0:00

You're listening to an Airwave

0:02

Media Podcast. This

0:05

edict identifies Jesus of Nazareth

0:08

as a heretic and a blasphemer.

0:10

This season on The Chosen. There

0:12

are those for whom this will set off a series

0:14

of events. My followers want to

0:16

understand. Nazareth, come

0:19

out! I

0:21

guess you're not holding back anymore. I

0:23

can't. I'm out of time.

0:26

See season 4 of The Chosen in theaters

0:28

on February 1st, starting with episodes 1, 2,

0:31

and 3. Get your tickets

0:33

now at thechosenriseup.com. This

0:35

is the second and final part of a

0:38

short series about the legend of Pope Joan.

0:40

So if you haven't already listened to part

0:42

1, you should go back and do that.

0:45

But as always, a refresher.

0:56

Since at least the time Martin

0:58

of Ophavos' Chronicle of the Popes

1:00

and Emperors entered circulation in the

1:02

late 13th century, the insuppressible story

1:04

of Pope Joan has spread around

1:06

the world. Some of

1:08

the details of that story differ

1:11

from account to account, but the

1:13

gist remained, and remains, incredibly consistent

1:15

that a woman, disguising herself as

1:17

a man, rose through the ranks

1:19

of the Catholic Church until she

1:22

reached its apex, the papacy itself.

1:25

Only referred to as Pope John, or

1:27

Pope John Anglicus, sometimes with a

1:29

couple of possible numbers, the 7th,

1:31

8th, or 9th usually, she might

1:34

have gotten away with the deception.

1:36

But unfortunately, she found herself in the

1:39

family way, and soon everyone else found

1:41

her in that way too. One

1:44

day, when proceeding from St. Peter's to

1:46

the Lateran, the Pope went

1:48

into labor, and gave birth in the

1:50

middle of the street, and the jig

1:52

was most decidedly up. What

1:55

happened to her next, whether she

1:57

died in childbirth, was killed on

1:59

the street. spot, was sent to

2:01

a nunnery or tied to the tail of

2:03

a horse and dragged to death is

2:06

disputed. Who

2:08

the father of the child was also varies from source

2:10

to source, though not in a way that we're going

2:12

to worry about. The fate of

2:14

the child usually goes unmentioned, aside from one

2:17

version where he grows up to be a

2:19

bishop and has his mom buried at a

2:21

cathedral, where she then performs miracles. And

2:24

her name varies almost endlessly when

2:27

she is given one. For

2:29

our purposes, we're going with the one that's

2:31

stuck, even though it wasn't introduced until the

2:33

1600s. Pope

2:35

Joan. The

2:39

most important discrepancy between accounts is when

2:41

Pope Joan became Pope Joan, but we

2:43

will get back to that in a

2:45

bit. In part one, we

2:47

looked at what we could call the

2:50

forensic evidence of Pope Joan's existence, and

2:52

we came up a bit wanting. There

2:55

are four key claims made among the different

2:57

variations of the story. One, that

3:00

the street upon which Joan gave birth

3:02

was thereafter shunned by the Popes that

3:04

followed her. Two, that

3:07

a statue to her was erected at the

3:09

spot. Three, that another memorial

3:11

inscription was placed at the point

3:13

of her death. And four,

3:16

that after her exposure, the Holy See

3:18

began using a chair with a hole

3:20

in the seat in the election of

3:22

new Popes, so that a bishop could

3:25

reach up and give the possible pontiff's

3:27

junk a tug to make sure everything

3:29

was as it should be. And announced

3:32

to the College of Cardinals, he has

3:34

two, and they dangle nicely. At

3:38

first, each of these claims appears

3:41

intriguing. Yes, Popes did

3:43

avoid the road in question. Yes,

3:45

there was a statue there. Yes,

3:47

some sort of inscription was found

3:49

outside the city where Joan could

3:51

have been dragged. And

3:53

yes, the church did have the marble

3:55

seat with the hole in the tucas.

3:59

Dig a little. deeper though, and these facts

4:01

begin to crumble. The seat is

4:04

much older than the Joan legend,

4:06

and probably was used ceremonially because

4:08

medieval Catholics thought it was pretty

4:10

and didn't realize it had started

4:12

out as a Roman toilet. The

4:15

inscription on the memorial is unclear, but

4:17

probably signals that said memorial was built

4:19

in remembrance of a high priest of

4:22

Mithras in the first century. The

4:29

statue and the shunned street are

4:32

a bit more complicated, but ultimately it

4:34

seems more likely than not that neither

4:37

one of them originally had to do

4:39

with Joan. All

4:41

in all, the physical evidence is looking, at

4:44

best, unpersuasive. But

4:46

there is one more reason to

4:49

suspect Pope Joan was real, the

4:52

strongest reason of them all, and

4:54

that is where we're starting today. This

5:08

is the constant, a history of getting things

5:10

wrong. By

5:34

his own admission, Jan Hus didn't even

5:36

want to become a priest in the

5:38

first place. But after

5:40

receiving a master's degree from the University of Prague

5:42

in 1396 and teaching there

5:44

for a couple of years, he was ordained

5:46

because he thought the priesthood would be easier

5:48

than a real job. Which it might have

5:50

been, but not for Jan Hus. From

5:54

even before his ordination, Hus, that's

5:57

goose in Bohemian by the way,

5:59

Hus, was a rough fit

6:01

for Catholicism. He

6:03

had been exposed to the ideas

6:06

of the English philosopher and Catholic

6:08

heretic John Wycliffe, and found himself

6:11

pretty much agreeing to them. Like

6:14

Wycliffe, he disagreed with the church

6:16

practice of selling indulgences, basically buying

6:18

your way out of hell. Like

6:21

Wycliffe, he was doubtful that the

6:23

bread of the Eucharist actually transubstantiated

6:26

into Jesus' flesh during communion. Instead

6:29

preferring the concept of impenation, that

6:31

Jesus' body naturally resided in part

6:34

within the Eucharist all the time.

