Editing Pope Joan (section)

==Early mentions==
The earliest mention of a female pope appears in the [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] [[Jean de Mailly]]'s chronicle of [[Metz]], ''Chronica Universalis Mettensis'', written in the early 13th century. In his telling the female pope is not named and the events are set in 1099. According to Jean:

{{Blockquote|Concerning a certain Pope or rather female Pope, who is not set down in the [[list of popes]] or Bishops of Rome, because she was a woman who disguised herself as a man and became, by her character and talents, a curial secretary, then a Cardinal and finally Pope. One day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth to a child. Immediately, by Roman justice she was bound by the feet to a horse's tail and dragged and stoned by the people for half a league, and, where she died, there she was buried, and at the place is written: "Petre, Pater Patrum, Papisse Prodito Partum" [Oh Peter, Father of Fathers, Betray the childbearing of the woman Pope]. At the same time, the four-day fast called the "fast of the female Pope" was first established.<ref>{{cite book |last=Breverton |first=Terry |author-link=Terry Breverton |title=Breverton's Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths and Legends |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2n5YdVTW0z8C&pg=PT81 |year=2011 |publisher=Lyons Press |isbn=978-0-7627-7023-6 |pages=81}}</ref>|Jean de Mailly|''Chronica Universalis Mettensis''}}

Jean de Mailly's story was picked up by his fellow Dominican [[Stephen of Bourbon]], who adapted it for his work on the ''Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost''. However the legend gained its greatest prominence when it appeared in the third ''recension'' (edited revision) of [[Martin of Opava]]'s ''Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum'' later in the 13th century. This version, which may have been by Martin himself, is the first to attach a name to the figure, indicating that she was known as John Anglicus or John of Mainz. It also changes the date from the 11th to the 9th century, indicating that Joan reigned between [[Pope Leo IV|Leo IV]] and [[Pope Benedict III|Benedict III]] in the 850s. According to the ''Chronicon'':

{{blockquote|John Anglicus, born at [[Mainz]], was Pope for two years seven months and four days and died in Rome, after which there was a [[Sede vacante|vacancy in the Papacy]] of one month. It is claimed that this John was a woman, who as a girl had been led to Athens dressed in the clothes of a man by a certain lover of hers. There she became proficient in a diversity of branches of knowledge, until she had no equal, and, afterward in Rome, she taught the liberal arts and had great masters among her students and audience. A high opinion of her life and learning arose in the city; and she was chosen for Pope. While Pope, however, she became pregnant by her companion. Through ignorance of the exact time when the birth was expected, she was delivered of a child while in procession from [[St. Peter's Basilica|St. Peter's]] to the [[Lateran]], in a lane once named Via Sacra (the sacred way) but now known as the "shunned street" between the [[Colosseum]] and [[Basilica of San Clemente|St Clement's church]]. After her death, it is said she was buried in that same place. The Lord Pope always turns aside from the street, and it is believed by many that this is done because of abhorrence of the event. Nor is she placed on the list of the Holy Pontiffs, both because of her female sex and on account of the foulness of the matter.|Martin of Opava|''Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum''}}

One version of the ''Chronicon'' gives an alternative fate for the female pope: she did not die immediately after her exposure but was confined and deposed, after which she did many years of penance. Her son from the affair eventually became [[Bishop of Ostia]] and ordered her entombment in his cathedral when she died.

Other references to the female pope are attributed to earlier writers, though none appears in manuscripts that predate the ''Chronica''. The one most commonly cited is [[Anastasius Bibliothecarius]] (d. 886), a compiler of ''[[Liber Pontificalis]]'', who was a contemporary of the female Pope by the ''Chronicon'''s dating. However the story is found in only one unreliable manuscript of Anastasius. This manuscript, in the [[Vatican Library]], bears the relevant passage inserted as a footnote at the bottom of a page. It is out of sequence and in a different hand, one that dates from after the time of Martin of Opava. This 'witness' to the female pope is likely to be based on Martin's account and not a possible source for it. The same is true of [[Marianus Scotus]]'s ''Chronicle of the Popes'', a text written in the 11th century. Some of its manuscripts contain a brief mention of a female pope named Johanna (the earliest source to attach to her the female form of the name), but all these manuscripts are later than Martin's work. Earlier manuscripts do not contain the legend.

[[File:InocencioXprueba.jpg|thumb|Illustration of [[Pope Innocent X]] having his testicles examined, from ''Roma Triumphans'' (1645)]]
Some versions of the legend suggest that subsequent popes were subjected to an examination whereby, having sat on a so-called ''sedia stercoraria'' or 'dung chair' containing a hole, a cardinal had to reach up and establish that the new pope had [[testicle]]s before announcing "''Duos habet et bene pendentes''" ("He has two and they dangle nicely"),<ref name="Clément1999">{{cite book |last=Clément |first=Catherine |title=Opera: The Undoing of Women |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dc4HeHS3ulMC&pg=PA105 |access-date=8 March 2012 |year=1999 |publisher=U of Minnesota P |isbn=978-0-8166-3526-9|page=105}}</ref> or "''habet''" ("he has them") for short.<ref>{{cite book |last=Leroy |first=Fernand |title=Histoire de naître: de l'enfantement primitif à l'accouchement médicalisé |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5aqgvIsStVsC&pg=PA101 |year=2001 |publisher=De Boeck Supérieur |isbn=978-2-8041-3817-2 |pages=100–101}}</ref>

There were associated legends as well. In the 1290s, the [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] [[Robert of Uzès]] recounted a vision in which he saw the seat "where, it is said, the pope is proved to be a man". Pope Joan has been associated with marvelous happenings. [[Petrarch]] (1304–1374) wrote in his ''Chronica de le Vite de Pontefici et Imperadori Romani'' that after Pope Joan had been revealed as a woman:

{{blockquote|... in Brescia it rained blood for three days and nights. In France there appeared marvelous locusts, which had six wings and very powerful teeth. They flew miraculously through the air, and all drowned in the British Sea. The golden bodies were rejected by the waves of the sea and corrupted the air, so that a great many people died.|Petrarch|Chronica de le Vite de Pontefici et Imperadori Romani}}

However the attribution of this work to Petrarch may be incorrect.<ref>{{cite book|title=Chronica delle vite de pontefici et imperatori romani|url=http://www.franklin.library.upenn.edu/record.html?id=FRANKLIN_3544172|via=Franklin: Penn Libraries Catalog|publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania]]|access-date=24 January 2015|quote=The attribution to Petrarch is doubtful. "Cette oeuvre est généralement considérée comme apocryphe." – Bib. Nat. cat.}}</ref>