have become pope was through black magic.
But still, the differences in these stories suggest that Pope
Joan was useful to Catholic writers with a variety of
styles and agendas. By the fourteen hundreds, the story of
Pope Joan had become so widespread that Pope jon became
(16:50):
even more entrenched in the Catholic canon, beyond just compilations
of legends. When the Duomo of Siena commissioned a series
wories of busts of past popes to display in the
giant ornate Cathedral, they included Pope Joan, proudly displaying her
alongside seminole figures in Catholic history. The bust of Pope
(17:15):
Joan wouldn't last forever. Two centuries later, on August seventh,
sixteen hundred, the Governor of Sienna delivered an edict commanding
quote remove the pope ess from the cathedral. Just two
days later, the bust of the Pope est was altered
to depict Pope Zacharias, essentially disguising Joan as a man
(17:39):
once more. This was the culmination of the work of
Florimond de Raymond, who had campaigned for months to have
the bust removed, suggesting that the legend was a hoax.
This event, the bust removal, marks a massive shift in
the Pope Joan story. The ledgend had lasted for almost
(18:01):
four hundred years without question, but now people were calling
the story blasphemous. So what happened in fourteen fifteen, more
than four hundred years after she supposedly lived. Pope Joan
(18:23):
appeared in an unlikely place, a heresy trial. The defendant,
Jan Hus, was a czech Man who was once the
rector for Prague University, but he had turned his back
on the Church and became its best known critic. He
was especially harsh about the sinful behavior of clergy, bishops,
(18:44):
and even the papacy, arguing that the true authority of
Catholicism wasn't the Pope but Christ himself. Unlike Jesus, who
was infallible, popes and other clergy were subject to the
same sinful urgent as everyone else. This belief was controversial,
(19:05):
especially for the Catholic higher ups who capitalized off of
their presumed infallibility. Hughes had been dragged to Constance, a
small university town in Germany, to defend his beliefs in
court or be executed. At the trial, he was asked
to give examples of sinful or illegitimate popes. He listed
(19:28):
a few, but the clergy struck each of them down
one by one, with a single exception, Pope Joan. Hughes
had written earlier in the century that Pope Joan was
proof that quote, the most unlettered layman or a female
or a heretic and Antichrist may be Pope end quote.
(19:51):
The clergy, which had been disproving and discrediting us at
every turn, could not challenge him on this point. This
event mark's a turning point in the legend of Pope Joan.
When it initially appeared, the Pope Joan myth was pretty harmless.
It was a fanciful, salacious rumor that actually proved useful
(20:14):
as a way for the Church to explore and explain
doctrinal inconsistencies. But now Pope Joan was being used by
enemies of the Church as a way to challenge the
Pope's very existence. It wasn't just use using Joan to
undermine the authority of the pope. At this time, the
(20:36):
Catholic Church was in a political crisis. It had managed
to elect two popes, one based in Rome and another
in Avignon, who were fighting for legitimacy. A council in
Pisa tried to resolve this by picking a new pope altogether,
but this plan backfired. The two deposed popes stood their
(20:59):
ground and kept control over their territories, so instead of
one pope, Pisa now meant that there were three. While
a pseudo pope like Joan may have been a funny
anomaly in the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, with
illegitimate popes and anti popes cropping up right and left,
(21:22):
it was less funny. In the bitter debate about what
to do with all of those popes, both sides used
Joan to defend their positions. On the one hand, Pope
Joan proved that there was a precedent for governing bodies
to depose of an unfit pope. On the other hand,
(21:45):
Pope Joan was a warning that deposing a pope could
cause chaos because, according to another legend, after Pope Joan
was executed, Catholic leadership struggled to replace her church was
left popeless for two years. This reasoning was accidentally kind
(22:06):
of progressive, because these thinkers are arguing that Pope Joan
should have stayed in power and that it was better
to have a female pope than no pope at all.
And even though hus was successfully convicted of heresy and
burned at the stake, his threat to the church only
grew stronger after his death. His execution sparked a new
(22:31):
religious movement, the Hussites, who rejected core Catholic doctrines like
Latin masses, the veneration of Saints, and even churches. The
movement started expanding across Bohemia. They too brought up Pope
Joan as evidence that Church authorities were not infallible. In
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fourteen fifty one, the Bishop of Siena traveled to a
Hussate stronghold in Tubor to debate them on that point.
To discredit them, he undermined the veracity of the Pope
Joan story, albeit in a fairly weak way, saying tentatively
quote the story is not certain. This moment foreshadows the
(23:15):
way the Catholic Church would majorly turn on Pope Joan
in the sixteenth century, as threats to the Church's authority
continued to spread, while the Holy Roman Empire managed to
quash the Hussite Revolution by the end of the fifteenth century.
In fifteen seventeen, a new threat to the Catholic Church
(23:38):
emerged in the form of Martin Luther's ninety five Theses. Luther,
like jan Hesse and the Hussites, would invoke Pope Joan.
In one of Luther's informal talks, he mentioned seeing a
statue of Joan during a trip to Rome, but he
didn't make much of it. Instead, he wonders why the
(23:59):
Church would put such an embarrassing object on public display,
which is actually a pretty effective dis Though Martin Luther
himself didn't spend much time delving into Pope Joan, he
would of course spark the Protestant Reformation, which in turn
caused an avalanche of Pope Joan discourse. From fifteen fifty
(24:23):
to seventeen hundred, Protestants and Catholics would produce at least
forty pamphlets devoted exclusively to Pope Joan, which doesn't include reprints,
new editions, translations, and publications that are lost that are
cited in surviving texts. Protestants started this century's long debate
(24:47):
in the fifteen fifties, seizing on Joan as proof that
the Catholic Church was toast. In fifteen fifty six, Italian
Protestant Pierre Paolo Bulgario argued in over the top fiery
prose that Joan seized the papacy by magical arts and
(25:07):
gave the Catholic Church a whore for a leader and
a mother for a father. John Calvin, the Protestant who
would inspire his own namesake Christian sect, Calvinism went even further.
