WEBVTT - How Pope Joan Became the High Priestess 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:05.040 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:15.680 and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised. In twelve 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.440 fifty five, a pope in northeast France hand wrote a 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:27.360 strange tale hoax in Rome, a woman becomes pope. According 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.560 to the Chronicle, in around eleven hundred, a woman disguised 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.120 herself as a man in order to rise through the 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:41.479 ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, from notary to cardinal and all. 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.200 The way to pope. This woman pulled off her scheme 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.320 for a while, until one day she the pope, was 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:54.520 riding on horseback and went into labor, revealing her deception 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.840 to the Romans. The citizens of Rome dragged her by 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:03.440 horseback and stoned her as punishment for breaking the rules. 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:10.199 This short, scandalous story raised a number of questions. Who 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.000 was this woman, where was she from? And how did 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.399 she make it through the gauntlet of Catholic politics without 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:21.680 getting caught? How did she get pregnant? If this happened 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.800 in eleven hundred, then why is this a female pope? 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:31.039 Objectively a massive deal only being reported for the first 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.600 time one hundred and fifty years later. Why is the 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.840 one detail we get about her time as pope that 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:42.560 she gave birth on horseback, which, while impressive and interesting, 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.840 doesn't seem to be the main headline of the story, 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.880 which again is that a woman was pope for the 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:55.520 first and only time in recorded history. This handwritten chronicle 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.200 from the monastery is even more ambiguous about the pope's 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:03.440 gender than you might imagine. While the headline explicitly calls 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.120 the pope in the story a woman, the text itself 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.840 never refers to the pope with any female pronouns, instead 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:17.520 opting for gender neutral pronouns like it and the neuter animated, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:21.440 which is a Latin tense that defaults to male. The 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:26.079 publication notes that the story is quote to be verified, 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:31.800 seeming to hedge the scandalous nature of the story. In 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:37.600 spite of these inconsistencies, the story of the alleged popess 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:42.640 spread among the medieval Catholic world, with various authors filling 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.720 in their own details about the legend. The popees became 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.080 an english woman from Maines. As a young woman, she 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.840 fell in love with a scholar and accompanied him to Athens. 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:59.400 While she was intellectually voracious, the Athenian professors wouldn't let 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.840 her into their classrooms, and so she disguised herself as 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.280 a man and moved to Rome. Admired for her vast 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.519 knowledge of scripture, she so successfully embedded herself in the 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:15.160 Catholic Church that she was unanimously elected Pope. She served 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.040 in the position for two years until she suddenly gave birth, 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:24.400 traveling from Saint Peter's Basilica to Saint John Lantern, which 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:31.680 uncovered her deception. Carved busts reveal her name Johannes the Eighth, 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:38.560 or Pope Joan, but there is still one massive problem 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:43.840 with that more detailed history. There is no actual evidence 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:48.920 to prove that Pope Joan ever existed. The story I 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.800 just told about the englishwoman from Maines. It became the 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.800 most popular version of the legend, but that story was 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:02.480 cobbled together from hundreds of different accounts with wildly desparate details. 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.360 Some versions of the Pope Joan story take place in 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.120 the year nine hundred, others in eight hundred and fifty, 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:15.000 others in eleven hundred. In some accounts, Joan is named 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:19.680 agnes Anna or Gilberta, and the length of her papacy 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:24.440 varies from two months to two years. One would think 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:29.640 that such a scandal would have produced some documentary evidence. 