TO ENDURING VATICAN chagrin, belief in the existence of a ninth-century female Pope, Joan, refuses to die, with books and films focusing on her alleged reign still being turned out. Although early accounts vary, the standard version of the story alleges that, after the death of Pope Leo IV (17 July 855), a woman masquerading as the Englishman John Anglicus hoodwinked the Vatican cardinals into electing her to the papal throne from which she reigned for some two and a half years before her true gender was discovered in a very public and dramatic manner. Although an inspection of the chronology swiftly demolishes most if not all of her alleged history, we are still left with the mystery surrounding who started the tale in the first place and to what end.
First mention of the scandal is noted in the eleventh-century writings of Marianus Scotus of the Abbey of St Martin, Cologne, which assert (and note the author’s mistaken date): ‘In AD 854 Joanna, a woman, succeeded [Pope] Leo [IV] and reigned for two years, five months and four days.’ Next to throw his hat into this ring was the twelfth-century scribe Sigebert de Gembloux, who alleged: ‘It is reported that this John was a female and that she conceived a child by one of her servants.’ But the most famous and detailed of all such early mentions is found in The Chronicle of the Popes and Emperors by Martin of Poland (d. 1278), a bishop-chronicler who maintained: ‘After Leo, John Anglicus, a native of Mainz [a city in Germany’s Rhineland, although others have her a native of Metz in north-eastern France], reigned two years five months and four days. It is claimed that this John was a woman who, when a girl, had been brought to Athens in the clothes of a man by a certain lover.’
Once in that city, according to Martin, she excelled in science and philosophy until she had no equal; she next moved to Rome where she maintained her deception to teach many of the great minds of the day, with her reputation for virtue and knowledge growing to such pitch that she was a natural choice for Pope. Martin further states, ‘While Pope she became pregnant and through ignorance of the exact time of the birth she was delivered of a child while in procession from St Peter’s to the Lateran, in a narrow lane between the Colosseum and St Clement’s Church, in the street.’ At this point, most accounts agree that both mother and child were beaten to death by the indignant mob. ‘The Lord Pope always turns aside from this street [in procession] and it is believed by many that this is done for abhorrence of the event.’
It is important to bear in mind that medieval scribes and chroniclers were the photocopiers of their day, diligently replicating each other’s work while inserting additions to cater to the prejudices of whoever was paying for the finished product. Once a genuine error or a malicious spoof got into the mix, it was destined for centuries of meticulous repetition. It was also common for those with a particular axe to grind in later centuries to bolster their fraud by the insertion of supportive additions into much earlier works – and it is significant that, in some hand-scribed copies of Martin’s book, the lover who took Joan to Athens is referred to as her ‘sweetheart’ – a term not known before 1290 – and reference to her being pregnant presents her as being ‘in the family way’, an expression not known prior to the mid-seventeenth century.
Then there is the chronology of the papal line itself; the longest gap between any two Popes did indeed occur in 855, the year of Joan’s alleged ascension, after Leo IV died to leave in his wake a most undignified squabble over the succession. First choice was Hadrian, Cardinal of St Marco, but he had the good sense to turn the job down flat. Second choice was Benedict, whose rule was immediately interrupted by a group of militant bishops who carted him off to prison to make way for their choice of Anastasius, a machinating back-stabber who had been anathematized and exiled by Leo IV. But, when he and his supporters realized their coup was stillborn, Benedict was hurriedly released, dusted down and reinstated as if nothing had happened. This game of musical thrones ran from 17 July 855 until 29 September the same year to give us Leo IV (847–55), followed by Benedict III (855–8) and Nicholas I (858–67), all of which leaves no room for a papal reign spanning any two years of the decade commencing in 850. Nor is there a single contemporary historical reference to any Pope John/Joan in that decade or to the violent nature of her death in the streets at the hands of a mob.
Despite this mountain of evidence to the contrary, those who still cling to their belief in a female Pope love to point out that papal processions, which once went down the narrow street mentioned by Martin of Poland, have avoided it for centuries. Pro-Joanists love to point out that this street, one of a tiny enclave of similar streets between the Colosseum and St Clement’s Church, is called Vicus Papessa, but this should not be translated as the ‘Street of the Female Pope’. The street was not called that until the tenth century, when it was renamed in honour of the wife of Giovanni Pape, a rich merchant who lived there, so the name properly translates as the altogether less intriguing Mrs Pape Street. Short of traipsing round in circles all day, papal processions would honour certain streets adjacent to their route with inclusion, providing the residents decked out the thoroughfare in a suitable manner and put a healthy sum into the Vatican coffers for the privilege. Apparently, Mrs Pape loved the pomp and ceremony of papal processions so Mr Pape indulged her but, when the Pape family died out, the Vatican no longer had any incentive to venture down the steep and narrow street.