According to him, not only did Pope jon prove that
(25:28):
individual popes could sin, she also potentially undermined the whole
structure of the Catholic Church. He argued that Catholic bishops
couldn't claim to be directly descendants of Jesus's apostles if
a fraudulent pope disrupted the chain. Similarly, in the two
(25:49):
years she allegedly reigned, Pope Joan would have ordained priests
and bishops, and those priests and bishops would have gone
on to ordain other priests and bishops, and so on
and so on, and so. If Pope Joan was illegitimate,
her bishops and priests would be two, and so would
(26:10):
all of the bishops and priests in their downlines. By
that logic, the existence of Pope Joan could potentially render
the entire structure of the Catholic Church illegitimate. Though Pope
Joan had originally been a Catholic propaganda tool, after decades
of watching the Protestants use her to discredit them, the
(26:32):
Catholic Church had enough. In fifteen sixty two, they finally
decided to fire back with a book by Anophrio Panvinio,
which set out to definitively disprove the Pope jon myth
for the final time. Like the Bishop of Siena who
had argued about Joan with the Hussites in fourteen fifty,
(26:55):
Aenophrio took a reasonable cautious approach to undermine the story,
focusing on the lack of documentary evidence, the confusing dates,
and the tentative language in even the earliest retellings of
the story. In fifteen eighty seven, a French Catholic writer
(27:15):
named Flora and Raymond made a much bigger splash in
his book length debunking of the Pope Joan myth. He
argued that the introduction of Pope Joan in the thirteenth
century was actually part of a German anti Catholic conspiracy.
He thought that the Germans, who in his mind, were
(27:36):
too promiscuous, wanted to undermine the Church's chastity. Those licentious
Germans created this salacious story to make the Church seem
hypocritical and giving them more licensed to sleep around. This
was a bizarre claim, founded more on Raymond's bias against
(28:00):
Germans than on any historical facts. Pope Jone. Historian Elainborough
says that Raymond swung for the fences rhetorically speaking because
of his quote relatively unenlightened mind end quote. Nevertheless, in
his big mic drop moment, Raymond suggested that it was
(28:21):
ironic that the Protestants were so fixated on Pope jan
when they were under the spell of their own female
usurper of religious authority, namely Queen Elizabeth I, who declared
herself the leader of the Anglican Church after becoming Queen
of England. Raymond's rebuttal pushed the Protestants to get even
(28:48):
more conspiratorial. In sixteen ten, Alexander Cook wrote an elaborate,
fervid defense of Pope Jones's existence to match the Rams
and Takedown. Echoing contemporary clickbait, Cook bragged that Catholics quote
hate him. Cook claimed that the lack of documentary evidence
(29:11):
for Joan pointed to a Catholic cover up. According to Cook,
Catholics were intentionally destroying textual evidence of Pope Joan in
order to suppress her threats to the papal line of succession.
The claim was just not true. If anything, Catholics of
the fourteenth century were the Ones, adding in the story
(29:34):
of Pope Joan into older texts to make her seem
more legitimate. But in his enthusiasm to prove the existence
of Pope Joan, it's pretty apparent that Alexander Cook lost
the forest for the trees a little bit. One of
the main tenets of Protestantism is that the Bible was
(29:54):
the core of religious life, rather than legends of saints
or elaborate ritual like Latin masses or ornate churches and cathedrals.
Without documentary evidence of Pope Joan, Cook was turning to
exactly the random books of legends and paintings that Protestants
(30:15):
like Martin Luther and Jan Hess built their careers on. Repudiating.
The massive reversal suggested how far the Pope Jones story
had come. The story became so symbolically important that it
had Catholics turning on each other and Protestants lionizing Catholic apocrypha.
(30:38):
David Blondell, a seventeenth century Calvinist minister and writer, recognized
the absurdity of the situation. In sixteen forty seven, he
broke with his fellow Protestants and wrote a debunking of
the Pope Jones story, which many considered a betrayal of
the cause. Looking back on the time fifty years later,
(31:02):
one source says, quote would it not have been better
to leave the Papists the trouble of wiping their own
filth away? End? Quote? Some even thought that he must
have been in league with the Catholics, but it seems
that Blundell was just motivated by the truth, and many
Protestants and Catholics were convinced by Blundell's account Because of
(31:25):
his unbiased approach. One could take issue with the Jones
story for reasons other than defending Catholicism. After Blundell published
his book, The Pace of Pope Joan, articles slowed down
on both sides. Blundell set the stage for the modern
attitude about Pope Joan that the story was largely a hoax.
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You might think that this was the last we'd hear
about Pope Joan, But it turns out that the legend
of the female Pope would take on a life of
its own in the secular world, a life that would
keep her legend alive for centuries to come. While the
(32:12):
Catholics and Protestants were having their own centuries long flame
war about Pope Jones's clerical legitimacy. Joan was gaining traction
in the secular world as a folk hero, perhaps to
the Church's chagrin. The Pope Jones story had broad appeal.
(32:33):
What's not to love about a wily, plucky woman who
outsmarted the church and also managed to get laid while
doing it. In thirteen sixty, long before the Protestant Revolution
and a century after the first mention of Pope Joan,
Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio included a particularly salacious version of
(32:57):
the story in his book On Faces Women, a compilation
of stories of notable women from myth and history. Unlike
his religious contemporaries, Boccaccio didn't care whether or not Joan
was legitimate or an illegitimate pope. Instead, he focused on
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the more lurid aspects of her story, her alleged lust
for sex, knowledge, and power. Boccaccio's story begins with Pope
Joan falling in love with a student and accompanying him
to Athens, disguising herself as a man to be able
to pursue her studies as well as to be able
(33:39):
to pursue her true love. In sort of an Ellwood's
legally blonde situation. But when her lover dies, she continues
her pursuit of religious knowledge as a tribute to him,
and Joan becomes so widely recognized for her intellect that
she is disguised as a man and unanimously elected Pope.
(34:03):
The Devil doesn't enter the picture until after she's elected. Pope.
The Devil encourages her to give in to temptation and
start sleeping around, which she does. She gets pregnant, and
the Romans discover her deception and stone her to death.