6:37

Most of all, he agreed with Wycliffe

6:40

that people should be encouraged to read

6:42

the Bible for themselves, in their own

6:44

language, and that, even

6:46

more dangerously, the Bible should

6:48

have ultimate authority over truth.

6:52

Which is to say, if the

6:54

Pope and the Bible disagree, the

6:56

book wins. The

6:59

Pope wasn't going to like that, but

7:01

luckily for Jan Hus, there were, at the

7:03

time, two competing Popes.

7:06

Pope Gregory XI had returned to Rome

7:08

from Avignon in 1377, but Avignon had

7:11

continued electing

7:14

their own Popes until in 1409 a

7:17

council was held at Pisa to try to

7:19

settle the matter once and for all and

7:22

reunify the church. The

7:24

council elected Alexander V to

7:26

be the new and only

7:28

Pope, but neither of the

7:30

other Popes, Gregory XII in

7:32

Rome or Benedict XIII in

7:34

Avignon, agreed. Trying

7:38

to solve the two-Pope problem Pisa had created,

7:40

a three-Pope problem.

7:43

Doesn't that just beat all? Well,

7:45

Jan Hus, as the Holy Roman Emperor, tried

7:47

to get him to accept the peace in

7:49

Pope. Why should we trust

7:52

the Pope when we don't even know who

7:54

the Pope is? Hus thought

7:56

the whole kerfuffle only showed to go

7:58

that the church was corrupt. and

8:00

the Papacy invalid, and a

8:02

lot of Bohemians agreed with him. Soon

8:05

he had a bit of a church of his own, a

8:07

fourth church, the Hussite

8:10

Church. So

8:16

in 1414, when another council was

8:19

called, this time in Constance, to

8:21

try to get down to one

8:23

pope, the council also asked Jan

8:25

Hus to attend. Hus

8:28

was reluctant. He

8:30

figured they only wanted him to show

8:32

up so they could kill him, but

8:35

the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund promised him

8:37

safe passage. So he made the trek

8:39

to Constance, where he was immediately captured

8:41

and jailed. The Council of

8:43

Constance eventually reunified the Catholic Church and

8:45

concentrated its power back in Rome, but

8:48

its goals with Hus were

8:50

harder to meet. They didn't want

8:52

to kill him for fear he'd be made

8:54

a martyr, so instead they tried to get

8:56

him to recant his heretical views through a

8:58

year of starvation, deprivation, and torture. But Hus

9:01

wouldn't recant, and eventually he was put

9:03

on trial for heresy and

9:05

burnt at the stake. This

9:07

was not the wind the council wanted

9:09

though, because exactly as they feared, Hus

9:11

was seen as a martyr, and his

9:13

followers, the Hussites, fought a

9:16

fifteen year long civil war against

9:18

the Emperor, the Pope, and most

9:21

of the Monarchs of Europe. Impressively,

9:23

they managed to hold Bohemia and

9:25

Moravia against the entire continent for

9:27

more than a decade. At

9:31

trial, Hus had refused to acquiesce.

9:34

Instead he used the courtroom as a

9:36

very public platform to air his views,

9:38

which the council refuted. Except

9:41

for one. When

9:43

arguing that there was no need for a

9:46

Pope, Jan Hus reminded the

9:48

court that there had been a period

9:50

of more than two years during which

9:52

a phony Pope had pretended to rule,

9:54

and the church had done just fine.

9:57

That phony Pope was, of course,

9:59

the female. The prosecution had plenty to say about

10:01

the rest of Hus's arguments, but on the

10:04

female pope thing, they had to admit the

10:06

point. When

10:09

the English dissident, anti-papist Walter Brute

10:13

was tried for heresy in 1393, his defense also

10:16

brought up Joan to defend his distrust of the

10:18

papacy, and again, Brute's defense was

10:21

roundly lambasted by the church faithful, except that

10:23

nobody scottled the church. Brute

10:27

and Hus are part of the

10:29

most intriguing bit of evidence in favor of

10:31

Pope Joan's existence. That

10:33

for more than 250 years, virtually everyone,

10:35

believer and non-believer, papist and Hussite, Roman,

10:41

Pisan, and French agreed, without controversy, that

10:43

the story was true. It

10:47

was common knowledge to the point that the

10:49

story was true, and that the story was

10:53

true. It

10:55

was common knowledge to the point that

10:57

when the pope first returned to Rome

10:59

from Avignon, he avoided the street upon

11:01

which Joan had supposedly given birth. So

11:04

obvious that a statue on the road was

11:06

either made of or taken as Joan, and

11:09

put in city guide books for centuries. When

11:12

the church commissioned a series of busts

11:14

to be made at the Siena Cathedral

11:16

in Tuscany of every pope in order,

11:19

Joan was plopped right there,

11:21

between Leo IV and Benedict

11:23

III, as Martin's

11:25

chronicon said, and remained

11:27

in that place for two

11:30

hundred years. When

11:32

finally some cracks began to form

11:34

in the edifice of the legend,

11:37

it wasn't because of new scholarship or

11:40

increased skepticism or anything so

11:42

impartial or intellectual. Doubts

11:45

only started being publicly raised

11:47

in the mid-1500s because of

11:50

the Protestant Reformation. The

11:53

Same sorts of anti-papal arguments that

11:55

Jan Hus and Walter Brute had

11:57

made a hundred years earlier were

11:59

taken up in Rome. larger numbers

12:01

and by louder voices in the

12:04

fifties sixties with Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinist

12:06

anabaptists and other new fangled products

12:08

in here Texas recognizing in the

12:10

Pope Joan story a prime way

12:12

to challenge to be an errand

12:14

seats and even the competency of

12:17

Rome. In.