There is also the matter of an admittedly puzzling throne-like marble chair held in the Vatican Museum; once one of a pair – Napoleon is thought to have looted the other – this has a large keyhole shape cut out of the seat. This has been eagerly seized upon by pro-Joanists, who maintain that both chairs were made in the post-Joan era to ensure that no woman could ever again perpetrate such a fraud. According to that lobby, once the papal candidate had been selected, he was required to sit on one such chair with his genitalia visible to the voters assembled in a special viewing chamber on the floor below. Next, the cleric selected to remain in the upper chamber with the candidate was required to reach under the chair and, taking hold of said papal appendage, pronounce, ‘Testiculos habet et bene pendentes’, or ‘He has testicles and they hang well’, this no doubt affording great comfort to all concerned. Needless to say, no such ‘ceremony’ has ever been enacted. Some say these chairs were simply commodes but the fact that the uprights are raked back at 45 degrees makes this unlikely. Others maintain that they were birthing-chairs. Either way, they long pre-date the alleged time of Pope Joan and, indeed, the advent of the Vatican itself. Which brings us back to the core question: who started the silly story and why did they do it?
ON THE BIG SCREEN
The Vatican’s distaste for the notion of a woman once having hoodwinked the cardinals into appointing her Pope has not been made any better by the constant parade of books, plays and films promoting the idea as fact.
The most recent venture into celluloid was Pope Joan (2009), a German film with Johanna Wokalek in the title role, which attracted disdain from the Vatican for billing itself as a ‘true story’. L’Avvenire, the Catholic newspaper, branded the film a vacuous hoax and an enterprise of little vision but this did not stop it achieving box office success and placing it in the Italian Top Ten Movie List for 2009/2010, taking second position just behind Sex and the City 2.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was growing dissatisfaction across Europe over the way the Vatican conducted itself – especially when it came to the selling of indulgences. These were dispensations for sins, available only to the rich, who could thus skip their allotted time of penance in Purgatory and go straight to Heaven. When indulgences were made available to cover sins not yet committed – I’ll have two murders and one rape, to go, please – it was this coffer-filling scam run by the Vatican which, more than anything else, led to the foundation of the Protestant reform movement and, soon after, the Protestant Church itself. Determined to make its mark, this new movement did everything it could to blacken the name of the opposition in Rome. Its adherents’ first successful propaganda coup was the spreading of gruesome tales about the activities of the Spanish Inquisition, which was nowhere near as draconian or punitive as the Protestant machine painted it, and then they came up with the idea of promoting the ultimate anathema to the Vatican – a female Pope.
Historian Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), argued that the inspiration for this notion might well have been the Vatican scandal known as the Pornocracy or the Rule of Harlots. This began with the ascension of Pope Sergius III in 904, a time conveniently close to the alleged time of Pope Joan. A weak and vacillating man, Sergius immediately fell under the spell of Theodora, the beautiful but viper-like wife of Rome’s leading Consul, Theophylact, Count of Tusculum, and a woman who used her sexual charms to keep Sergius and others in the Vatican compliant to her ambitions. Soon tiring of being so hands-on with Sergius, Theodora passed that duty to her fifteen-year-old daughter, Marozia. Despite her youth, Marozia immediately raised the stakes and, by engineering many political murders in the Vatican, made the Borgias look like amateurs.
Her illegitimate son by Sergius would become Pope John XI (931–5), and two of her grandsons, two of her great-grandsons and one great-great-grandson each took their turn on the Chair of St Peter – a unique achievement in the history of the Vatican. Marozia bore the title of Senatrix and Patricia of Rome – the female equivalent of Senator and Patrician – bestowed on her by Pope John X (914–28), yet another of her mother’s lovers. She died in 937, after which the Pornocracy pretty much fizzled out.
The Protestant propagandists reasoned that if a woman had indeed been the real power behind the papal throne, they could ‘rebrand’ this scandal in the form of an actual female Pope. That just left them with the need to generate some suitable early references to the lady. Remember the strange appearance of ‘sweetheart’ and ‘in the family way’ found in copies of Martin of Poland’s work? It should also be said that in some of the earliest known copies of his Chronicle of the Popes and Emperors, those kept safe from meddling hands, no mention of Pope Joan can be found. Also, many of the other references to Joan in other early works appear as footnotes or margin notes that are in a hand quite unlike that of the main text. So, if we accept Gibbon’s suggestion that the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant propaganda machine simply resurrected the Pornocracy in the form of Pope Joan and concocted back-washed forgeries into medieval manuscripts, then all makes sense.