ABC Pushes Anti-Catholic "Pope Joan" Tale

Newsbusters.org ^ | 28 December 2005 | Dave Pierre

[infoguy]

Check out the promotional ad for this Thursday evening's (December 29, 2005) episode of ABC's Primetime. The promo is for the story, "On the Trail of Pope Joan" (audiotape on file; emphasis mine):

"Diane Sawyer takes you on the trail of a passionate mystery. Just as intriguing as The Da Vinci Code. Chasing down centuries-old clues hidden even inside the Vatican. Could a woman disguised as a man have been Pope? Thursday night. One astonishing Primetime."

It doesn't get much uglier than this, folks. Quite simply, there was never a female pope, or "Pope Joan." The tale is a complete fabrication dating back to the 13th century - nearly 400 years after the reported "reign" of the so-called "Joan." For reliable summaries of the bogus tale, see this and this. Scholars debunked the fable hundreds of years ago, and recent books (this and this, for example) have further repudiated it.

Over the centuries, the "Pope Joan" story has been used as a slanderous tool to tarnish the Catholic Church and degrade Catholics. In his acclaimed 2003 book The New Anti-Catholicism, Philip Jenkins writes, "The Pope Joan legend is a venerable staple of the anti-Catholic mythology" (page 89). Jenkins adds,

"Though it has not the slightest foundation ... [f]rom the sixteenth century through the nineteenth, the tale was beloved by Protestants, since it testified to Catholic stupidity ... [Today] Pope Joan enjoys a lively presence on the Web, where feminist anti-Catholics celebrate her existence much as did seventeenth-century Calvinists" (page 89).

That a major network like ABC would lend credibility to such a vicious anti-Catholic smear is deplorable.

What could be worse? Donna Woolfolk Cross' novel, Pope Joan, seeks to advance the stature and validity of the fictional character, and a movie of this book is currently in production. Yikes.

[Frank Sheed]

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0060.html

Triumph of the Catholic Church by Anglican convert H.W. Crocker. It is a fascinating 2000 year history. Even deals with the Anti-Popes, the Great Schism, etc.

F

[conserv13]

"It's Round John Virgin!"

LOL. When I was little I thought there was an angel named Hark. Hark the Herald Angel.

[wideawake]

It is anti-Catholic because it says that a central Catholic doctrine - the Apostolic Succession - is a complete fraud and is provably so (i.e. a non-ordained woman became Pope) and the Church is engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to suppress history.

[humblegunner]

The tale is a complete fabrication dating back to the 13th century

Well, I've never heard of it and I'm interested in the story.
I'll make sure and watch.. I missed most of the current events in the 13th century.

[Prospero]

I couldn't be happier that the writers of the "Code" are being sued by the guys who wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

This rising tide of anti-Christian bias, which needs confronting, is misdirected anger at Islam which, as we all know, is politically incorrect and dangerous to attack.

The only answer to Islam is Christ. The anti-Christians can't handle that.

[wideawake]

A lot of those Popes and Cardinals weren't saints.

Of course not.

But 99.999% of the scandals weren't very interesting - they mostly involved misappropriation of property.

No denomination is free of that taint.

[dangus]

Oh, Gosh no, they certainly weren't! It's just sometimes it seems that the worst offenses are conflated together in some people's minds, and then attributed to the vast majority of popes.

Long before the Reformation, Catholics were keenly aware of the inherent tendency for wicked men to rise to power. For hundreds of years, men have made comments such as, "The highway to Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops," and then been recognized by Popes (bishops of Rome) as great saints and apologists. It is unfortunate that the uneducated and the intellectually stubborn have for so long misunderstood infallible to mean inerrant. Peter himself was upbraided by Paul, not for proclaiming false doctrine, but for sinning in allowing false teachings to stand unrefuted.

[COBOL2Java]

Source: catholic.com

Q: Recently my sister, who is a Catholic nun, told me that one of the popes was a woman. She also said St. Brigid was a bishop! I have never heard this before and I feel so distressed. I would appreciate any information which you could share with me.

A: Your sister is wrong on both counts. First, there never was a woman pope. The old story of Pope Joan is sometimes used to suggest otherwise, but this legend has been thoroughly discredited. The appendix to The Oxford Dictionary of the Popes (written by a Protestant, J. N. D. Kelly) says the legend of a woman pope "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 makes it impossible to fit one in."