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.240 She might have been depicted in paintings or sculptures, or 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:39.719 mentioned in articles or letters, But there were no references 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:42.159 to her to be found. So I have to be 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.040 the unfortunate bearer of bad news on this story and 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.400 make it very clear to you, the listener, that it 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:55.400 is incredibly unlikely that a female pope ever existed. One 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.680 would think that this lack of evidence would deter people 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:03.280 from spreading the story, but the opposite happened. There wouldn't 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.479 be a single source questioning the validity of the Pope 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:11.680 Jone story until three hundred years after the initial chronicle 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:15.880 was published in twelve fifty, and Jon's legend would continue 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:21.720 to spread for centuries after that, surviving debunking after debunking. 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:27.160 In fact, Pope Joan became a kind of Catholic forest gump, 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.520 popping up throughout pivotal moments in the history of the 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:35.680 Catholic Church and playing central roles in religious conflicts. She 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.920 even spread far beyond the church into secular life, popping 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:45.039 up in plays, novels, and even card games. How did 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:49.839 the almost certainly false myth of Pope Joan manage to 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:54.920 survive for almost a millennium in spite of shoddy evidence 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.720 and multiple debunkings. In this episode, we'll try to solve 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:04.360 the mystery, tracing the story of a woman who, as 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:08.960 Catholic scholar Tom Noble put it quote, never lived, but 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:14.599 who nevertheless refuses to die. I'm Danish Schwartz and this 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:23.480 is noble blood. To solve the mystery of how and 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.760 why the legend of Pope Joan spread, we should look 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:31.800 more closely at the first mention of her, the Monastery 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:37.360 Chronicle from twelve fifty five. Unfortunately, we don't know much 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:40.719 about it. The author of this text was a Dominican 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.320 monk named Jean de Maii, but scholars don't know much 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.800 about him other than that he wrote this article and 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.359 one other book of legends. We don't know where he 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:55.160 got his information about Pope Joan from, or what his 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.560 intentions were for this story, or if he believed the 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.919 story himself, but Maille's role as a Dominican monk gives 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:09.279 us a clue. Maye wasn't alone in reproducing sketchy rumors. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.280 In fact, it was a matter of principle for friars 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:18.640 to document as many stories as possible, no matter how apocryphal. 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.240 It didn't even seem to matter whether or not the 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.880 author believed the story they were reporting. Jean de Meili 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:30.800 wrote about plenty of legends he didn't personally believe. For example, 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.200 he wrote an account of the Nativity where Salome, one 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:39.680 of Jesus' disciples, wanted to confirm Mary's virginity before she 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:44.400 gave birth, so Salome felt her up, which caused her 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:48.080 arm to wither away. At the end of the piece, 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:53.600 Meilee concludes that this event probably never happened. This might 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.360 raise the question if Malee didn't believe the story himself, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.560 then why did he spread it? After all, all, the 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:05.320 Salome story, like the Pope Joan story, was not widely known. 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:10.640 Mainly wasn't debunking a popular rumor. He was simply telling 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:14.360 the story and then mentioning that he didn't find it plausible. 