A female Pope????

So was there really a Pope "Joan"? has anyone else heard about this

Pope Joan

John Anglicus was a ninth century Englishman. He travelled to Athens where he gained a reputation for his knowledge of the sciences. Eventually he came to lecture at the Trivium in Rome where his fame grew even larger. He became a Cardinal, and when Pope Leo IV died in 853 A.D., he was unanimously elected pope.

As Pope John VIII he ruled for two years, until 855 A.D. However, while riding one day from St. Peter's to the Lateran, he had to stop by the side of the road and, to the astonishment of everyone, gave birth to a child. It turned out that Pope John VIII was really a woman. In other words, Pope John was really Pope Joan.

According to legend, upon discovering the Pope's true gender, the people of Rome tied her feet together and dragged her behind a horse while stoning her, until she died. Another legend has it that she was sent to a faraway convent to repent her sins and that the child she bore grew up to become the Bishop of Ostia.

It is not known whether the story of Pope Joan is true. The first known reference to her occurs in the thirteenth century, 350 years after her supposed reign. Around this time her image also began to appear as the High Priestess card in the Tarot deck.

The Catholic Church at first seemed to accept the reality of Pope Joan. Marginal notes in a fifteenth century document refer to a statue called "The Woman Pope with Her Child" that was supposedly erected near the Lateran. There was also a rumor that for some years the chairs used during papal consecrations had holes in their seats, so that an official check of the pope's gender could be performed.

During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church began to deny the existence of Pope Joan. However, at the same time, Protestant writers insisted on her reality, primarily because the existence of a female pope was a convenient piece of anti-Catholic propaganda.

Modern scholars have been unable to resolve the historicity of Pope Joan.

[Edited on 10/30/03 by NotTooHappy]

I doubt it - many Anglicans coverted to catholicism here when they introduced women vicars - I would guess NEVER.

I doubt it, but good info

Does anyone else have any info about this? I would like to learn more.

Here is link from the perspective of the Catholic Church.....

www.newadvent.org...

Good link Toltec. Their view seems to be that of covering their asses.

Critical Evaluation. This alleged popess is a pure figment of the imagination. In the fifteenth century, after the awakening of historical criticism, a few scholars like Aeneas Silvius (Epist., I, 30) and Platina (Vitae Pontificum, No. 106) saw the untenableness of the story. Since the sixteenth century Catholic historians began to deny the existence of the popess, e.g., Onofrio Panvinio (Vitae Pontificum, Venice, 1557), Aventinus (Annales Boiorum, lib. IV), Baronius (Annales ad a. 879, n. 5), and others.

Their view is all that matters because it happened in THEIR Church. They have the facts straight on it.

yeah I know old post... I was goign to post this topic but SEARCH!

I was reading in my local Catholic Newspaper about this. Suppsoably it is just ledgend. In the article they said that the ledgend is not supported by any real historical evidince and most if not all historains believe it is just a tale.

As a catholic this intruiged me. I figured something like this would have been disscussed before.

Would the father of her baby not have noticed the fact she was a woman? So someone must know for sure. Also, I thought popes were supposed to be entirely cellibate? She must have being doing the dirty while she was pope, as she was around for 2 years before she gave birth.

So if she was a pope she can't have been a good one.

[edit on 29-7-2005 by sammie_doodle]

Originally posted by sammie_doodle
Would the father of her baby not have noticed the fact she was a woman? So someone must know for sure. Also, I thought popes were supposed to be entirely cellibate? She must have being doing the dirty while she was pope, as she was around for 2 years before she gave birth.

So if she was a pope she can't have been a good one.

[edit on 29-7-2005 by sammie_doodle]

I seem to remember that several popes had children, at least into celibacy came into fashion in the church. I'd have to do some more research, but I;m sure I could find it. The history of the papacy is much less clean thatn the church would publically acknowledge. I cite the times in the middle ages where there were more than one pope.

There has NEVER been a female pope, let alone one named
Joan. This is just propaganda by radical feminists.

