A Female Pope?

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

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Information on a female ever helming the papacy is shrouded in mystery. All viable signs point to a woman named Joan or Pope Joan, who lived around A.D. 800. Reports vary on an exact time period.

The story of Pope Joan reads like an ancient Mulan, the tale of a woman who disguises herself as a man to overcome gender rules. Hundreds of accounts of Pope Joan’s existence abound but the Catholic Church dismisses the tale. While many dismiss Pope Joan as legend, the novelist Donna Cross spent seven years researching the era when Joan is noted to have lived and says there is evidence of her existence - over 500 accounts of the female pope exist, according to Cross.

Pope Looks Like a Lady

Joan began life as Joanna in the town of Mainz, Germany, where English missionaries were extolling the lessons of Christianity. It is said Joanna possessed both great beauty and intelligence but relied heavily on her beauty. At age 12, she fell in love with a monk and followed him to his monastery, secreting her identity as she masqueraded as the boy, John Anglicus. Eventually, the two were discovered and Joanna’s gender revealed, they both fled.

On a journey to the Holy Land, on a stop in Athens, Greece, the couple were separated, and Joanna made her way to Rome. Rome was not then as the Vatican is today. Then, Popes killed one another. Rome was the epicenter of Catholicism, operated by corrupt, cross-dressing officials. It was a time of rampant ambitions and getting your foot in the papal door at all costs. That was the genius of Joan's design. Joan - still referring to herself as John Anglicus - became a respected teacher and scholar, she worked as a secretary to a curia and a cardinal and then became a contender for Pope in A.D. 855 when Pope Leo IV died.

Though she was smart and imminently on her way to becoming head of the Catholic Church, did not change the precocious, sexual woman under all her robes. It is said that Pope Joan or Pope John VIII made her personal valet her lover and in 857, as she departed from a crowd at St. Peter’s Basilica, had collapsed between the Colosseum and the Church of St. Clement. When inspected, it was discovered that the Pope had given birth. Some accounts say her and the newborn were dragged away and stoned, others that she was sent to a convent and that the baby boy grew up to become a bishop.

The Evidence in Art

The facts of Pope Joan are scattered but accounts of her existence remain including in art and literature. Books, such as History of Emperors and Popes by the monk, Martin Polonus, mention a young woman from Mainz who was intelligent.

A cathedral in Siena  has a gallery depicting 170 popes and in the 17th century, Cardinal Baronuis, the Vatican librarian, said  one of the faces was that of Joan's.

Medieval manuscripts recount her surprise pregnancy although in all likelihood, we will never know for certain if Pope Joan was a fact or fiction.