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:20.160 Pope Joan scholar Elaine Borough argues that Dominican writers of 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:25.360 that era emphasized quantity over quality. Part of this was 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.760 politically motivated. After the end of the Crusades, the Catholic 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.680 Church had more cultural power than ever, and they flexed 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.319 that power by trying to explain and account for anything 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:43.320 and everything, even traditions that seemed to challenge the Catholic 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:48.920 Church's authority. Reproducing rumors, even ones that cast doubt on 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:53.080 the authority of the Catholic Church or undermined biblical accounts, 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:58.240 made them less threatening. Recording rumors and apocrypha was also 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.800 a matter of religious doctrine. According to the Bible, Jesus 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.160 appeared in the middle of human history rather than in 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:11.160 the beginning, suggesting that a seismic divine event could occur 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.520 at any time. Therefore, it was crucial that Catholic writers 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:20.480 document any rumor because it may gain religious significance later. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.199 In the minds of these writers, it would be way 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:28.480 worse to leave out a potentially significant event than it 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:30.880 would be to spread a rumor that turned out to 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:40.440 be irrelevant or untrue. Other Catholic writers would echo this 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.760 logic when reproducing the story of Pope Joan. For centuries 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:49.600 after that first story was originally published, it became something 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.280 of a self fulfilling prophecy. The story had become so 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:57.280 widespread that it would be weirder not to include it. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:02.079 One Catholic writer, Platina, would say this explicitly when he 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.200 wrote his version of the story of Pope Joan in 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.680 fourteen seventy nine, writing that he wasn't certain that Pope 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:14.040 Joan actually existed, but he did not want quote to 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:20.440 omit too obstinately and tenaciously what everyone affirms. Peer pressure 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.600 wasn't the only reason the story gained traction. Another reason 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.080 the story spread was that it was useful in clearing 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:34.800 up some inconsistencies around papal infallibility. Around the time that 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:38.120 Pope Joan appeared in the record in the twelve fifties, 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.320 monks were pretty unhappy with the pope, Pope Innocent the Fourth, 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:47.240 who limited Franciscan monk's right to preach and hear confession. 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:52.000 This made the pope hugely unpopular, but he was difficult 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:56.880 to criticize because, according to Catholic doctrine, he was ordained 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:02.000 by God to rule. By suggesting that a woman could 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:06.240 have ascended to the papacy, the Pope Joan story showed 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:10.000 that the Church had made mistakes before, so it wouldn't 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:13.640 be out of the question if it allowed an unworthy 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:18.680 man like Pope Innocent to rule. In twelve seventy nine, 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:23.400 an archbishop Martin of Opava emphasized that reading when he 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.679 published another account of the female pope in his book 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:32.160 of Legends. He explained that Pope Joan was intelligent and 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:37.000 well respected, and that she was unanimously elected to the papacy. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.520 Even so, her reign was invalid because a woman could 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:46.480 not be pope, suggesting that pope's could be illegitimate even 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:50.560 if they were elected fairly. It's worth noting that we 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.280 don't know for sure whether or not Martin of Opava 0:11:54.360 --> 0:12:00.120 actually intended to include the Pope Joan story in his work. 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.600 Doesn't appear in early editions of the book, and the 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.440 story actually first appears in editions of the book around 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:11.760 thirteen oh four in different handwriting, leading many scholars to 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:16.439 believe the story was added later by a different writer. Still, 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:21.120 Martin of Opava's story became the definitive account of Pope Joan. 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.760 His book was a best seller, and it spread the 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:30.880 rumor throughout Europe, getting translated into several languages. It wasn't 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.120 just popular, it was also the first version of the 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:38.920 story that actually attempted to give historical evidence for her reign. 