In the ending shared by most Pope Joan accounts that said,
(34:25):
in a stark departure from other Pope Jone stories, Boccaccio
celebrates Joan for remarkable achievements, whether those achievements are eloping
with her lover, cross dressing, advancing as a scholar, or
pursuing clerical power. It's only after she starts seducing other
men that Boccaccio begins to criticize her. Her tragic downfall
(34:49):
is that she refused to remain loyal to her dead lover,
even though she fell prey to lust. Eventually, Boccaccio's Pope
Joan was a sympathetic portra of a woman as she
amassed power. What gave Boccaccio's Pope Joan's story such remarkable
staying power wasn't just that it was sympathetic to Joan,
(35:11):
but that it presented Joan as an archetype rather than
a historical figure. Women usually got political power in history
through familial succession or through marriage, and they tended to
express that power by manipulating men in their lives, at
least according to the stories women like Theodora or Morosia
(35:34):
the Mother Daughter power duo from the nine hundreds. But
in Boccaccio's story, Pope Joan gained her power through a meritocracy,
and she exercised it fairly. She was elected into the
papacy as a result of her scholarly achievements and her
ability to deceive the Romans by disguising herself as a man.
(35:57):
Illustrated editions of Boccaccio's book spread the story of Pope
Joan throughout Europe, with images of her sitting placidly on
the throne, wearing her papal robes and an ornate triple tiara.
These images of Pope Joan found their way into a
tarot card deck, which was introduced into Europe around fourteen fifty.
(36:21):
Tarot decks, like decks of playing cards, include various suits
and numbers that a tarot reader interprets to tell you
your fortune. But what distinguishes tarot decks from regular old
playing cards are special symbolic cards like the World and
the Moon, and these cards form what's called the major arcana.
(36:44):
One card of the major Arcana is the High Priestess.
Back in the fourteen hundreds, when the taro was initially
introduced to Europe, this card was the pope Us. The
oldest surviving tarot deck, commissioned in fourteen fifty by Filippo
Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and by his successor and
(37:06):
son in law, includes an image of the popis one
that resembles the wood cut prints of Joan from the
Boccaccio illustrations. In this image, hand painted with silver and
gold leaf, the Popess sits on a throne, holding a
pontifical staff and wearing the typical papal triple tiara, much
(37:29):
like the Boccaccio illustrations. It wasn't until the late seventeen
hundreds that the popess would transform into the high priestess.
In the midst of the French Revolution, the Catholic Church
was considered unpopular and corrupt. French tarot decks began to
decenter images of the clergy, a shift that would eventually
(37:53):
result in the development of the high priestess card in
the nineteenth century. But while Pope Joan was being scrubbed
from the tarot deck, she was about to have a
major moment of resurgence in revolutionary France. In seventeen ninety
three alone, three plays about Pope Joan debuted in France,
(38:15):
all body farces aimed at satirizing the monarchy and the
Catholic Church. Like Boccaccio's version of the Pope jon myth,
these plays had almost no interest in confirming or denying
the veracity of the story. Instead, they held up Joan
as something of a folk hero, willing to thumb her
(38:35):
nose at the Church's authority in the pursuit of true love.
But even as Pope Joan established herself firmly as a
folklore figure, even today, there are some scholars who stubbornly
assert that Joan could have been a real historical figure
in spite of the lack of evidence. After all, even
(38:57):
from the few primary sources presented in this episode, I
think it's pretty clear that the textual record is contentious
and confusing. Some scholars think that the primary sources were
later altered to provide proof of Pope Jones's existence, but
others think, like the Protestants in the sixteen hundreds, that
(39:18):
the lack of documentary evidence is more likely a result
of Catholics frantically scrubbing the pope ess from the archive.
There is always the possibility that some historian might stumble
upon a long buried primary source that proves that Pope
Joan was a real historical figure. Stranger things have happened,
(39:42):
But until then, it is Joan's ambiguity that makes her compelling,
at least in my mind. How she was manipulated and used, reinterpreted,
and trotted out as evidence on every side of multiple debates. Joan,
even in legendary form, fueled centuries of resistance to the
(40:03):
Church's misdeeds from the Protestant Reformation all the way through
the French Revolution. History is a slippery thing, and it
doesn't work like simple fables with morals. At the end
of the story. But if the moral of Pope jones
story is resist the constraints of the institutions you're in
to fight for more equal opportunities, then that's a pretty
(40:27):
good lesson. That's the story of the myth of Pope Joan.
Keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about
one of the silliest myths that still persists in Jon's legacy.
(40:53):
A corollary of the Pope Jone myth was that because
a woman snuck into the papacy, their needs to be
a final check at the end of the pope election
to make sure that all elected popes were male. According
to legend, popes had to sit on a special chair
with a hole in it so that someone could reach
(41:14):
up through the hole and make sure that the Pope
to be had testicles. This myth appeared initially in around
twelve ninety in an account of Pope Joan from a
Benedictine monk. He wrote, quote it is said that this
is why Romans established the custom of verifying the sex
(41:35):
of the elected pope through an opening in a stone
throne end quote. At around the same time, another Dominican
monk wrote of a spiritual vision he had where quote
the Spirit of the Lord took hold of him and
placed him in Rome, where he saw the chair for himself.
In the next few hundred years, much like the Pope
(41:58):
Joan myth, the the Chair ritual myth took on a
life of its own and became known as the Right
of Verification. Unlike the Pope Joan myth, the Right of
Verification had more solid evidence for its existence. There are
some eyewitness accounts of the ritual, and not just visions
(42:21):
guided by the Holy Spirit. In fourteen oh four, someone
mentioned that they saw the Pope elect sit on a
stone throne as part of his inauguration, but it's not
hard to poke holes in that account because the person
who wrote it wasn't a member of the Roman Curia,
so he wouldn't have been able to see the ritual
in the first place. There was another account of the
(42:44):
Right of Verification from someone who was actually in the Curia,
a humanist and member of the Roman Academy named Platina
that you might remember from earlier in this episode, but
his version only complied Kate the historical record, since he
claimed that the stone throne with a hole in the
(43:05):
seat wasn't used to verify the pope's sex, but rather
it was used as a toilet. He wrote, quote that
seat was prepared in such a manner so that one
who is invested with such great domination will know that
he is not God but a man, so he must defecate.