12:19

Response: The Catholic church, which low

12:21

those many years had been perfectly

12:24

content with the fact of Jones

12:26

Misrule, began getting antsy. Somewhere.

12:28

Around the turn of the seventeenth centuries,

12:31

Pope Clement ordered that that bust of

12:33

zone in Tuscany to be removed, read

12:35

carved into poop zachary and placed a

12:38

long ways to the left. Somewhere.

12:40

Around that same time the statue

12:42

on the a sacrifice was removed,

12:45

probably on orders of Pope Six

12:47

to specific that's a confusing name.

12:50

And before that, as Protestant

12:52

polemics weaponized zone like a

12:54

plague soaked corpse to be

12:56

thrown over the walls of

12:59

Rome, bishops, priests, months and

13:01

other Catholic apologists began crafting

13:03

incredible attacks on her. Try

13:05

to be. X

13:11

are really worth detailing because

13:13

very large, they're not made

13:15

with any real interesting evidence.

13:17

they're just the pure spirit

13:20

of distilled religious partisanship. But

13:22

the Arc of Believe In

13:24

Zone is itself the best

13:26

argument for her reality. Did

13:45

archaeologists discover Noah's Ark? Is the

13:47

rapture coming? As soon as the

13:49

Euphrates River dries up to the

13:51

Bible? Condemn Abortion. Don't you wish

13:53

you had a trustworthy academic resource

13:55

to help make sense of all

13:57

of us? The

14:00

And Beecher and she's award winning Bible

14:02

scholar and six talk sensation doctor Damn

14:04

Mccloughan and we want to invite you

14:06

to the Data Over Dogma podcast where

14:08

our mission is to increase public access

14:11

to the academic study of the bible

14:13

and religion and also to combat the

14:15

spread of misinformation about the. Regular

14:18

in a fun way. Every

14:21

week we tackle fascinating topics. we go

14:23

back to source materials in their original

14:25

languages, and we interviewed top scholars in

14:27

the Feel. So whether you're a devout

14:30

believer, For you're just interested in a

14:32

clear eyed, deeply informed look at one

14:34

of the most influential books of all

14:36

time. We think you're going to love

14:38

the Data over Dogma podcast wherever you

14:40

subscribe to awesome shows. Is

14:55

it really possible that some

14:57

nameless interpol later concocted an

14:59

errant paragraph out of the

15:01

blue? Slip it into a

15:03

single copy of Martin of

15:05

a Potter's Chronic on and

15:08

with that one obscure ass

15:10

convinced the entire western world

15:12

of a pure fabrication almost

15:14

immediately and so thoroughly that

15:16

it took nearly three hundred

15:18

years for anyone to look

15:20

sideways at it. Seems

15:23

pretty far fetched and it

15:25

sure convenient that the story

15:27

only began to face good

15:29

nice when people were highly

15:32

motivated to scrutinizes. A

15:36

lot of Poked Zone backers and there

15:38

are a lot of Poke Town Backers

15:40

go as far as to assert a

15:42

conspiracy headed up for half by Pope

15:44

Clement who remove the bus were Pope

15:46

six this to remove the static. and

15:50

ah maybe this is a good opportunity

15:52

to take a moment and say that's

15:55

of all the one hundred and seventy

15:57

odd topics i've researched over the course

15:59

of I have

16:02

never seen so much shoddy

16:04

scholarship as there is about

16:06

Pope Joan. It is

16:09

a true and forbidding wasteland. Some

16:12

of that bad scholarship comes from

16:14

Joan deniers, but at least most

16:17

of that stuff is old. The

16:19

Pope Joan boosters are still publishing

16:21

absolute codswallop up until this very

16:23

day. A paper from

16:25

five years ago, for instance, claims to

16:27

have found proof of St. Joan's existence

16:29

in a pair of coins. They

16:32

are both deniers,

16:34

and both feature monograms of John the

16:37

8th, who was Pope between 872 until

16:40

his death in 882. But

16:43

the monograms are slightly

16:45

different. Each of them

16:47

has, at its center, a large combined

16:49

letter, an H with an N superimposed

16:52

over it. And each monogram

16:54

features two other letters, above and below

16:56

the combination HN. An

16:59

S and an O. But in

17:01

the older coin, the S is at the top,

17:03

and the O is at the bottom. Whereas in

17:05

the newer coin, the O is at the top,

17:07

and the S is at the bottom. This,

17:10

says Dr. Michael Haddick of Flinders

17:13

University, is evidence that the coins

17:15

refer to two different Pope John's

17:17

the 8th, and that the first

17:20

is Martin's John Anglicus, Pope

17:22

Joan, ruling between 855 and 857. It

17:29

is facially unpersuasive.

17:33

Haddick argues that a Pope's monogram was

17:35

like his signature, and that it couldn't

17:37

have changed in this, frankly, pretty minor

17:40

way. Which might be true, but even

17:42

if it is, there's no reason to

17:44

think that some dyslexic minter didn't reverse

17:46

the S and the O accidentally, or

17:48

that the order for the coin wasn't

17:50

placed in error. It's even possible

17:52

that the coin he ascribes to Joan is

17:54

a forgery, although he makes a pretty strong

17:56

argument that that isn't the case. However,

18:00

is strained to breaking.

18:03

The. Just is that conspiracy against that

18:05

in the late sixteenth or early

18:08

seventeenth century that shirts out of

18:10

embarrassment or looking to quash Protestant

18:12

criticisms erased Pope Zone from her

18:14

right for wrongful place as Pope

18:16

and Eight Fifty Five and retroactively

18:18

polled the reign of the next

18:20

Pope Benedict the third back to

18:22

that dates exactly the way Clement

18:25

had her been removed from Vienna.

18:28

It's difficult to get your mitts

18:30

around just how implausible this is.