Here is a complete list of the popes - from Peter to Pope Benedict.
The years they were pope and information about each is included.
www.newadvent.org...

Originally posted by FlyersFan
There has NEVER been a female pope, let alone one named
Joan. This is just propaganda by radical feminists.

Here is a complete list of the popes - from Peter to Pope Benedict.
The years they were pope and information about each is included.
www.newadvent.org...

Way to go Flyerbaby..............give it to'em. Pope "Joan" is just sillyness to an extreme..............

From our friends at Museum of Hoaxes:

Linky

Excerpt:

"During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church began to deny the existence of Pope Joan. However, at the same time, Protestant writers insisted on her reality, primarily because the existence of a female pope was a convenient piece of anti-Catholic propaganda.

Modern scholars have been unable to resolve the historicity of Pope Joan."

And from our friends at

Britannica Encyclopaedia

" legendary female pontiff who supposedly reigned, under the title of John VIII, for slightly more than 25 months, from 855 to 858, between the pontificates of Leo IV (847–855) and Benedict III (855–858). It has subsequently been proved that a gap of only a few weeks fell between Leo and Benedict and that the story is entirely apocryphal."

It does appear that there's not much to support the actuality of Pope Joan actually being what legend would have us believe, though this has less to do with radical feminists as it has to do with generic suspicion and myth-telling.

I heard this a few years ago on "Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story."

Roper

Yeah, the links say that Benedict III was pope at the time Pope 'Joan' was said to have been. After Leo IV (855), until 858.

www.newadvent.org...

[edit on 29-7-2005 by sammie_doodle]

It's amazing how many lives this particular fabel has had over the centuries. People just can't seem to leave it alone to die a natural death.

Oh ancient rumour of the "wrong-gendered" Pope, thou shall awake once again... (and let it be so)


They thought she was a man and they named her Pope Johannes VIII. Here's some more details. In the 1290s they had a seat for the pope where he had to prove that he was a man (this was supposedly a response to the scandal). The seat had holes, and the Pope had to sit on it naked while a committee of cardinals would check whether he was a man. If he really was a man they would declare: "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes", meaning: "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely"...

Pope Joan - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography


There were associated legends as well. In the 1290s the Dominican Robert of Usèz recounted a vision in which he saw the seat "where, it is said, the Pope is proved to be a man". By the 14th century, it was believed that two ancient marble seats, called the sedia stercoraria, which were used for enthroning new Popes in the Basilica of St. John Lateran had holes in the seats that were used for determining the gender of the new Pope. It was said that the Pope would have to sit on one of the seats naked, while a committee of cardinals peered through the hole from beneath, before declaring, "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely." Not until the late 15th century, however, was it said that this peculiar practice was instituted in response to the scandal of the 9th century female Pope.

According to other research what was said is as follows, "Mas nobis nominus est"- "Our nominee is a man"

In 1601, Pope Clement VIII declared the legend of the female Pope to be untrue. The famous bust of her, inscribed Johannes VIII, femina ex Anglia, which had been carved for the series of papal figures in the Duomo of Siena about 1400 and was noted by travellers was either destroyed or recarved and relabeled, replaced by a male figure, of Pope Zacharias (Stanford 1999; J.N.D. Kelly, Oxford Dictionary of Popes).

But who knows for sure...

Originally posted by FlyersFan
There has NEVER been a female pope, let alone one named
Joan. This is just propaganda by radical feminists.

Actually, no. Radical feminists never espoused this to any degree... and the story of the female pope is actually quite old (13th century or earlier.) That's a long time before the rise of modern feminism.

And yes, I'm familiar with it. There were a number of controversies about the papacy and a couple of confused years when there were counterclaims to the See. It is, however, a medieval urban legend (there were thousands of them) and isn't true at all.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about this:
en.wikipedia.org...

The stroy of "Pope Joan" is apocryphal, at best.

Clerical celibacy is a matter of discipline, not doctrine. Priests/bishops/popes at times were married, but then there was a problem with certain members of the clergy having heirs.

Clerical celibacy was imposed to prevent inheriting offices, titles, wealth, and land.