Second, St. Brigid was never a bishop, although she did start, along with the hermit Conleth, the religious community of Kildare in fifth-century Ireland. Conleth was a bishop and was the abbot for a house of men. Brigid was the abbess of a nearby convent, but was never a bishop.

[Antoninus]

How about this somewhat more scholarly take from The Catholic Encyclopedia:

Popess Joan

The fable about a female pope, who afterwards bore the name of Johanna (Joan), is first noticed in the middle of the thirteenth century.

VARIATIONS OF THE FABLE

First Version: Jean de Mailly. The first who appears to have had cognizance of it was the Dominican chronicler Jean de Mailly (Archiv der Gesellschaft fur altere deutsche Geschichte, xii, 17 sq., 469 sq.) from whom another Dominican, Etienne de Bourbon (d. 1261), adopted the tale into his work on the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost."

In this account the alleged popess is placed about the year 1100, and no name is yet assigned her. The story runs that a very talented woman, dressed as a man, became notary to the Curia, then cardinal and finally pope; that one day this person went out on horseback, and on this occasion gave birth to a son; that she was then bound to the tail of a horse, dragged round the city, stoned to death by the mob, and was buried at the place where she died; and that an inscription was put up there as follows: "Petre pater patrum papissae prodito partum". In her reign, the story adds, the Ember days were introduced, called therefore the "fasts of the popess".

Second Version: Martin of Troppau. A different version appears in the third recension of the chronicle of Martin of Troppau (Martinus Polonus) possibly inserted by the author himself and not by a subsequent transcriber. Through this very popular work the tale became best known in the following form: After Leo IV (847-55) the Englishman John of Mainz (Johannes Anglicus, natione Moguntinus) occupied the papal chair two years, seven months and four days. He was, it is alleged, a woman. When a girl, she was taken to Athens in male clothes by her lover, and there made such progress in learning that no one was her equal. She came to Rome, where she taught science, and thereby attracted the attention of learned men. She enjoyed the greatest respect on account of her conduct and erudition, and was finally chosen as pope, but, becoming pregnant by one of her trusted attendants, she gave birth to a child during a procession from St. Peter's to the Lateran, somewhere between the Colosseum and St. Clement's. There she died almost immediately, and it is said she was buried at the same place. In their processions the popes always avoid this road; many believe that they do this out of abhorrence of that calamity.

Here occurs for the first time the name of Johanna (Joan) as that of the alleged popess. Martin of Troppau had lived at the Curia as papal chaplain and penitentiary (he died 1278), for which reason his papal history was widely read, and through him the tale obtained general acceptance. One manuscript of his chronicle relates in a different way the fate of the alleged popess: i.e., after her confinement Joan was immediately deposed, and did penance for many years. Her son, it is added, became Bishop of Ostia, and had her interred there after her death.

Later Versions. Later chroniclers even give the name which she bore as a girl; some call her Agnes, some Gilberta. Still further variations are found in the works of different chroniclers, e.g. in the "Universal Chronicle of Metz", written about 1250, and in subsequent editions of the twelfth (?) century "Mirabilia Urbis Romae". According to the latter, the popess was given the choice in a vision, of temporal disgrace or eternal punishment; she chose the former, and died at her confinement in the open street.

EARLY EVALUATIONS OF THE LEGEND

Credulous Acceptance. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this popess was already counted as an historical personage, whose existence no one doubted. She had her place among the carved busts which stood in Siena Cathedral. Under Clement VIII, and at his request, she was transformed into Pope Zacharias. The heretic Hus, in the defense of his false doctrine before the Council of Constance, referred to the popess, and no one offered to question the fact of her existence. She is not found in the "Liber Pontificalis" nor among the papal portraits in St. Paul's Outside the Walls, at Rome.

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.

Protestant Evaluation. A few Protestants also, e.g., Blondel (Joanna Papissa, 1657) and Leibniz ("Flores sparsae in tumulum papissae" in "Bibliotheca Historica", Göttingen, 1758, 267 sq.), admitted that the popess never existed. Numerous Protestants, however, made use of the fable in their attacks on the papacy. Even in the nineteenth century, when the untenableness of the legend was recognized by all serious historians, a few Protestants (e.g. Kist, 1843; Suden, 1831; and Andrea, 1866) attempted, in an anti-Roman spirit, to prove the historical existence of the popess. Even Hase ("Kirchengesch.", II, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1895, 81) could not refrain from a spiteful and absolutely unhistorical note on this subject.

