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