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.280 Opava gave the pope a name John, which would later 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:47.559 be feminized to Joan. He changed the date of her 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.880 reign from eleven hundred to the eight fifties, and suggested 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:57.040 that she ruled after Pope Leo the fourth. It's unclear 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.360 how he came up with these details. There was a 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:04.360 Pope John John the eighth in the eight hundreds. Like Joan, 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:09.240 his reign was brief. He reconciled a schism between Western 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:14.120 and Eastern branches of Catholicism through compromise, which many fellow 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:19.800 Catholics considered weak and quote womanish Opava may have conflated 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:25.120 criticisms of his quote effeminate nature into the idea that 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.360 he was actually a woman disguised as a man the 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:36.080 whole time. It also wasn't totally out of the question 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.480 for a woman to have sought political power through the 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.440 Church at that time. In the tenth century, there was 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.960 what people called a government of harlots, or later a 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:53.200 pornocracy in Rome, where a few wives and mistresses of 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:58.520 noblemen attempted to manipulate papal succession from behind the scenes. 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:05.079 A noble woman in Rome named Theodora advanced several men 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.520 to the papacy, one of whom she allegedly slept with 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:13.120 and another who had a child with her daughter, Morosia. 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.760 Morosia herself would later advance her own son to the papacy. 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:23.720 People mockingly called these women popouses, since these women seemed 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.320 to be the true source of political power and influence, 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.320 puppeting their popes to advance their own agendas. Many of 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:37.240 those popes were also named John, connecting those accounts to 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:43.720 Martin of Opava's story. These hypotheseses aren't perfect. The dates 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.760 don't line up. Opava thought that Joan reigned in eight 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.840 point fifty, while the quote effeminate Pope John the Eighth 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.960 held the throne in eight seventy, and Theodora and Morosia 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:00.000 rose to power in the nine hundreds. Still, they suggest 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.920 that there was a pervasive anxiety in the Catholic Church 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:09.000 about the influence of women and femininity in religious life, 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.520 which brings us to another reason the story of Pope 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:18.920 Joan proved useful to the Catholic Church. It discouraged women 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:24.360 from pursuing political power within the church. Another writer from 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:28.600 the twelve hundreds, at Tande bourbonc published a fiery polemic 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.760 about Pope Joan, suggesting she was a harlot who had 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:37.640 what he called quote the audacity or rather insanity to 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.880 become pope. According to him, Joan solicits the help of 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.200 the devil himself, who helps her achieve her political ambitions. 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:51.760 This version of the story has a clear moral the 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.800 Church should be wary of wily women with the audacity 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.360 to seek religious power, because it clearly means they are 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:04.280 in league with the devil. Opava and Bourbon's version of 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:09.200 the Pope Joan stories couldn't be more different. Opava's account 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:14.080 is even keeled, based in true or not what purports 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:18.040 to be historical detail, and it's slightly critical of the 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:23.200 Catholic Church, while Bourbone's account is salacious, over the top 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.600 and fiercely defensive of the Church, suggesting that the only 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:32.160 way a woman could have become pope was through black magic. 