PROOFS OF ITS MYTHICAL CHARACTER

The principal proofs of the entirely mythical character of the popess are:

1. Not one contemporaneous historical source among the papal histories knows anything about her; also, no mention is made of her until the middle of the thirteenth century. Now it is incredible that the appearance of a "popess", if it was an historical fact, would be noticed by none of the numerous historians from the tenth to the thirteenth century.

2. In the history of the popes, there is no place where this legendary figure will fit in.

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, 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.

Further, is is even less probable that a popess could be inserted in the list of popes about 1100, between Victor III (1087) and Urban II (1088-99) or Paschal II (1099-1110), as is suggested by the chronicle of Jean de Mailly.

ORIGIN OF THE LEGEND

This fable of a Roman popess seems to have had an earlier counterpart at Constantinople. Indeed, in his letter to Michael Caerularius (1053), Leo IX says that he would not believe what he had heard, namely that the Church of Constantinople had already seen eunuchs, indeed even a woman, in its episcopal chair (Mansi "Concil.", XIX, 635 sq.).

Concerning the origin of the whole legend of Popess Joan, different hypotheses have been advanced.

Bellarmine (De Romano Pontifice, III, 24) believes that the tale was brought from Constantinople to Rome.

Baronius (Annales ad a., 879, n. 5) conjectures that the much censured effeminate weaknesses of Pope John VIII (872-82) in dealing with the Greeks may have given rise to the story. Mai has shown (Nova Collectio Patr., I, Proleg., xlvii) that Photius of Constantinople (De Spir. Sanct. Myst., lxxxix) refers emphatically three times to this pope as "the Manly", as though he would remove from him the stigma of effeminacy.

Other historians point to the degradation of the papacy in the tenth century, when so many popes bore the name John; it seemed therefore a fitting name for the legendary popess. Thus Aventinus sees in the story a satire on John IX; Blondel, a satire on John XI; Panvinio (notae ad Platinam, De vitis Rom. Pont.) applies it to John XII, while Leander (Kirkengesch., II, 200) understands it as applicable generally to the baneful female influence on the papacy during the tenth century.

Other investigators endeavour to find in various occurrences and reports a more definite basis for the origin of this legend. Leo Allatius (Diss. Fab. de Joanna Papissa) connects it with the false prophetess Theota, condemned at the Synod of Mainz (847); Leibniz recalls the story that an alleged bishop Johannes Anglicus came to Rome and was there recognized as a woman. The legend has also been connected with the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, e.g. by Karl Blascus ("Diatribe de Joanna Papissa", Naples, 1779), and Gfrörer (Kirchengesch., iii, 978).

Döllinger's explanation has met with more general approval ("Papstfabeln", Munich, 1863, 7-45). He recognizes the fable of Popess Joan as a survival of some local Roman folk-tale originally connected with certain ancient monuments and peculiar customs. An ancient statue discovered in the reign of Sixtus V, in a street near the Colosseum, which showed a figure with a child, was popularly considered to represent the popess. In the same street a monument was discovered with an inscription at the end of which occurred the well-known formula P.P.P. (proprie pecuniâ posuit) together with a prefixed name which read: Pap. (?Papirius) pater patrum. This could easily have given origin to the inscription mentioned by Jean de Mailly (see above). It was also observed that the pope did not pass along this street in solemn procession (perhaps on account of its narrowness). Further it was noticed that, on the occasion of his formal inauguration in front of the Lateran Basilica, the newly-elected pope always seated himself on a marble chair. This seat was an ancient bath-stool, of which there were many in Rome; it was merely made use of by the pope to rest himself. But the imagination of the vulgar took this to signify that the sex of the pope was thereby tested, in order to prevent any further instance of a woman attaining to the Chair of St. Peter.

Erroneous explanations — such as were often excogitated in the Middle Ages in connection with ancient monuments — and popular imagination are originally responsible for the fable of "Popess Joan" that uncritical chroniclers, since the middle of the thirteenth century, dignified by consigning it to their pages.