18:33

There's. No question that the medieval church was

18:35

powerful and plenty of reason to suspect that

18:37

it would have liked to put the kibosh

18:39

on the Joan Diary after Lutherans and a

18:41

goggins began waving it around as a criticism

18:44

and joke. But. If there had

18:46

been some substantive evidence of Jones Is use,

18:48

it would have been spread far beyond even

18:50

Rome's ability to destroy us, and by the

18:52

time the church might have tried, a lot

18:54

of that evidence would have been in the

18:57

hands of it's enemies, the Protestants. Not

18:59

to mention that a cover up of

19:01

this scale would have probably left evidence

19:03

of the cover up. Orders.

19:06

Would have had to have been written

19:08

and sent all around The Christian world

19:10

doesn't serve even hundreds of people Would

19:12

have had to have been tasked with

19:14

destroying books and letters and maybe even

19:17

artifacts without leaving any books or letters

19:19

or artifacts themselves. And.

19:21

When it comes to burying embarrassments,

19:23

the Catholic Church has a. Bad.

19:26

Track Record. Nice.

19:33

Another ten to twelve

19:35

was. Unknown robin murderers and rapists

19:37

who is thought to have committed incest

19:39

with both his sister and his knees,

19:41

sired multiple children, state title and plans

19:43

to a mistress and allegedly died at

19:45

the hands of a couple that husband

19:47

when he walked in on the pontiff

19:50

with his wife. Benedict

19:53

the night with Made Hope three

19:55

separate times between Ten Thirty Two

19:57

and Ten Forty Eight the first.

20:00

He was removed from office for

20:02

the crimes of adultery, murder, sodomy

20:04

bc our A and sponsoring orgies.

20:06

Then he came back in ten

20:09

forty five with an army and

20:11

expelled his replacement, Sylvester the third.

20:13

But this time he lasted less

20:15

than a year before John Grisham

20:17

bribes him to leave the office

20:19

and makes him the new Pope

20:21

Gregory the Six. He literally souls

20:24

the papacy, but every couple of

20:26

years he decided he wanted me

20:28

pope again. After all, And

20:30

returns to Rome where he contested the

20:32

papacy from Gregory. Sylvester came back to

20:34

and said he was still the true

20:36

pope himself. For a period of roughly

20:39

three years, there were three possible popes

20:41

duking it out until Holy Roman Emperor

20:43

Henry the Black stepped in march on

20:45

Rome and suppose that it exists is

20:47

esther before forcing Gregory to. Maybe

20:52

the. Most embarrassing moments in

20:54

Paypal history to place in

20:56

Eight Ninety Seven when Pope

20:58

Stephen the sixth had the

21:00

body of a previous Pontus

21:02

hope for Moses that up

21:04

after lying seven months death,

21:06

dressed investments and put on

21:08

public trial for having a

21:10

sent it to his station

21:12

illegally. The Kangaroo Court

21:15

sound the rotting corpse guilty and

21:17

threw it into the Tiber Weird

21:19

Zones statue supposedly ended up and

21:21

labeled for most of Papacy illegitimate.

21:24

Attempting to wipe it from the

21:26

record, that efforts failed spectacularly. Stephen

21:28

thought that the reading and persecuting

21:30

his dead predecessor would improve his

21:33

popularity and room for the tip

21:35

precisely the opposite for most of

21:37

his body washed up on the

21:39

base of the river and people

21:42

began saying it was performing miracles.

21:44

a mob some worms in support

21:46

of the cadaver rose up and

21:49

depose see them throwing him and

21:51

sale where he was soon strangled

21:53

to death then roman as was

21:55

elected pope see an old stephen

21:57

stay busy and it's had to

21:59

to remove his record, but he

22:02

was deposed too. Several

22:05

other succeeding popes tried their damnedest

22:07

to remove the mark of the

22:09

so-called cadaver synod, but while they

22:11

eventually cleared Formosus' name and got

22:13

his body properly buried at St.