(43:28):
End quote. It turns out, starting in ten ninety nine,
a pope had to sit on a perforated marble throne
as part of the papal election ritual, and in keeping
with the spirit of Platina's explanation, it was meant to
humble the pope in a moment that he was about
to gain absolute power. The ritual was relatively uncontroversial it
(43:53):
was performed up until fifteen thirteen, but the Pope Joan
Myth added a rectale for the perforated chair and imbued
the ritual with a scandalous origin story, which allowed it
to become sensationalized and exaggerated for centuries. In tandem with
the Pope Joan Myth, the quote right of verification became
(44:18):
a hot topic during the Protestant Reformation, although it was
less existentially threatening to the Catholic Church after all, As
scholar Tom Noble wrote, quote in the early sixteenth century,
several writers with grim humor said that the right had
fallen out of use because recent popes had so many
(44:39):
bastard children that their sex was not in doubt. Meanwhile,
flormand Durraymond, who you might remember as the one who
thought that the Pope Joan story was a blasphemous, horny
German conspiracy theory, was relatively chill about the right of verification.
He wrote, so that the whole thing was quote so
(45:02):
gross that the only good response for Catholics was to
laugh at the Protestants who repeated it. Noble Blood is
a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from
Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me
(45:24):
Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
(45:44):
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised. In twelve
fifty five, a pope in northeast France hand wrote a
strange tale hoax in Rome, a woman becomes pope. According
(00:27):
to the Chronicle, in around eleven hundred, a woman disguised
herself as a man in order to rise through the
ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, from notary to cardinal and
all the way to pope. This woman pulled off her
scheme for a while, until one day she the pope,
(00:49):
was riding on horseback and went into labor, revealing her
deception to the Romans. The citizens of Rome dragged her
by horseback and stoned her as punishment for breaking the rules.
This short, scandalous story raised a number of questions. Who
(01:10):
was this woman, where was she from? And how did
she make it through the gauntlet of Catholic politics without
getting caught? How did she get pregnant? If this happened
in eleven hundred, then why is this a female pope?
Objectively a massive deal only being reported for the first
(01:31):
time one hundred and fifty years later. Why is The
one detail we get about her time as pope that
she gave birth on horseback, which, while impressive and interesting,
doesn't seem to be the main headline of the story,
which again is that a woman was pope for the
first and only time in recorded history. This handwritten chronicle
(01:55):
from the monastery is even more ambiguous about the pope's
gender than you might imagine. While the headline explicitly calls
the pope in the story a woman, the text itself
never refers to the pope with any female pronouns, instead
opting for gender neutral pronouns like it and the neuter animated,
(02:17):
which is a Latin tense that defaults to male. The
publication notes that the story is quote to be verified,
seeming to hedge the scandalous nature of the story. In
spite of these inconsistencies, the story of the alleged popess
(02:37):
spread among the medieval Catholic world, with various authors filling
in their own details about the legend. The popees became
an english woman from Maines. As a young woman, she
fell in love with a scholar and accompanied him to Athens.
While she was intellectually voracious, the Athenian professors wouldn't let
(02:59):
her into their classrooms, and so she disguised herself as
a man and moved to Rome. Admired for her vast
knowledge of scripture, she so successfully embedded herself in the
Catholic Church that she was unanimously elected Pope. She served
in the position for two years until she suddenly gave birth,
(03:19):
traveling from Saint Peter's Basilica to Saint John Lantern, which
uncovered her deception. Carved busts reveal her name Johannes the Eighth,
or Pope Joan, but there is still one massive problem
with that more detailed history. There is no actual evidence
(03:43):
to prove that Pope Joan ever existed. The story I
just told about the englishwoman from Maines. It became the
most popular version of the legend, but that story was
cobbled together from hundreds of different accounts with wildly desparate details.
Some versions of the Pope Joan story take place in
(04:06):
the year nine hundred, others in eight hundred and fifty,
others in eleven hundred. In some accounts, Joan is named
agnes Anna or Gilberta, and the length of her papacy
varies from two months to two years. One would think
that such a scandal would have produced some documentary evidence.
(04:30):
She might have been depicted in paintings or sculptures, or
mentioned in articles or letters, But there were no references
to her to be found. So I have to be
the unfortunate bearer of bad news on this story and
make it very clear to you, the listener, that it
is incredibly unlikely that a female pope ever existed. One
(04:55):
would think that this lack of evidence would deter people
from spreading the story, but the opposite happened. There wouldn't
be a single source questioning the validity of the Pope
Jone story until three hundred years after the initial chronicle
was published in twelve fifty, and Jon's legend would continue
(05:15):
to spread for centuries after that, surviving debunking after debunking.
In fact, Pope Joan became a kind of Catholic forest gump,
popping up throughout pivotal moments in the history of the
Catholic Church and playing central roles in religious conflicts. She
even spread far beyond the church into secular life, popping
(05:40):
up in plays, novels, and even card games. How did
the almost certainly false myth of Pope Joan manage to
survive for almost a millennium in spite of shoddy evidence
and multiple debunkings. In this episode, we'll try to solve
the mystery, tracing the story of a woman who, as
(06:04):
Catholic scholar Tom Noble put it quote, never lived, but
who nevertheless refuses to die. I'm Danish Schwartz and this
is noble blood. To solve the mystery of how and
why the legend of Pope Joan spread, we should look
(06:27):
more closely at the first mention of her, the Monastery
Chronicle from twelve fifty five. Unfortunately, we don't know much
about it. The author of this text was a Dominican
monk named Jean de Maii, but scholars don't know much
about him other than that he wrote this article and
(06:47):
one other book of legends. We don't know where he
got his information about Pope Joan from, or what his
intentions were for this story, or if he believed the
story himself, but Maille's role as a Dominican monk gives
us a clue. Maye wasn't alone in reproducing sketchy rumors.
(07:09):
In fact, it was a matter of principle for friars
to document as many stories as possible, no matter how apocryphal.
It didn't even seem to matter whether or not the
author believed the story they were reporting. Jean de Meili
wrote about plenty of legends he didn't personally believe. For example,
(07:30):
he wrote an account of the Nativity where Salome, one
of Jesus' disciples, wanted to confirm Mary's virginity before she
gave birth, so Salome felt her up, which caused her
arm to wither away. At the end of the piece,
Meilee concludes that this event probably never happened. This might
(07:53):
raise the question if Malee didn't believe the story himself,
then why did he spread it? After all, all, the
Salome story, like the Pope Joan story, was not widely known.
Mainly wasn't debunking a popular rumor. He was simply telling
the story and then mentioning that he didn't find it plausible.
