Editing Pope Joan (section)

==Recent analysis and critique==
[[File:Bonifacio Bembo.jpg|thumbnail|The [[The High Priestess|Popess tarot card]] from the [[Visconti-Sforza]] tarot deck, c. 1450]]

Most scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries have dismissed Pope Joan as a medieval [[legend]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/pope.htm |title=The lady was a pope: A bestseller revives the outlandish tale of Joan |first=Lewis |last=Lord |date=24 July 2000 |work=U.S. News Online |publisher=[[U.S. News & World Report]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100324093437/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/pope.htm |archive-date=24 March 2010 |access-date=2010-03-22 |url-status=dead}}</ref> British historian [[John Julius Norwich]] dismissed the myth with a logical assessment of evidence.<ref>{{cite book|last=Norwich|first= John Julius|title=Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy|date= 2011|chapter= Pope Joan (Chapter VI)|pages= 63–70}}</ref> In the ''Oxford Dictionary of Popes'', [[John Norman Davidson Kelly|J. N. D. Kelly]] declares the legend "Scarcely needs painstaking refutation today, for not only is there no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign, but the known facts of the respective periods make it impossible to fit one in." The appendix entry also cites chronological and material differences in the instances of the legend's telling, suggests an origin, and points to the Protestant historian [[David Blondel]], whom "effectively demolished it in treatises published at Amsterdam in 1647 and 1657."<ref name="ODP">{{cite book |last=Kelly |first=J.N.D. |title=Oxford Dictionary of Popes |year=2005 |orig-year=1988 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=0-19-861433-0 |pages=331–332}}</ref> 

The 1910 ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'' elaborated on the historical timeline problem:

<blockquote>Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17 July 855, and immediately after his death Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome; but, owing to the setting up of an [[Antipope]], in the person of the deposed Cardinal Anastasius, he was not consecrated until 29 September. Coins exist which bear both the image of Benedict III and of Emperor [[Lothair I|Lothair]], who died 28 September 855; therefore Benedict must have been recognized as pope before the last-mentioned date. On 7 October 855, Benedict III issued a charter for the Abbey of Corvey. [[Hincmar]], Archbishop of Reims, informed Nicholas I that a messenger whom he had sent to Leo IV learned on his way of the death of this Pope, and therefore handed his petition to Benedict III, who decided it (Hincmar, ep. xl in P.L., CXXXVI, 85). All these witnesses prove the correctness of the dates given in the lives of Leo IV and Benedict III, and there was no [[interregnum]] between these two Popes, so that at this place there is no room for the alleged Popess.<ref name="CE">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08407a.htm |title=Popess Joan |first=J.P. |last=Kirsch |year=1910 |encyclopedia=The Catholic Encyclopedia |publisher=Robert Appleton Company |location=New York |access-date=2010-03-22}}</ref></blockquote>

It has also been noted that enemies of the papacy in the 9th century make no mention of a female Pope. For example, [[Photios I of Constantinople]], who became [[Patriarch]] of Constantinople in 858 and was deposed by [[Pope Nicholas I]] in 863, had a contentious relationship with the Pope. He strongly defended his own authority as patriarch and opposed the influence of the Pope in Rome and would have likely highlighted any scandals of that time regarding the papacy; but he never mentions the story once in any of his voluminous writings. Indeed, at one point he mentions "Leo and Benedict, successively great priests of the Roman Church".<ref name="pardoe">{{cite book |last=Pardoe |first=Rosemary and Darroll |title=The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan. The First Complete Documentation of the Facts behind the Legend |url=http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/PopeJoanHome.html |access-date=2010-03-22 |year=1988 |publisher=Crucible |isbn=978-1-85274-013-9 |chapter=Chapter 3: 'Did Joan exist?' |chapter-url=http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/PopeJoan3.html}}</ref>

Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe, authors of ''The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan'', theorize that if a female pope did exist, a more plausible time frame is 1086 and 1108, when there were several antipopes; during this time the reign of the legitimate popes [[Pope Victor III|Victor III]], [[Pope Urban II|Urban II]], and [[Pope Paschal II|Paschal II]] was not always established in [[Rome]], since the city was occupied by [[Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor]], and later sacked by the [[Normans]].<ref name="pardoe"/> This also agrees with the earliest known version of the legend, by [[Jean de Mailly]], as he places the story in the year 1099. De Mailly's account was acknowledged by his companion [[Stephen of Bourbon]].