[Frank Sheed]

Thanks for your rant which added a great deal to the discussion (/sarcasm).

Since you are in tune with things religious, perhaps you noticed the incredible garbage that passed for religious history on Discovery, the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel and A & E as a good many of the cable channels "handed it to Jesus" as His Birth was being celebrated. But, that's okay. Catholics were really offended but didn't stage a protest; we are putting our house in order and fending off anti-RC bigots. I wonder how many other Churches "bought this crap" with 'nigh a whimper, however, as their Savior was psychoanalyzed, demythologized and debunked?

F

[billbears]

Well doing a couple of searches apparently the Catholic Church did not begin denying this pope Joan until the 16th century. It is curious that they allow the story to stand for close to 300 years before they begin denying it though. I found this to be particularly interesting

The story of a pope named Joan, writes historian J.N.D. Kelly in his Oxford Dictionary of Popes, "was accepted without question in Catholic circles for centuries." Only after the Reformation, when Protestants used the story to poke fun at Roman Catholics, did the Vatican begin to deny that one of its Holy Fathers had become an unholy mother.

And I'm not sure how you can equate thousands or millions of deaths and the Divinity and Gospel of Jesus Christ to whether or not some priest was actually a priestess

[dangus]

>>>>"It's Round John Virgin!"

>>LOL. When I was little I thought there was an angel named Hark. Hark the Herald Angel. <<

I finally saw "Olive, the Other Reindeer," starring the voice of Drew Barrymore, this Christmas. Yes, it includes a character Round John Virgin. I'm not sure if I caught a reference to a Harold (Harold Angel?)

I enjoyed it... as soon as it became apparent that a certain voice it was NOT Michael Stipe. (As long as I was uncertain, I was waiting for it to turn sneering... Michael Stipe is a rabid Christian-hater.)

[conserv13]

the Apostolic Succession - is a complete fraud

I think it is a fraud for other reasons - Popes and anti-Popes - there was all kinds of stuff going on back then.

[Mike Darancette]

How is this "anti-Catholic"? I find it interesting.

Me too, and I'll probably watch to see which version of the story they push. And for the surrounding history too.

[NeoCaveman]

So when in Diane Sawyer doing a show on the Protocols of the Eldes of Zion?

[teddyballgame]

Any chance to bash Christians. Wait until the Da Vinci Codes comes out in May, '06. THE next big Social War.

[Publius6961]

How is this "anti-Catholic"? I find it interesting.

Assuming that you are serious, imagine the British inventing the story that George Washington was really a secret agent of the crown. A totally bogus assertion calculated to promote divisions among the new country.

Fast forward a few hundred years and imagine ABC finding an obscure reference to it (no matter how absurd it was at the time) and decides to make a feature one hour show or a TV movie about it.

[wideawake]

As Pope John VIII he ruled for two years, until 855 A.D.

Pope Leo IV, a saint whose life is well-documented (probably better-documented than the life of any other 9th century Christians besides Charlemagne and Alfred the Great), reigned from 847-855.

He was succeeded by Pope Benedict III from 855-858, who was also well-documented because of his role in the disputes between the heirs to the Carolingian throne and the Anastasius affair with the Eastern Churches.

His successor, Pope Saint Nicholas, was also well-documented because of his diplomatic initiatives and he reigned from 858-867.

The

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

Wrong. No modern scholar of any reputation asserts the existence of the fictional "Pope Joan" which was most likely the result of some dolt misreading "Ioanna" for "Ioannae."

[A.A. Cunningham]

Quid est veritas?

I'm not your friend, putz.

[dangus]

Typical dialog:
Comet: "So, uh, I was, ya know, wondering if you might want to join us afterwards, ya know, now that we're done for the night..."
Olive: "Whacha guys gonna be doin'?"
Comet: "Ya know... stuff... maybe some reindeer games..."

Santa: "I was wondering if you could use your sense of smell to guide my sleigh tonight"
Olive (who is actually a dog, not a reindeer): "I suppose. What about Rudolph, though?"
Santa: "Rudolph? Oh, that's just an urban legend."

Olive: "But what will you do"
Martini, An Italian Penguin: "Me, Don't worry about me. I'll find something.... insurance, maybe..."