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:37.680 But still, the differences in these stories suggest that Pope 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:41.880 Joan was useful to Catholic writers with a variety of 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:46.440 styles and agendas. By the fourteen hundreds, the story of 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.840 Pope Joan had become so widespread that Pope jon became 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.840 even more entrenched in the Catholic canon, beyond just compilations 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.000 of legends. When the Duomo of Siena commissioned a series 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.480 wories of busts of past popes to display in the 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:09.959 giant ornate Cathedral, they included Pope Joan, proudly displaying her 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:15.200 alongside seminole figures in Catholic history. The bust of Pope 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:20.360 Joan wouldn't last forever. Two centuries later, on August seventh, 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:25.280 sixteen hundred, the Governor of Sienna delivered an edict commanding 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.800 quote remove the pope ess from the cathedral. Just two 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.280 days later, the bust of the pope es was altered 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:39.359 to depict Pope Zacharias, essentially disguising Joan as a man 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.840 once more. This was the culmination of the work of 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.920 Florimond de Raymond, who had campaigned for months to have 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.560 the bust removed, suggesting that the legend. 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:52.040 Was a hoax. 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:57.320 This event, the bust removal, marks a massive shift in 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:01.879 the Pope Joan story. The ledgend had lasted for almost 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:06.760 four hundred years without question, but now people were calling 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:17.840 the story blasphemous. So what happened in fourteen fifteen, more 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:23.040 than four hundred years after she supposedly lived. Pope Joan 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:28.600 appeared in an unlikely place, a heresy trial. The defendant, 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.040 Jan Hus, was a czech Man who was once the 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:36.160 rector for Prague University, but he had turned his back 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:40.040 on the Church and became its best known critic. He 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:44.720 was especially harsh about the sinful behavior of clergy, bishops, 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.720 and even the papacy, arguing that the true authority of 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:54.280 Catholicism wasn't the Pope but Christ himself. Unlike Jesus, who 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:58.720 was infallible, popes and other clergy were subject to the 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:04.760 same sinful urgent as everyone else. This belief was controversial, 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:09.280 especially for the Catholic higher ups who capitalized off of 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:15.199 their presumed infallibility. Hughes had been dragged to Constance, a 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:19.639 small university town in Germany, to defend his beliefs in 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:23.760 court or be executed. At the trial, he was asked 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:28.760 to give examples of sinful or illegitimate popes. He listed 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.560 a few, but the clergy struck each of them down 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:37.800 one by one, with a single exception, Pope Joan. Hughes 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.720 had written earlier in the century that Pope Joan was 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:45.680 proof that quote, the most unlettered layman or a female 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:50.840 or a heretic and Antichrist may be Pope end quote. 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:54.919 The clergy, which had been disproving and discrediting us at 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:59.640 every turn, could not challenge him on this point. This 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.080 event mark's a turning point in the legend of Pope Joan. 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:08.439 When it initially appeared, the Pope Joan myth was pretty harmless. 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:13.920 It was a fanciful, salacious rumor that actually proved useful 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.040 as a way for the Church to explore and explain 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:23.520 doctrinal inconsistencies. But now Pope Joan was being used by 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.040 enemies of the Church as a way to challenge the 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:32.119 Pope's very existence. It wasn't just use using Joan to 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.119 undermine the authority of the pope. At this time, the 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:40.760 Catholic Church was in a political crisis. It had managed 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.240 to elect two popes, one based in Rome and another 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:50.040 in Avignon, who were fighting for legitimacy. A council in 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:54.439 Pisa tried to resolve this by picking a new pope altogether, 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:59.520 but this plan backfired. The two deposed popes stood their 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.960 ground and kept control over their territories, so instead of 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:08.560 