(08:15):
Pope Joan scholar Elaine Borough argues that Dominican writers of
that era emphasized quantity over quality. Part of this was
politically motivated. After the end of the Crusades, the Catholic
Church had more cultural power than ever, and they flexed
that power by trying to explain and account for anything
(08:38):
and everything, even traditions that seemed to challenge the Catholic
Church's authority. Reproducing rumors, even ones that cast doubt on
the authority of the Catholic Church or undermined biblical accounts,
made them less threatening. Recording rumors and apocrypha was also
a matter of religious doctrine. According to the Bible, Jesus
(09:02):
appeared in the middle of human history rather than in
the beginning, suggesting that a seismic divine event could occur
at any time. Therefore, it was crucial that Catholic writers
document any rumor because it may gain religious significance later.
In the minds of these writers, it would be way
(09:24):
worse to leave out a potentially significant event than it
would be to spread a rumor that turned out to
be irrelevant or untrue. Other Catholic writers would echo this
logic when reproducing the story of Pope Joan. For centuries
(09:44):
after that first story was originally published, it became something
of a self fulfilling prophecy. The story had become so
widespread that it would be weirder not to include it.
One Catholic writer, Platina, would say this explicitly when he
wrote his version of the story of Pope Joan in
(10:05):
fourteen seventy nine, writing that he wasn't certain that Pope
Joan actually existed, but he did not want quote to
omit too obstinately and tenaciously what everyone affirms. Peer pressure
wasn't the only reason the story gained traction. Another reason
the story spread was that it was useful in clearing
(10:28):
up some inconsistencies around papal infallibility. Around the time that
Pope Joan appeared in the record in the twelve fifties,
monks were pretty unhappy with the pope, Pope Innocent the Fourth,
who limited Franciscan monk's right to preach and hear confession.
This made the pope hugely unpopular, but he was difficult
(10:52):
to criticize because, according to Catholic doctrine, he was ordained
by God to rule. By suggesting that a woman could
have ascended to the papacy, the Pope Joan story showed
that the Church had made mistakes before, so it wouldn't
be out of the question if it allowed an unworthy
(11:13):
man like Pope Innocent to rule. In twelve seventy nine,
an archbishop Martin of Opava emphasized that reading when he
published another account of the female pope in his book
of Legends. He explained that Pope Joan was intelligent and
well respected, and that she was unanimously elected to the papacy.
(11:37):
Even so, her reign was invalid because a woman could
not be pope, suggesting that pope's could be illegitimate even
if they were elected fairly. It's worth noting that we
don't know for sure whether or not Martin of Opava
actually intended to include the Pope Joan story in his work.
(12:00):
Doesn't appear in early editions of the book, and the
story actually first appears in editions of the book around
thirteen oh four in different handwriting, leading many scholars to
believe the story was added later by a different writer. Still,
Martin of Opava's story became the definitive account of Pope Joan.
(12:21):
His book was a best seller, and it spread the
rumor throughout Europe, getting translated into several languages. It wasn't
just popular, it was also the first version of the
story that actually attempted to give historical evidence for her reign.
Opava gave the pope a name John, which would later
(12:43):
be feminized to Joan. He changed the date of her
reign from eleven hundred to the eight fifties, and suggested
that she ruled after Pope Leo the fourth. It's unclear
how he came up with these details. There was a
Pope John John the eighth in the eight hundreds. Like Joan,
(13:04):
his reign was brief. He reconciled a schism between Western
and Eastern branches of Catholicism through compromise, which many fellow
Catholics considered weak and quote womanish Opava may have conflated
criticisms of his quote effeminate nature into the idea that
(13:25):
he was actually a woman disguised as a man the
whole time. It also wasn't totally out of the question
for a woman to have sought political power through the
Church at that time. In the tenth century, there was
what people called a government of harlots, or later a
(13:48):
pornocracy in Rome, where a few wives and mistresses of
noblemen attempted to manipulate papal succession from behind the scenes.
A noble woman in Rome named Theodora advanced several men
to the papacy, one of whom she allegedly slept with
(14:08):
and another who had a child with her daughter, Morosia.
Morosia herself would later advance her own son to the papacy.
People mockingly called these women popouses, since these women seemed
to be the true source of political power and influence,
puppeting their popes to advance their own agendas. Many of
(14:32):
those popes were also named John, connecting those accounts to
Martin of Opava's story. These hypotheseses aren't perfect. The dates
don't line up. Opava thought that Joan reigned in eight
point fifty, while the quote effeminate Pope John the Eighth
held the throne in eight seventy, and Theodora and Morosia
(14:56):
rose to power in the nine hundreds. Still, they suggest
that there was a pervasive anxiety in the Catholic Church
about the influence of women and femininity in religious life,
which brings us to another reason the story of Pope
Joan proved useful to the Catholic Church. It discouraged women
(15:19):
from pursuing political power within the church. Another writer from
the twelve hundreds, at Tande bourbonc published a fiery polemic
about Pope Joan, suggesting she was a harlot who had
what he called quote the audacity or rather insanity to
become pope. According to him, Joan solicits the help of
(15:42):
the devil himself, who helps her achieve her political ambitions.
This version of the story has a clear moral the
Church should be wary of wily women with the audacity
to seek religious power, because it clearly means they are
in league with the devil. Opava and Bourbon's version of
(16:04):
the Pope Joan stories couldn't be more different. Opava's account
is even keeled, based in true or not what purports
to be historical detail, and it's slightly critical of the
Catholic Church, while Bourbone's account is salacious, over the top
and fiercely defensive of the Church, suggesting that the only
(16:27):
way a woman could have become pope was through black magic.
But still, the differences in these stories suggest that Pope
Joan was useful to Catholic writers with a variety of
styles and agendas. By the fourteen hundreds, the story of
Pope Joan had become so widespread that Pope jon became
(16:50):
even more entrenched in the Catholic canon, beyond just compilations
of legends. When the Duomo of Siena commissioned a series
wories of busts of past popes to display in the
giant ornate Cathedral, they included Pope Joan, proudly displaying her
alongside seminole figures in Catholic history. The bust of Pope
(17:15):
Joan wouldn't last forever. Two centuries later, on August seventh,
sixteen hundred, the Governor of Sienna delivered an edict commanding
quote remove the pope ess from the cathedral. Just two
days later, the bust of the Pope est was altered
to depict Pope Zacharias, essentially disguising Joan as a man
(17:39):
once more. This was the culmination of the work of
Florimond de Raymond, who had campaigned for months to have
the bust removed, suggesting that the legend was a hoax.