22:16

Peter's, the story, obviously, was not

22:18

suppressible. Is

22:22

it conceivable that a pope being

22:24

executed after giving birth on a

22:27

street in public view just 40

22:29

years earlier was? I

22:34

don't think so. Not

22:36

to mention that we have a pretty good understanding of

22:39

what went down in 855 when Joan

22:42

was supposedly pope. Pope

22:48

Leo IV died on July 17,

22:51

and according to the official records, Benedict

22:53

III was consecrated on

22:55

September 29. That

22:58

leaves a gap of a little more

23:00

than two months, not two years, for

23:02

Joan. During that short

23:04

interregnum, the cardinal, librarian, and

23:06

historian Anastasius Bibliothecarius attempted to

23:08

insert himself onto the seat

23:10

of power, but he was

23:12

deposed after a scant few

23:14

weeks. The conspiracy theory alleges

23:17

that this did not actually happen this way,

23:19

that Benedict didn't come to be pope until

23:21

1857, and that the records of his 855

23:23

consecration must be

23:27

fake. But

23:31

we can be sure of Benedict's

23:33

consecration date because of a different

23:35

coin, announcing him as pope. It

23:38

must have been struck on or very soon

23:40

after September 29, 855, because the reverse side

23:45

displays the cameo of Holy Roman

23:47

Emperor Lothair I. What

23:51

the Minter couldn't have known, what Benedict

23:53

couldn't have known, what no one in

23:55

Rome could have known, was that Lothair

23:57

had died within literal hours of the

24:00

hours of Benedict's consecration,

24:02

on September 29th, 855, in Prüm, Germany. By

24:07

early October, news would have reached

24:09

the Vatican, and no one would

24:11

have coined any currency featuring his

24:13

visage. There is just

24:15

no way around it. Benedict

24:18

had to be made pope at exactly

24:20

the time the official records say. Things

24:24

look even gloomier for Pope Joan when you

24:26

step back and do the math. She

24:28

supposedly was pope in 855. She

24:31

wasn't, but let's for the sake of

24:33

argument pretend she was. That leaves a gap

24:36

of more than 400 years

24:38

between her papacy and

24:41

the main record of it, Martin of

24:43

Apava's chronicon. That

24:45

is a big red flag, huh? But

24:52

while the chronicon was certainly the most

24:54

influential account of Joan, it

24:56

turns out it was not the earliest. In

24:59

fact, there are a healthy

25:01

handful of earlier documents suggesting

25:03

her rule. Granted, most

25:06

of them are certainly interpolations made later,

25:08

and almost all of them appear to

25:10

have been added on by people who

25:13

read and believed the chronicon, who

25:15

then saw other church documents that

25:17

didn't mention Joan and thought they'd

25:19

correct the mistake. The text

25:21

of most of these accounts are clearly derivative

25:23

of the version in the chronicon. One

25:26

particularly curious example is a

25:28

copy of the Lieber Pontificalis,

25:30

which relates the chronicon's version

25:33

verbatim. The Book

25:35

of Popes was composed, incredibly,

25:37

by Anastasius Pivilpecarius, the cardinal

25:40

and librarian. But only

25:42

one copy, a later copy, of the

25:44

Lieber includes the story, written in different

25:46

handwriting than the rest of it. And

25:49

the facts of Anastasius's life directly

25:51

contradict it, seeing as he was

25:53

the one who tried to usurp

25:55

the papacy before Benedict was installed.

26:00

However, there are

26:02

two sources that actually,

26:05

legitimately predate Martins.

26:08

The first is from the

26:10

Chronica universalis Metensis by the obscure

26:12

French Dominican Jean de Maillie.

26:15

De Maillie's chronica is only a couple

26:17

of decades older than Martins' chronicon, but

26:19

that still makes it the oldest authentic

26:21

reference to the woman pope. The

26:24

entry reads, Querie. Concerning

26:26

a certain pope, or rather female pope,

26:28

who was not set down in the

26:31

list of popes or bishops of Rome

26:33

because she was a woman who disguised

26:35

herself as a man and became by

26:37

her character and talents a curial secretary,

26:39

then a cardinal, and finally pope. One

26:42

day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth

26:44

to a child. While mounting a horse? Anyway,

26:49

immediately, by Roman justice, she was

26:51

bound by defeat to a horse's

26:53

tail and dragged and stoned by

26:55

the people for half a league.

26:58

And where she died, there

27:00

she was buried, and at

27:02

that place is written, Petra

27:04

Potter Potram Papis Prodito Partum.

27:06

O Peter, father of fathers, betray the

27:09

childbearing of the woman pope. At

27:11

the same time, the four-day fast

27:13

called the fast of the female

27:16

pope was first established. What's

27:20

most intriguing about

27:22

this paragraph isn't that it's 40

27:25

years older than Martin's, it's that

27:27

it's very different from

27:29

Martin's. It mentions the

27:31

memorial plaque, which Martin does not,

27:33

but ignores the shunned street, which

27:35

Martin notes. It describes the

27:38

horrible fate of Joan, which Martin seems

27:40

to know at best little about, and

27:42

it says that there was a fast established,

27:44

which isn't mentioned anywhere else. At

27:47

first, you might think that

27:49

these versions being so different is a

27:51

point against the legitimacy of the story,

27:54

but really it is the opposite, because

27:56

It's quite clear that the authors of The Chronic

27:58

Con and The Chronic Cub. Did not

28:01

know about one another. Margins.

28:03

Where Martin's copyist did not

28:05

invent the story, It.

28:07

Must have come from somewhere else. Demise

28:11

version was itself picked up and

28:13

regurgitated by an acquaintance of his,

28:16

the much more influential French dominican,

28:18

Stephen of Bourbon. And. Both

28:20

of their accounts do something else

28:22

to pull Joan out of the

28:24

fires of improbability. They suggest a

28:26

different state than Martin. De. Maya

28:29

place his paragraph in the section

28:31

of the chronic Us for the

28:33

year Ten Ninety Nine, and Stephen

28:35

explicitly describes it as happening in

28:37

Eleven Hundred. Eight

28:39

Fifty Five is a no go for

28:42

sure. But. Eleven Hundred is

28:44

a lot better. For

28:46

one, it substantially shrinks the gap between

28:48

the suppose it event and the first

28:51

time it's talked about. And while the

28:53

events and person's surrounding the Vatican leave

28:55

little room for Pope Down in Eight

28:57

fifty five. Eleven hundred

29:00

ms a bit more complicated.

29:07

The. Period Around the turn of the

29:09

Twelfth century was a tumultuous times, even

29:12

by European standards. There were a number

29:14

of feuding factions within the church, not

29:16

to mention the looming hand of Holy

29:18

Roman Emperor, Henry the Fourth, who elected

29:20

his own anti Pope, Clement the Third.

29:23

In Tennessee, fourth Henry seized Rome

29:25

and installed Clement officially their, while

29:27

the real Pope officially at least

29:30

Gregory the Seventh, had to flee

29:32

to a distant fortress which and

29:34

reed army quickly lay siege to.

29:36

For. The next fourteen years, a series

29:39

of Pope's reined in absentia. Well,

29:41

Henry's Clements sat in Rome. In

29:43

Ten Ninety Seven, Pope Urban the

29:45

second, was able to reestablish himself

29:47

in Rome, but when he died

29:49

less than two years later, the

29:51

whole thing went to plot. Of

29:54

Sicily again the next pope with

29:56

Haskell the seconds, and he was

29:58

consecrated quite quickly. What the

30:00

anti Pope Clement with still out

30:03

there contesting him through eleven hundred

30:05

And when he died, Emperor Henry

30:07

installed another anti pope Theodore. It's.