one pope, Pisa now meant that there were three. While 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.479 a pseudo pope like Joan may have been a funny 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:17.439 anomaly in the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, with 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:21.679 illegitimate popes and anti popes cropping up right and left, 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.600 it was less funny. In the bitter debate about what 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.320 to do with all of those popes, both sides used 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:37.560 Joan to defend their positions. On the one hand, Pope 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.600 Joan proved that there was a precedent for governing bodies 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.520 to depose of an unfit pope. On the other hand, 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.840 Pope Joan was a warning that deposing a pope could 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:55.240 cause chaos because, according to another legend, after Pope Joan 0:21:55.400 --> 0:22:00.720 was executed, Catholic leadership struggled to replace her church was 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:06.280 left popeless for two years. This reasoning was accidentally kind 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:10.760 of progressive, because these thinkers are arguing that Pope Joan 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:13.600 should have stayed in power and that it was better 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.800 to have a female pope than no pope at all. 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:22.000 And even though hus was successfully convicted of heresy and 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:25.840 burned at the stake, his threat to the church only 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:31.080 grew stronger after his death. His execution sparked a new 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:36.560 religious movement, the Hussites, who rejected core Catholic doctrines like 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:42.000 Latin masses, the veneration of Saints, and even churches. The 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:47.720 movement started expanding across Bohemia. They too brought up Pope 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:53.639 Joan as evidence that Church authorities were not infallible. In 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:57.040 fourteen fifty one, the Bishop of Siena traveled to a 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:00.960 Hussate stronghold in Tubor to debate them on that point. 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.840 To discredit them, he undermined the veracity of the Pope 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:10.360 Joan story, albeit in a fairly weak way, saying tentatively 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:15.359 quote the story is not certain. This moment foreshadows the 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:19.359 way the Catholic Church would majorly turn on Pope Joan 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:23.840 in the sixteenth century, as threats to the Church's authority 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:29.520 continued to spread, while the Holy Roman Empire managed to 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:33.560 quash the Hussite Revolution by the end of the fifteenth century. 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:38.359 In fifteen seventeen, a new threat to the Catholic Church 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:44.760 emerged in the form of Martin Luther's ninety five Theses. Luther, 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:49.119 like jan Hesse and the Hussites, would invoke Pope Joan. 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:53.159 In one of Luther's informal talks, he mentioned seeing a 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.080 statue of Joan during a trip to Rome, but he 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:59.000 didn't make much of it. Instead, he wonders why the 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:03.080 Church would put such an embarrassing object on public display, 0:24:03.640 --> 0:24:08.040 which is actually a pretty effective dis Though Martin Luther 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:12.679 himself didn't spend much time delving into Pope Joan, he 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:17.600 would of course spark the Protestant Reformation, which in turn 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:23.720 caused an avalanche of Pope Joan discourse. From fifteen fifty 0:24:23.840 --> 0:24:29.399 to seventeen hundred, Protestants and Catholics would produce at least 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:35.800 forty pamphlets devoted exclusively to Pope Joan, which doesn't include reprints, 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:40.680 new editions, translations, and publications that are lost that are 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:46.920 cited in surviving texts. Protestants started this century's long debate 0:24:47.320 --> 0:24:51.439 in the fifteen fifties, seizing on Joan as proof that 0:24:51.480 --> 0:24:56.480 the Catholic Church was toast. In fifteen fifty six, Italian 0:24:56.640 --> 0:25:01.680 Protestant Pierre Paolo Bulgario argued in over the top fiery 0:25:01.840 --> 0:25:07.400 prose that Joan seized the papacy by magical arts and 0:25:07.600 --> 0:25:10.840 gave the Catholic Church a whore for a leader and 0:25:10.960 --> 0:25:18.080 a mother for a father. John Calvin, the Protestant who 0:25:18.119 --> 0:25:23.879 would inspire his own namesake Christian sect, Calvinism went even further. 