This event, the bust removal, marks a massive shift in
the Pope Joan story. The ledgend had lasted for almost
(18:01):
four hundred years without question, but now people were calling
the story blasphemous. So what happened in fourteen fifteen, more
than four hundred years after she supposedly lived. Pope Joan
(18:23):
appeared in an unlikely place, a heresy trial. The defendant,
Jan Hus, was a czech Man who was once the
rector for Prague University, but he had turned his back
on the Church and became its best known critic. He
was especially harsh about the sinful behavior of clergy, bishops,
(18:44):
and even the papacy, arguing that the true authority of
Catholicism wasn't the Pope but Christ himself. Unlike Jesus, who
was infallible, popes and other clergy were subject to the
same sinful urgent as everyone else. This belief was controversial,
(19:05):
especially for the Catholic higher ups who capitalized off of
their presumed infallibility. Hughes had been dragged to Constance, a
small university town in Germany, to defend his beliefs in
court or be executed. At the trial, he was asked
to give examples of sinful or illegitimate popes. He listed
(19:28):
a few, but the clergy struck each of them down
one by one, with a single exception, Pope Joan. Hughes
had written earlier in the century that Pope Joan was
proof that quote, the most unlettered layman or a female
or a heretic and Antichrist may be Pope end quote.
(19:51):
The clergy, which had been disproving and discrediting us at
every turn, could not challenge him on this point. This
event mark's a turning point in the legend of Pope Joan.
When it initially appeared, the Pope Joan myth was pretty harmless.
It was a fanciful, salacious rumor that actually proved useful
(20:14):
as a way for the Church to explore and explain
doctrinal inconsistencies. But now Pope Joan was being used by
enemies of the Church as a way to challenge the
Pope's very existence. It wasn't just use using Joan to
undermine the authority of the pope. At this time, the
(20:36):
Catholic Church was in a political crisis. It had managed
to elect two popes, one based in Rome and another
in Avignon, who were fighting for legitimacy. A council in
Pisa tried to resolve this by picking a new pope altogether,
but this plan backfired. The two deposed popes stood their
(20:59):
ground and kept control over their territories, so instead of
one pope, Pisa now meant that there were three. While
a pseudo pope like Joan may have been a funny
anomaly in the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, with
illegitimate popes and anti popes cropping up right and left,
(21:22):
it was less funny. In the bitter debate about what
to do with all of those popes, both sides used
Joan to defend their positions. On the one hand, Pope
Joan proved that there was a precedent for governing bodies
to depose of an unfit pope. On the other hand,
(21:45):
Pope Joan was a warning that deposing a pope could
cause chaos because, according to another legend, after Pope Joan
was executed, Catholic leadership struggled to replace her church was
left popeless for two years. This reasoning was accidentally kind
(22:06):
of progressive, because these thinkers are arguing that Pope Joan
should have stayed in power and that it was better
to have a female pope than no pope at all.
And even though hus was successfully convicted of heresy and
burned at the stake, his threat to the church only
grew stronger after his death. His execution sparked a new
(22:31):
religious movement, the Hussites, who rejected core Catholic doctrines like
Latin masses, the veneration of Saints, and even churches. The
movement started expanding across Bohemia. They too brought up Pope
Joan as evidence that Church authorities were not infallible. In
(22:53):
fourteen fifty one, the Bishop of Siena traveled to a
Hussate stronghold in Tubor to debate them on that point.
To discredit them, he undermined the veracity of the Pope
Joan story, albeit in a fairly weak way, saying tentatively
quote the story is not certain. This moment foreshadows the
(23:15):
way the Catholic Church would majorly turn on Pope Joan
in the sixteenth century, as threats to the Church's authority
continued to spread, while the Holy Roman Empire managed to
quash the Hussite Revolution by the end of the fifteenth century.
In fifteen seventeen, a new threat to the Catholic Church
(23:38):
emerged in the form of Martin Luther's ninety five Theses. Luther,
like jan Hesse and the Hussites, would invoke Pope Joan.
In one of Luther's informal talks, he mentioned seeing a
statue of Joan during a trip to Rome, but he
didn't make much of it. Instead, he wonders why the
(23:59):
Church would put such an embarrassing object on public display,
which is actually a pretty effective dis Though Martin Luther
himself didn't spend much time delving into Pope Joan, he
would of course spark the Protestant Reformation, which in turn
caused an avalanche of Pope Joan discourse. From fifteen fifty
(24:23):
to seventeen hundred, Protestants and Catholics would produce at least
forty pamphlets devoted exclusively to Pope Joan, which doesn't include reprints,
new editions, translations, and publications that are lost that are
cited in surviving texts. Protestants started this century's long debate
(24:47):
in the fifteen fifties, seizing on Joan as proof that
the Catholic Church was toast. In fifteen fifty six, Italian
Protestant Pierre Paolo Bulgario argued in over the top fiery
prose that Joan seized the papacy by magical arts and
(25:07):
gave the Catholic Church a whore for a leader and
a mother for a father. John Calvin, the Protestant who
would inspire his own namesake Christian sect, Calvinism went even further.
According to him, not only did Pope jon prove that
(25:28):
individual popes could sin, she also potentially undermined the whole
structure of the Catholic Church. He argued that Catholic bishops
couldn't claim to be directly descendants of Jesus's apostles if
a fraudulent pope disrupted the chain. Similarly, in the two
(25:49):
years she allegedly reigned, Pope Joan would have ordained priests
and bishops, and those priests and bishops would have gone
on to ordain other priests and bishops, and so on
and so on, and so. If Pope Joan was illegitimate,
her bishops and priests would be two, and so would
(26:10):
all of the bishops and priests in their downlines. By
that logic, the existence of Pope Joan could potentially render
the entire structure of the Catholic Church illegitimate. Though Pope
Joan had originally been a Catholic propaganda tool, after decades
of watching the Protestants use her to discredit them, the
(26:32):
Catholic Church had enough. In fifteen sixty two, they finally
decided to fire back with a book by Anophrio Panvinio,
which set out to definitively disprove the Pope jon myth
for the final time. Like the Bishop of Siena who
had argued about Joan with the Hussites in fourteen fifty,
(26:55):
Aenophrio took a reasonable cautious approach to undermine the story,
focusing on the lack of documentary evidence, the confusing dates,
and the tentative language in even the earliest retellings of
the story. In fifteen eighty seven, a French Catholic writer
(27:15):
named Flora and Raymond made a much bigger splash in
his book length debunking of the Pope Joan myth. He
argued that the introduction of Pope Joan in the thirteenth
century was actually part of a German anti Catholic conspiracy.