[[Peter Stanford]], a British writer and former editor of ''[[The Catholic Herald]]'', concluded in ''The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth'' (2000) "Weighing all th[e] evidence, I am convinced that Pope Joan was an historical figure, though perhaps not all the details about her that have been passed on down the centuries are true".<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Legend of Pope Joan |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8050-3910-8 |magazine=[[Publishers Weekly]]|date=4 January 1999 |access-date=24 January 2015}}</ref> Stanford's work has been criticised as "credulous" by one mainstream historian, Vincent DiMarco.<ref>DiMarco, Vincent, "The Medieval {{not a typo|Pope|ss}}", in Stephen Harris, Bryon L. Grigsby (eds), [https://books.google.com/books?id=oneTAgAAQBAJ ''Misconceptions about the Middle Ages''], [[Routledge]], 18 February 2008, pp. 63–69: "...{{nbsp}}credulous studies 
 include{{nbsp}}... Peter Stanford, ''The Legend of Pope Joan''{{hairspace}}".  [https://books.google.com/books?id=oneTAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA68&dq=peter%20stanford%20pope%20joan&pg=PA68 At p. 68.]</ref> Against the lack of historical evidence to her existence, the question remains as to why the Pope Joan story has been popular and widely believed. [[Philip Jenkins]] in ''[[The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice]]'' suggests that the periodic revival of what he calls this "anti-papal legend" has more to do with [[feminism|feminist]] and [[Anti-Catholicism|anti-Catholic]] wishful thinking than historical accuracy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jenkins |first=Philip |author-link=Philip Jenkins |title=The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year= 2003 |page=89 |isbn=0-19-515480-0}}</ref>

[[File:MGD91PregnantPope.jpg|thumb|New Orleans: Mardi Gras revelers in Jackson Square, the French Quarter. A pregnant woman costumes as "Pope Joan."]]
The ''sedes stercoraria'', the throne with a hole in the seat, now at [[St. John Lateran]] (the formal residence of the popes and center of Catholicism), is to be considered. This and other toilet-like chairs were used in the consecration of [[Pope Pascal II]] in 1099.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Boureau |first1=Alain |title=La Papesse Jeanne |date=1988 |publisher=Aubier |location=Paris|page=?}}</ref> In fact, one is still in the [[Vatican Museums]], another at the [[Musée du Louvre]]. The reason for the configuration of the chair is disputed. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman [[bidet]]s or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonies by Popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims (as they did also with their [[Latin]] title, ''[[Pontifex Maximus]]'').<ref name="Norwich 2011 63"/>

Alain Boureau quotes the humanist Jacopo d'Angelo de Scarparia, who visited Rome in 1406 for the enthronement of [[Pope Gregory XII|Gregory XII]]. The pope sat briefly on two "pierced chairs" at the Lateran: "... the vulgar tell the insane fable that he is touched to verify that he is indeed a man", a sign that this corollary of the Pope Joan legend was still current in the Roman street.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Boureau |first1=Alain |title=La Papesse Jeanne |date=1988 |publisher=Aubier |location=Paris |page=23}}</ref>

Medieval popes, from the 13th century onward, did indeed avoid the direct route between the Lateran and St Peter's, as Martin of Opava claimed. However, there is no evidence that this practice dated back any earlier. The origin of the practice is uncertain, but it is quite likely that it was maintained because of widespread belief in the Joan legend, and it was thought genuinely to date back to that period.

Although some medieval writers referred to the female pope as "John VIII", a genuine [[Pope John VIII]] reigned between 872 and 882. Due to the scarcity of records in the [[Early Middle Ages]], confusion often reigns in the evaluation of events. The Pope Joan legend is also conflated with the gap in the [[Pope John numbering|numbering of the Johns]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Riesman |first1=David |title=A Physician in the Papal Chair |journal=Annals of Medical History |date=Winter 1923 |volume=V |issue=4 |pages=291–300}}</ref> In the 11th century, [[Pope John XIV]] was mistakenly counted as two popes. When Petrus Hispanus was elected pope in 1276, he believed that there had already been twenty popes named John, so he skipped the number XX and numbered himself [[Pope John XXI|John XXI]].

In 2018, Michael E. Habicht, an archaeologist at [[Flinders University]], published new evidence in support of an historical Pope Joan. Habicht and grapho-analyst Marguerite Spycher analyzed papal monograms on medieval coins and found that there were two significantly different monograms attributed to Pope John VIII. Habicht argues that the earlier monogram, which he dates from 856 to 858, belongs to Pope Joan, while the latter monogram, which he dates to after 875, belongs to Pope John VIII.<ref name="Solly">{{cite web |last1=Solly |first1=Meilan |title=Why the Legend of Medieval Pope Joan Persists |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/medieval-coins-suggest-legendary-female-pope-may-have-existed-after-all-180970297/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=25 September 2020 |language=en |date=19 September 2018}}</ref><ref name="Habicht">{{cite book |last1=Habicht |first1=Michael E. |title=Päpstin Johanna: Ein vertuschtes Pontifikat einer Frau oder eine fiktive Legende? |date=2018 |publisher=epubli |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3746757360 |language=de}}</ref>