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:28.800 According to him, not only did Pope jon prove that 0:25:28.960 --> 0:25:34.320 individual popes could sin, she also potentially undermined the whole 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:39.240 structure of the Catholic Church. He argued that Catholic bishops 0:25:39.600 --> 0:25:44.480 couldn't claim to be directly descendants of Jesus's apostles if 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:49.800 a fraudulent pope disrupted the chain. Similarly, in the two 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:54.800 years she allegedly reigned, Pope Joan would have ordained priests 0:25:54.920 --> 0:25:59.040 and bishops, and those priests and bishops would have gone 0:25:59.080 --> 0:26:02.280 on to ordain other priests and bishops, and so on 0:26:02.400 --> 0:26:06.080 and so on, and so. If Pope Joan was illegitimate, 0:26:06.520 --> 0:26:10.160 her bishops and priests would be two, and so would 0:26:10.240 --> 0:26:13.840 all of the bishops and priests in their downlines. By 0:26:13.880 --> 0:26:18.840 that logic, the existence of Pope Joan could potentially render 0:26:18.920 --> 0:26:24.000 the entire structure of the Catholic Church illegitimate. Though Pope 0:26:24.119 --> 0:26:29.280 Joan had originally been a Catholic propaganda tool, after decades 0:26:29.320 --> 0:26:32.679 of watching the Protestants use her to discredit them, the 0:26:32.760 --> 0:26:37.080 Catholic Church had enough. In fifteen sixty two, they finally 0:26:37.200 --> 0:26:41.880 decided to fire back with a book by Anophrio Panvinio, 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:46.600 which set out to definitively disprove the Pope jon myth 0:26:46.840 --> 0:26:51.320 for the final time. Like the Bishop of Siena who 0:26:51.359 --> 0:26:55.120 had argued about Joan with the Hussites in fourteen fifty, 0:26:55.680 --> 0:27:00.920 Anophrio took a reasonable cautious approach to undermine the story, 0:27:01.440 --> 0:27:06.680 focusing on the lack of documentary evidence, the confusing dates, 0:27:06.720 --> 0:27:10.800 and the tentative language in even the earliest retellings of 0:27:10.840 --> 0:27:15.480 the story. In fifteen eighty seven, a French Catholic writer 0:27:15.720 --> 0:27:20.159 named Flora and Raymond made a much bigger splash in 0:27:20.320 --> 0:27:24.359 his book length debunking of the Pope Joan myth. He 0:27:24.600 --> 0:27:28.200 argued that the introduction of Pope Joan in the thirteenth 0:27:28.240 --> 0:27:33.439 century was actually part of a German anti Catholic conspiracy. 0:27:34.080 --> 0:27:36.880 He thought that the Germans, who in his mind, were 0:27:36.920 --> 0:27:43.560 too promiscuous, wanted to undermine the Church's chastity. Those licentious 0:27:43.600 --> 0:27:48.960 Germans created this salacious story to make the Church seem 0:27:49.280 --> 0:27:54.720 hypocritical and giving them more licensed to sleep around. This 0:27:55.000 --> 0:27:59.639 was a bizarre claim, founded more on Raymond's bias against 0:28:00.000 --> 0:28:05.639 Germans than on any historical facts. Pope Jone. Historian Elainborough 0:28:05.800 --> 0:28:10.520 says that Raymond swung for the fences rhetorically speaking because 0:28:10.520 --> 0:28:16.679 of his quote relatively unenlightened mind end quote. Nevertheless, in 0:28:16.760 --> 0:28:20.840 his big mic drop moment, Raymond suggested that it was 0:28:21.000 --> 0:28:25.400 ironic that the Protestants were so fixated on Pope jan 0:28:25.960 --> 0:28:29.600 when they were under the spell of their own female 0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:36.200 usurper of religious authority, namely Queen Elizabeth I, who declared 0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:40.040 herself the leader of the Anglican Church after becoming Queen 0:28:40.120 --> 0:28:48.760 of England. Raymond's rebuttal pushed the Protestants to get even 0:28:48.840 --> 0:28:54.920 more conspiratorial. In sixteen ten, Alexander Cook wrote an elaborate, 0:28:55.440 --> 0:28:59.960 fervid defense of Pope Jones's existence to match the rays 0:29:00.120 --> 0:29:06.479 and takedown. Echoing contemporary clickbait, Cook bragged that Catholics quote 0:29:06.760 --> 0:29:11.480 hate him. Cook claimed that the lack of documentary evidence 0:29:11.560 --> 0:29:16.080 for Joan pointed to a Catholic cover up. According to Cook, 0:29:16.560 --> 0:29:21.479 Catholics were intentionally destroying textual evidence of Pope Joan in 0:29:21.600 --> 0:29:25.600 order to suppress her threats to the papal line of succession. 0:29:26.680 --> 0:29:30.480 The claim was just not true. If anything, Catholics of 0:29:30.520 --> 0:29:34.200 the fourteenth century were the Ones, adding in the story 0:29:34.240 --> 0:29:37.840 of Pope Joan into older texts to make her seem 0:29:38.000 --> 0:29:42.920 more legitimate. But in his enthusiasm to prove the existence 0:29:42.920 --> 0:29:47.640 of Pope Joan, it's pretty apparent that Alexander Cook lost 0:29:47.720 --> 0:29:51.080 the forest for the trees a little bit. One of 0:29:51.120 --> 0:29:54.920 the main tenets of Protestantism is that the Bible was 0:29:54.960 --> 0:29:58.360 the core of religious life, rather than legends of saints 0:29:58.840 --> 0:30:03.720 or elaborate ritual like Latin masses or ornate churches and cathedrals. 0:30:04.280 --> 0:30:08.760 Without documentary evidence of Pope Joan, Cook was turning to 0:30:09.680 --> 0:30:14.920 exactly the random books of legends and paintings that Protestants 0:30:15.080 --> 0:30:19.920 like Martin Luther and Jan Hess built their careers on. Repudiating. 0:30:20.640 --> 0:30:25.840 The massive reversal suggested how far the Pope Jones story 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:31.160 had come. The story became so symbolically important that it 0:30:31.240 --> 0:30:37.680 had Catholics turning on each other and Protestants lionizing Catholic apocrypha. 0:30:38.640 --> 0:30:44.720 David Blondell, a seventeenth century Calvinist minister and writer, recognized 0:30:44.800 --> 0:30:49.400 the absurdity of the situation. In sixteen forty seven, he 0:30:49.560 --> 0:30:53.840 broke with his fellow Protestants and wrote a debunking of 0:30:53.880 --> 0:30:57.840 the Pope Jones story, which many considered a betrayal of 0:30:57.920 --> 0:31:01.960 the cause. Looking back on the time fifty years later, 0:31:02.480 --> 0:31:05.800 one source says, quote would it not have been better 0:31:05.880 --> 0:31:08.920 to leave the Papists the trouble of wiping their own 0:31:09.040 --> 0:31:13.120 filth away? End? Quote? Some even thought that he must 0:31:13.120 --> 0:31:16.720 have been in league with the Catholics, but it seems 0:31:16.760 --> 0:31:20.960