30:11

Pascal. Soon captured Theodore Iq and

30:13

excise him, at which point Henry's

30:16

anti cardinals elected another anti Pope

30:18

to contest passcode. Albert Albert was

30:20

captured and convicted even quicker than

30:22

Theodore Iq, at which point you

30:24

guessed it, another anti pope was

30:26

named Sylvester the Fourth, who managed

30:28

sitting on to his claim for

30:30

six years until Henry son and

30:33

Read the Fifth forced him to

30:35

abdicate so that Pascoe would officially

30:37

bless him as Emperor. All

30:39

in all, that makes six potential

30:41

Pope's over the span of jones

30:43

other time slot. You know, the

30:45

confusion. It may seem more likely

30:47

that another female claimants could have

30:50

been overlooked, or that one of

30:52

the anti Pope's about whom little

30:54

is known could have secretly been

30:56

a woman. But. In

30:58

a much more immediate sense, this

31:00

seems even less plausible the Martin's

31:03

timeline. Since. The Papacy was

31:05

so bitterly contested, any rumors of

31:07

cross dressing probably would have been

31:10

pressed very firmly by jones enemies

31:12

who would necessarily have possessed a

31:14

tall bully pulpit from which to

31:17

lob accusations. Any way

31:19

you cut it or put it, or press

31:21

it's There's just no way to fit down

31:23

into the record and no way to account

31:25

for the many contradictions and discrepancies in her

31:27

story. Yes, there are a couple

31:29

of enticing breadcrumbs like the street in

31:31

the statue, which can't be entirely discounted,

31:34

but they are buried in a sea

31:36

of current are facts and into raga

31:38

tories that are just plain insuperable. They.

31:41

Cannot be super to. I defy you

31:43

to super them. Which.

31:46

I know. say. Is. Too bad.

31:49

Because. I'd really like it if she were

31:51

real. And. at least for

31:53

the last fifty years most all of

31:55

the people arguing that she was are

31:58

clearly motivated by the same desire But

32:01

it ain't so. That's

32:03

not the end of our investigation, however. We

32:06

do still have one stray hair to

32:08

contend with. Sure,

32:11

Martin's account of Joan can't be right, and

32:14

neither can't amize. But the

32:16

existence of those two independent

32:18

versions indicates that neither of

32:20

them made it up. Joan

32:23

might not have been real, but

32:25

her story definitely was.

32:27

So where did it come

32:30

from? We'll try to find out.

32:58

In approximately 1260 AD, a

33:00

woman going by the name

33:02

of Guglielma entered Milan, carting

33:04

her young son in tow.

33:07

Nothing of her life prior to

33:09

this moment is known, although there's

33:11

decent reason to believe she might

33:13

have been an estranged Bohemian princess.

33:16

At any rate, in Milan, she

33:18

began living an ascetic life of

33:20

poverty, service, and religious study. This

33:23

was not a unique career arc,

33:25

especially for widows of the time,

33:27

which Guglielma may have been. But

33:30

in her case, she began

33:32

attracting adherents, and soon enough,

33:35

she had something of an underground church

33:37

going on. The Guglielmites elected

33:39

their own bishops and cardinals and

33:45

such, just like the real Catholic Church

33:47

did. Except that all

33:50

of their elections were for women.

33:54

And did they elect a female pope? I

33:57

hear you asking. Friends, You know

33:59

they did. Her name was

34:01

my freighter a pure Ivano and

34:03

see was Pope S of the

34:06

Guglielmo mites until the imposition. Predictably

34:08

it's a burned her at the

34:10

state. So that's

34:12

cool. The know, right? There was

34:15

an all female sat out shirts,

34:17

a mirror image of the Catholic

34:19

one in Milan of the thirteenth

34:21

century. Spill that one at your

34:23

next dinner parties, and while you're

34:25

at it, you might bring up

34:27

that this was the exact same

34:29

time during which. Martin Level part

34:31

of Us Amazon's my were writing

34:33

the first known accounts of the

34:35

female Pope who came to be

34:37

known as Joan. To

34:40

incidence. Maybe

34:42

I seem nobody brought up the connects

34:45

until the twentieth century from what I

34:47

can tell about the little funky, but

34:49

like I said, most of the scholarship

34:51

about Pope John is crap and that's

34:53

especially true the further back you go.

35:00

Most of the people arguing about

35:02

Pope Zone in the sixteen hundreds

35:04

were really arguing about whether the

35:06

true Christian spirit lived in Catholicism

35:09

or Protestantism and so most of

35:11

their arguments don't end up being

35:13

very good, it actually doing the

35:16

business of explaining pope tone. One

35:19

exception to this rule is

35:21

the Vatican Library and Historian

35:23

or either and Cardinal Caesar

35:25

Brunious. See posited that the

35:27

myth of Pope Jones might have had

35:29

it's roots in the life of Pope

35:32

John the Ace, whom he figured might

35:34

have been insulted as a woman because

35:36

of his softness in dealing with thirty

35:39

as the first the Patriarch of Constantinople

35:41

which presage to the great schism. That.

35:44

Intriguing as this sounds. Speroni as pulls directly

35:46

out of his ass and then he reads

35:48

on the eighth was a pretty ruthless dude.

35:51

As was done the seventh, who some

35:53

other Catholic apologists after brownies thought might

35:55

have spawned the John Legend in the

35:57

same manner. The

36:00

Bean-Bearing Gould, the writer of Onward Christian

36:02

Soldiers, not to mention a very good

36:04

book on werewolves which came in handy

36:06

a couple months back, explained away Pope

36:08

Joan in no uncertain terms in his

36:10

curious myths of the Middle Ages. He

36:13

said he had, quote, little

36:15

doubt that Joan was a

36:17

response to all of the chaos around

36:19

Pascal and his many rival antipopes, and

36:21

that she was concocted as an allusion

36:24

to the horror of Babylon in the

36:26

Book of Revelation, a sign that Rome

36:28

was falling and the end times were

36:30

upon mankind. It's not

36:32

a bad little theory, really, and it's

36:34

clear that a bunch of medieval writers

36:36

did see Joan in this role, including

36:39

Petrarch, who described a series of plagues

36:41

that he thought followed her death. But

36:43

how Baron Gould became so sure

36:45

of this theory, which he is

36:47

the first to explicitly suggest in

36:50

the nineteenth century, is beyond me.