He thought that the Germans, who in his mind, were
(27:36):
too promiscuous, wanted to undermine the Church's chastity. Those licentious
Germans created this salacious story to make the Church seem
hypocritical and giving them more licensed to sleep around. This
was a bizarre claim, founded more on Raymond's bias against
(28:00):
Germans than on any historical facts. Pope Jone. Historian Elainborough
says that Raymond swung for the fences rhetorically speaking because
of his quote relatively unenlightened mind end quote. Nevertheless, in
his big mic drop moment, Raymond suggested that it was
(28:21):
ironic that the Protestants were so fixated on Pope jan
when they were under the spell of their own female
usurper of religious authority, namely Queen Elizabeth I, who declared
herself the leader of the Anglican Church after becoming Queen
of England. Raymond's rebuttal pushed the Protestants to get even
(28:48):
more conspiratorial. In sixteen ten, Alexander Cook wrote an elaborate,
fervid defense of Pope Jones's existence to match the Rams
and Takedown. Echoing contemporary clickbait, Cook bragged that Catholics quote
hate him. Cook claimed that the lack of documentary evidence
(29:11):
for Joan pointed to a Catholic cover up. According to Cook,
Catholics were intentionally destroying textual evidence of Pope Joan in
order to suppress her threats to the papal line of succession.
The claim was just not true. If anything, Catholics of
the fourteenth century were the Ones, adding in the story
(29:34):
of Pope Joan into older texts to make her seem
more legitimate. But in his enthusiasm to prove the existence
of Pope Joan, it's pretty apparent that Alexander Cook lost
the forest for the trees a little bit. One of
the main tenets of Protestantism is that the Bible was
(29:54):
the core of religious life, rather than legends of saints
or elaborate ritual like Latin masses or ornate churches and cathedrals.
Without documentary evidence of Pope Joan, Cook was turning to
exactly the random books of legends and paintings that Protestants
(30:15):
like Martin Luther and Jan Hess built their careers on. Repudiating.
The massive reversal suggested how far the Pope Jones story
had come. The story became so symbolically important that it
had Catholics turning on each other and Protestants lionizing Catholic apocrypha.
(30:38):
David Blondell, a seventeenth century Calvinist minister and writer, recognized
the absurdity of the situation. In sixteen forty seven, he
broke with his fellow Protestants and wrote a debunking of
the Pope Jones story, which many considered a betrayal of
the cause. Looking back on the time fifty years later,
(31:02):
one source says, quote would it not have been better
to leave the Papists the trouble of wiping their own
filth away? End? Quote? Some even thought that he must
have been in league with the Catholics, but it seems
that Blundell was just motivated by the truth, and many
Protestants and Catholics were convinced by Blundell's account Because of
(31:25):
his unbiased approach. One could take issue with the Jones
story for reasons other than defending Catholicism. After Blundell published
his book, The Pace of Pope Joan, articles slowed down
on both sides. Blundell set the stage for the modern
attitude about Pope Joan that the story was largely a hoax.
(31:49):
You might think that this was the last we'd hear
about Pope Joan, But it turns out that the legend
of the female Pope would take on a life of
its own in the secular world, a life that would
keep her legend alive for centuries to come. While the
(32:12):
Catholics and Protestants were having their own centuries long flame
war about Pope Jones's clerical legitimacy. Joan was gaining traction
in the secular world as a folk hero, perhaps to
the Church's chagrin. The Pope Jones story had broad appeal.
(32:33):
What's not to love about a wily, plucky woman who
outsmarted the church and also managed to get laid while
doing it. In thirteen sixty, long before the Protestant Revolution
and a century after the first mention of Pope Joan,
Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio included a particularly salacious version of
(32:57):
the story in his book On Faces Women, a compilation
of stories of notable women from myth and history. Unlike
his religious contemporaries, Boccaccio didn't care whether or not Joan
was legitimate or an illegitimate pope. Instead, he focused on
(33:17):
the more lurid aspects of her story, her alleged lust
for sex, knowledge, and power. Boccaccio's story begins with Pope
Joan falling in love with a student and accompanying him
to Athens, disguising herself as a man to be able
to pursue her studies as well as to be able
(33:39):
to pursue her true love. In sort of an Ellwood's
legally blonde situation. But when her lover dies, she continues
her pursuit of religious knowledge as a tribute to him,
and Joan becomes so widely recognized for her intellect that
she is disguised as a man and unanimously elected Pope.
(34:03):
The Devil doesn't enter the picture until after she's elected. Pope.
The Devil encourages her to give in to temptation and
start sleeping around, which she does. She gets pregnant, and
the Romans discover her deception and stone her to death.
In the ending shared by most Pope Joan accounts that said,
(34:25):
in a stark departure from other Pope Jone stories, Boccaccio
celebrates Joan for remarkable achievements, whether those achievements are eloping
with her lover, cross dressing, advancing as a scholar, or
pursuing clerical power. It's only after she starts seducing other
men that Boccaccio begins to criticize her. Her tragic downfall
(34:49):
is that she refused to remain loyal to her dead lover,
even though she fell prey to lust. Eventually, Boccaccio's Pope
Joan was a sympathetic portra of a woman as she
amassed power. What gave Boccaccio's Pope Joan's story such remarkable
staying power wasn't just that it was sympathetic to Joan,
(35:11):
but that it presented Joan as an archetype rather than
a historical figure. Women usually got political power in history
through familial succession or through marriage, and they tended to
express that power by manipulating men in their lives, at
least according to the stories women like Theodora or Morosia
(35:34):
the Mother Daughter power duo from the nine hundreds. But
in Boccaccio's story, Pope Joan gained her power through a meritocracy,
and she exercised it fairly. She was elected into the
papacy as a result of her scholarly achievements and her
ability to deceive the Romans by disguising herself as a man.
(35:57):
Illustrated editions of Boccaccio's book spread the story of Pope
Joan throughout Europe, with images of her sitting placidly on
the throne, wearing her papal robes and an ornate triple tiara.