36:54

The most widely considered explanation, which several

36:56

sources cite as if it's a matter

36:58

of fact, goes back to the Pornocracy.

37:01

No way. No way

37:04

that's right. Surely that's supposed to be

37:06

an M, right? No, there it is. Pornocracy.

37:14

Huh. The Pornocracy, otherwise known as

37:16

the Saculum Obscurum, Dark Age, or

37:18

the Rule of the Harlots, was

37:20

a seventy year long stretch that

37:22

began, of all times, with the

37:25

death of Pope Formosus, his posthumous

37:27

trial at the hands of Pope

37:29

Stephen, Stephen's arrest and strangulation, all

37:31

that good stuff. Well,

37:38

in the midst of all

37:40

of that papal chaos, one

37:42

aristocratic Roman family, the Theophylacti,

37:45

decided to make lemons out of lemonade and

37:47

set up a system by which they would

37:49

control all future

37:51

Popes. What's more,

37:54

it worked for

37:56

a while. The Theophylacti

37:58

managed to install Sheeps,

38:00

poops, and one antipope, who were

38:03

together known as the Tusculon Popes,

38:05

creating a system of papal nobility

38:07

where the aristocrats and theocrats were

38:10

one and the same. The

38:13

whole of the pornography had begun with

38:15

the Roman senator Theophilact and his wife,

38:18

Theodora. On the side,

38:20

Theodora was hooking up with the Bishop

38:22

of Ravenna, who, in the midst of

38:25

their affair, became Pope John X. So

38:28

there was a bit of power-sharing going on, along with

38:30

the wife swapping already. Most

38:32

contemporaries agreed that Theodora was pretty

38:34

much entirely in charge, not just

38:36

of her husband and the Pope,

38:39

but of Rome itself. Lutprand

38:42

of Cremona called her a

38:44

shameless whore who exercised power

38:46

over Rome in the most

38:48

manly fashion. Which

38:50

yes, problematic. Theodora

38:53

really was a piece of work, though. But

38:55

she was nothing compared to her

38:58

daughter, Maratia, and it's when Theodora

39:00

died that the pornography really escalated.

39:03

Maratia organized a coup

39:05

and imprisoned Pope John,

39:08

and then probably murdered him.

39:10

So a new pope was elected, Leo

39:13

VI, but Maratia didn't like the cut

39:15

of his jib either, so she probably

39:17

murdered him. Then she probably

39:19

murdered the next guy. But the

39:21

next pope, John XI,

39:23

she approved of, because he

39:25

was her 15-year-old son. His

39:29

dad was probably one of the other popes, by the

39:31

way. A

39:34

few years later, Maratia's other son,

39:36

Alberic, fomented an uprising in the

39:38

middle of her third wedding ceremony

39:40

and imprisoned his mom. Alberic

39:43

then became ruler of Rome and ruler

39:45

of his brother, the Pope, until later

39:47

on when he elevated his bastard son,

39:50

Octavian, to the role, and to the

39:52

Pope John XII, the

39:54

robbing, murdering, incestuous rapist.

39:58

Most of the Popes to come through the 1040s. These

40:00

were either directly descended from Theodore Us

40:02

or else under the control of her

40:04

family's Until finally her great great grandson

40:07

Pope Benedict the ninth was thrown out

40:09

for beast. The alien birds came back

40:11

sold, the office came back against and

40:14

got his ass kicked by Emperor Henry

40:16

who was finally able to more or

40:18

less bring but the awful act I

40:21

into line and end the pornography. Anyways,

40:24

the thought is that the

40:26

female pope's originally referred to

40:29

Theodora or Marathi Us who

40:31

were after all the real

40:33

power behind several posts and

40:35

much loaded for it. It.

40:38

Makes a certain kind of sense, but

40:40

it's not at all clear how you

40:42

get some razzi of the craven ambitious

40:44

backstabbing to Joan the within seeds and

40:46

actual Pope who gave birth in the

40:48

road. And. There are no

40:50

intermediary steps between the two in

40:53

the remaining record. Like.

40:55

I say there's a mountain of

40:57

bad scholarship about Pope Zone. But.

41:00

There's plenty of good stuff to. A

41:04

Lane boroughs two thousand and one book.

41:07

The myth of Poke Town is great.

41:09

Burrow doesn't have a single theory for

41:11

jones origin which is probably to his

41:13

credit, but thinks the germ of the

41:15

idea of might have been devised by

41:17

thirteenth century Franciscan months who are looking

41:20

for a bad pope because they're order

41:22

was being as they saw it at

41:24

least persecuted. Cregg.

41:26

Rested sees the afterlife of Pope

41:28

John is great to. He doesn't

41:30

come down on one explanation or

41:32

another hedging his bets which is

41:34

probably to his credit. But the

41:37

genesis of Zone could have been

41:39

there a feminist see of John

41:41

the Ace or the pornography It's

41:43

or else the explanation favored by

41:45

Rosemary It's and Darryl Pardo. The.

41:47

Part as a married couple mostly known

41:50

for editing early fantasy same scenes wrote

41:52

what is certainly the best book I

41:54

have found on the subject and what

41:56

I'm willing to bet is the best

41:58

book on the subject. Period: The

42:00

female Pope The Mystery of

42:03

Pope Joan. I really cannot

42:05

stress enough what a delight their book

42:07

is to read. It's clever, is compelling,

42:09

it's thorough, and it's level headed. Mike.