These images of Pope Joan found their way into a
tarot card deck, which was introduced into Europe around fourteen fifty.
(36:21):
Tarot decks, like decks of playing cards, include various suits
and numbers that a tarot reader interprets to tell you
your fortune. But what distinguishes tarot decks from regular old
playing cards are special symbolic cards like the World and
the Moon, and these cards form what's called the major arcana.
(36:44):
One card of the major Arcana is the High Priestess.
Back in the fourteen hundreds, when the taro was initially
introduced to Europe, this card was the pope Us. The
oldest surviving tarot deck, commissioned in fourteen fifty by Filippo
Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and by his successor and
(37:06):
son in law, includes an image of the popis one
that resembles the wood cut prints of Joan from the
Boccaccio illustrations. In this image, hand painted with silver and
gold leaf, the Popess sits on a throne, holding a
pontifical staff and wearing the typical papal triple tiara, much
(37:29):
like the Boccaccio illustrations. It wasn't until the late seventeen
hundreds that the popess would transform into the high priestess.
In the midst of the French Revolution, the Catholic Church
was considered unpopular and corrupt. French tarot decks began to
decenter images of the clergy, a shift that would eventually
(37:53):
result in the development of the high priestess card in
the nineteenth century. But while Pope Joan was being scrubbed
from the tarot deck, she was about to have a
major moment of resurgence in revolutionary France. In seventeen ninety
three alone, three plays about Pope Joan debuted in France,
(38:15):
all body farces aimed at satirizing the monarchy and the
Catholic Church. Like Boccaccio's version of the Pope jon myth,
these plays had almost no interest in confirming or denying
the veracity of the story. Instead, they held up Joan
as something of a folk hero, willing to thumb her
(38:35):
nose at the Church's authority in the pursuit of true love.
But even as Pope Joan established herself firmly as a
folklore figure, even today, there are some scholars who stubbornly
assert that Joan could have been a real historical figure
in spite of the lack of evidence. After all, even
(38:57):
from the few primary sources presented in this episode, I
think it's pretty clear that the textual record is contentious
and confusing. Some scholars think that the primary sources were
later altered to provide proof of Pope Jones's existence, but
others think, like the Protestants in the sixteen hundreds, that
(39:18):
the lack of documentary evidence is more likely a result
of Catholics frantically scrubbing the pope ess from the archive.
There is always the possibility that some historian might stumble
upon a long buried primary source that proves that Pope
Joan was a real historical figure. Stranger things have happened,
(39:42):
But until then, it is Joan's ambiguity that makes her compelling,
at least in my mind. How she was manipulated and used, reinterpreted,
and trotted out as evidence on every side of multiple debates. Joan,
even in legendary form, fueled centuries of resistance to the
(40:03):
Church's misdeeds from the Protestant Reformation all the way through
the French Revolution. History is a slippery thing, and it
doesn't work like simple fables with morals. At the end
of the story. But if the moral of Pope jones
story is resist the constraints of the institutions you're in
to fight for more equal opportunities, then that's a pretty
(40:27):
good lesson. That's the story of the myth of Pope Joan.
Keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear about
one of the silliest myths that still persists in Jon's legacy.
(40:53):
A corollary of the Pope Jone myth was that because
a woman snuck into the papacy, their needs to be
a final check at the end of the pope election
to make sure that all elected popes were male. According
to legend, popes had to sit on a special chair
with a hole in it so that someone could reach
(41:14):
up through the hole and make sure that the Pope
to be had testicles. This myth appeared initially in around
twelve ninety in an account of Pope Joan from a
Benedictine monk. He wrote, quote it is said that this
is why Romans established the custom of verifying the sex
(41:35):
of the elected pope through an opening in a stone
throne end quote. At around the same time, another Dominican
monk wrote of a spiritual vision he had where quote
the Spirit of the Lord took hold of him and
placed him in Rome, where he saw the chair for himself.
In the next few hundred years, much like the Pope
(41:58):
Joan myth, the the Chair ritual myth took on a
life of its own and became known as the Right
of Verification. Unlike the Pope Joan myth, the Right of
Verification had more solid evidence for its existence. There are
some eyewitness accounts of the ritual, and not just visions
(42:21):
guided by the Holy Spirit. In fourteen oh four, someone
mentioned that they saw the Pope elect sit on a
stone throne as part of his inauguration, but it's not
hard to poke holes in that account because the person
who wrote it wasn't a member of the Roman Curia,
so he wouldn't have been able to see the ritual
in the first place. There was another account of the
(42:44):
Right of Verification from someone who was actually in the Curia,
a humanist and member of the Roman Academy named Platina
that you might remember from earlier in this episode, but
his version only complied Kate the historical record, since he
claimed that the stone throne with a hole in the
(43:05):
seat wasn't used to verify the pope's sex, but rather
it was used as a toilet. He wrote, quote that
seat was prepared in such a manner so that one
who is invested with such great domination will know that
he is not God but a man, so he must defecate.
(43:28):
End quote. It turns out, starting in ten ninety nine,
a pope had to sit on a perforated marble throne
as part of the papal election ritual, and in keeping
with the spirit of Platina's explanation, it was meant to
humble the pope in a moment that he was about
to gain absolute power. The ritual was relatively uncontroversial it
(43:53):
was performed up until fifteen thirteen, but the Pope Joan
Myth added a rectale for the perforated chair and imbued
the ritual with a scandalous origin story, which allowed it
to become sensationalized and exaggerated for centuries. In tandem with
the Pope Joan Myth, the quote right of verification became
(44:18):
a hot topic during the Protestant Reformation, although it was
less existentially threatening to the Catholic Church after all, As
scholar Tom Noble wrote, quote in the early sixteenth century,
several writers with grim humor said that the right had
fallen out of use because recent popes had so many
(44:39):
bastard children that their sex was not in doubt. Meanwhile,
flormand Durraymond, who you might remember as the one who
thought that the Pope Joan story was a blasphemous, horny
German conspiracy theory, was relatively chill about the right of verification.
He wrote, so that the whole thing was quote so
(45:02):
gross that the only good response for Catholics was to
laugh at the Protestants who repeated it. Noble Blood is
a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from
Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me
(45:24):
Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
(45:44):
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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