42:11

Meets the part as wanted Pope

42:13

Joan to be real and like

42:15

me. They nevertheless begrudgingly concluded she

42:17

was moved. Given that, they

42:20

also positive a few ways the

42:22

legend might have begun, which are

42:24

the best possibilities I've sound. For.

42:27

One mother wasn't a female Pope, There

42:29

were a couple of known female church

42:31

officials who cross dress their way through

42:34

their careers not to mention naturally and

42:36

impossible to calculate number of women who

42:38

might have succeeded in never been sound

42:41

out. One. Who was

42:43

found out with a woman named

42:45

Silda Guns but for many years

42:47

called Josias. Her.

42:52

Mother died sometime in the mid twelfth

42:55

centuries, and her father then took her

42:57

on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

42:59

But it's to ensure her safety. He

43:01

dressed her up as a boy and

43:03

called her justice. On the way back,

43:05

he died and Hilda Guns was robbed

43:08

and left on the streets. Eventually,

43:10

after being arrested and making it through

43:12

the ordeal of hot iron it's a

43:15

long story. she ended up at Some

43:17

Now Abby in Arden Wall Germany as

43:19

a novice. See never revealed

43:21

her true identity, although on several

43:23

occasions she did arouse suspicion from

43:25

her fellow months. On one occasion,

43:27

See aroused something else to Caesar

43:30

of Heister. Box quotes one of

43:32

the monks and saying this brother

43:34

of ours is either a woman

43:36

or a devil because I have

43:38

never been able to look at

43:41

him without temptation. Her sex was

43:43

only revealed after her death and

43:45

Eleven eighty Eight. Hilda.

43:49

Gun Story is not very much

43:51

like Jones at All. But. It

43:54

was a very popular and influential

43:56

story and helped seed a large

43:58

number of similar though like. The

44:00

legendary ones throughout church history. It.

44:03

Could be the jones was like

44:05

those. Almost. Certainly all

44:07

of those who wrote about her

44:09

were aware of Hildebrandt. I

44:13

don't know how to choose a favorite explanation

44:15

among a lot, so I'll end with the

44:17

part us favorite. After the

44:20

rule of Harlots and did the

44:22

church based in even greater crisis

44:24

the Great Schism when the Orthodox

44:26

church centered in Constantinople splintered off

44:28

from the Catholic Church in Rome.

44:31

Intensity. For the separation

44:33

was complete and Pope Leo

44:35

the Nights wrote a very

44:37

passive aggressive mrs to his

44:39

Orthodox counterparts, Patriarch Michael Cera

44:41

Larry as it read in

44:43

parts. God

44:48

forbid that we wish to believe

44:50

what public opinion does not hesitate

44:52

to claim has happened to the

44:54

Church of Constantinople. namely that in

44:56

promoting unix indiscriminately against the first

44:59

law of the Council of my

45:01

Cs, it once raised a woman

45:03

onto the seat of it's pontiff.

45:05

We regard this crimes as so

45:07

abominable and horrible that although outrage

45:10

and horror of it and brotherly

45:12

good will do not allow us

45:14

to believe it. Nevertheless, reflecting upon

45:16

your carelessness towards. The Judgment of

45:18

Holy Law We consider that it

45:20

could have happened because even know

45:22

you indifferently and repeatedly promote Unix

45:25

and those who are weak in

45:27

some part of their bodies not

45:29

only into clerical office but also

45:31

to the position of Pontus. The.

45:34

Part of track the rumor of

45:36

a female patriarch in Constantinople back

45:38

to the tenth century, and most

45:40

of the account place this hypothetical

45:42

ruler during the rule of Charlemagne.

45:45

Which. In all likelihood means

45:47

that we're talking about the Patriarchs

45:50

Nick. It is the first of

45:52

Constantinople who was. Murdered

45:55

in and that he

45:57

was a Unix. No

46:01

was negative the first.

46:03

The real pope. Zone.

46:06

I know, know. It's. Not a super

46:09

clean explanation, but the telephone game that

46:11

gets us from Nikitas to Jones is

46:13

considerably more intelligible than the one which

46:15

starts and Eight, Fifty Five, or Ten

46:17

Ninety Nine, or with John The Seventh

46:19

or John The Gates. Maybe.

46:23

The true best explanation is that

46:25

Pope Jones started out as a

46:27

joke. Alerts shared by some

46:30

French Dominican friars that was to

46:32

drive for outsiders to recognize as

46:34

humor and which leaked out by

46:37

accident snowballing into the unstoppable legends

46:39

that barreled through Medieval Europe and

46:41

continues it's directed is very day

46:44

where it no longer has much

46:46

speed but continues to rock back

46:48

and forth in the annals of

46:51

pop history. Guess.

46:53

Today. You. Could say that

46:56

the ball dangles. Nicely. Whole

47:03

lot more. He. I

47:08

know that much of an end, but there isn't much

47:10

of it as. Thou hast du.

47:16

Music. For today's episode provided by

47:18

Epidemic Sound and Blue.sessions You want to

47:20

support the making of this. So usually

47:22

I phrased as questions when I know

47:25

the answer. So you're going to head

47:27

over to Pay Three on.com/the Constant and

47:29

sign up to get early and ad

47:32

free access to new episodes as well

47:34

as monthly bonus content. or else you're

47:36

going to tell sensationalism then check that

47:39

didn't make sure they didn't really have

47:41

to learn about it jeopardize your relationship.

47:43

so understand. Until next, I'm from Chicago,

47:46

Illinois. Home to the

47:48

one true St. Joan Sucess.

47:51

visit them the concept This

48:01

is The Constant, a history of getting

48:03

things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Ugh. I

48:07

touched it with Mike.