Pope Joan: Was There Really a Female Pope?

You all can relate that you have never seen a female pope, or females in general in positions of power inside the Church hierarchy. Or did a woman really rule the medieval Church? Why am I saying this? Because for hundreds of years, people all over Europe believed that the Catholic Church had once been ruled by a woman. According to the legend, she disguised herself as a man and fooled all the men that worked for the Church. She climbed all the way to the throne of Saint Peter, and presumably was only found out when she gave birth in the middle of a religious procession in Rome. We are talking about Pope Joan, and her statue even stood among the popes in a famous Italian cathedral. What do you think, was there really a female pope? Or is this just a fake story? Not just a normal fake story, but maybe the most successful fake story of the Middle Ages? Let me show you the truth behind it.

The story of Pope Joan

According to the 13th-century chronicle by Martin of Opava (also called Martin of Troppau), who was a Dominican friar, the future popess was a girl from Mainz. This girl was taken to Athens dressed as a man and was educated. After some time she came to Rome, where her extreme brilliance won her one job after another, until she was finally elected pope after the death of Leo IV in the year 855. This is the best-known version of her existence, and it tells how she became the pope. The friar Martin even gives us the exact length of her pontificate: two years, seven months and four days. This exact fact sounds exactly like something that was verified with proof before it was written.

After this came exactly the story that shocked the Church, presumably. During a procession between the Colosseum and the church of St Clement, apparently the pope suddenly went into labour and gave birth in the street. According to Martin, she died there and was buried on the spot. He even wrote that later all the popes avoided the street whenever they rode through Rome.

Where the legend first appeared

People of the Middle Ages were too busy ploughing the fields, drinking just a bit of ale, not all day, as the myths said (they really drank water most of the time), to discuss whether a female pope existed. As a matter of fact, nobody mentions a female pope for roughly four hundred years after she was supposed to have lived. According to a chronicle by a Dominican named Jean de Mailly, the earliest known version of her life appears in the mid-1200s. His popess has no name and lives “about the year 1100”, not in the 9th century. Another Dominican preacher, Stephen of Bourbon, who died in 1261, repeated the tale in a book of sermon stories.

It was Martin’s chronicle that made Joan famous. The same thing happens with all trending news in modern days; the same thing happened with the news in the Middle Ages. The news was copied again and again across Europe, and with every copy the story looked a little more like history and a little less like gossip.

Why historians say it never happened

The thing is that the dates simply don’t match. Leo IV died on 17 July 855, and after that, almost immediately, Benedict III was chosen to succeed him as the next pope. There were even coins that were struck in Benedict’s name. These coins also carry the name of the Frankish emperor Lothar I, who died on 28 September 855. This myth already started to shake, because Benedict was clearly already pope, and there was no gap of two and a half years for anyone to fill the place, let alone for a woman to fool all the men, disguise herself and pretend to be a pope.

Another clue that rejects the idea of a female pope is that no writer from the 9th century says a word about it. A pope giving birth in the streets of Rome would have been the scandal of the age, and a lot of plays about it would have been performed in every street. The fact that the story only surfaces centuries later, in the hands of preachers who loved a good moral tale, is exactly what you would expect from a legend.

How Europe came to believe it

Only by the late Middle Ages was the popess treated as a real historical figure. Let me show you a few examples to show you how far the story spread:

• Around 1362, Giovanni Boccaccio included “Joan, an Englishwoman and pope” in his book about famous women.
• Around 1400, a bust of Joan was placed among the busts of the popes in Siena Cathedral.
• In 1415, at the Council of Constance, the Czech reformer Jan Hus used Joan as an example of how the Church could go wrong, and nobody in the room denied that she had existed.
• In the mid-1400s, a card showing a female pope appeared in a tarot deck made for the Visconti-Sforza family of Milan.

Exactly like Robin Hood or King Arthur, all good stories tend to spread and be repeated. None of this proves the story was true. It only shows how a good tale, repeated by respectable people, can turn into “fact”, and from that moment anyone will think that it existed. This is how fake news and propaganda work in modern times!

The chair with a hole in it

One of the strangest parts of the legend concerns a marble chair with an opening in the seat, used at papal ceremonies at the Lateran. After Joan, the story went, every new pope had to sit on it so that a cleric could check from below that he really was a man. The examiner was even said to announce the result in Latin.

The chair was real, but the test was not. The old Catholic Encyclopedia explains it as an ancient seat, probably a Roman bath chair, on which the new pope simply sat during the ceremony. Popular imagination did the rest. The World History Encyclopedia sums the tale up nicely: it is “too good to check”.

So how did the legend begin?

We don’t have just a single answer that everybody considers the ultimate truth. Historians have pointed to several possible causes throughout history. In the 10th century, the papacy was dominated by a powerful Roman family, in which some of its women had enormous influence over who would be the next pope. Later writers may have confused it, or it was intentional, because they turned the memory into a woman who was literally the pope. Disinformation? Propaganda? Maybe, who knows. Also, in the 17th century, the scholar David Blondel suggested that the tale began as a satire on Pope John XI, whose mother was one of the most powerful women.

Rome itself may have added the details. An ancient statue showing a figure with a child stood near the Colosseum, and a worn Latin inscription nearby could be read in creative ways. Put a mysterious statue, an odd inscription and a procession route together, and a medieval storyteller had everything he needed.

How the legend was finally debunked

Ironically, the story became a weapon in the religious wars of the 16th century. Protestant writers loved Joan, because a female pope seemed to prove that the papacy could not be trusted. Catholic writers fought back, and in 1587 Florimond de Raemond argued that the story was false. In 1601, the Joan bust in Siena was changed into a bust of Pope Zachary.

The decisive blow came from the other side. In 1647, the French Protestant clergyman David Blondel published a study showing that the popess had never existed. A Protestant scholar demolishing a story that was so useful to Protestants convinced many readers. More than a century later, the historian Edward Gibbon wrote that Joan had been “annihilated” by two learned Protestants, Blondel and Pierre Bayle.

Why I wanted Joan to be real

I have to admit that part of me was hoping the story would turn out to be true. This is like a movie subject, an invention. A story about a woman clever enough to fool the whole Church and climb to the very top would be one of the best stories in history. But unfortunately for me, there was simply no strong evidence to sustain this, and I actually had to debunk the myth. But who knows, maybe there is a bit of truth in it, or at least someone tried but failed.

Pope Joan today

The legend never really died, and Donna Woolfolk Cross’s 1996 novel Pope Joan became a bestseller, and a German film based loosely on it was released in 2009. This story was so good, in my opinion, that it stands right next to the Greek myths, in which we saw heroes so clever that they did unimaginable things. If you enjoy puzzles like this one, read whether King Arthur was real and whether Robin Hood was real.

The real history of the papacy is dramatic enough without her. Within a few centuries of the supposed popess, Europe would see popes living in Avignon and then two or even three rival popes fighting over the job in the Western Schism. You can read how the whole system worked in our guide to the medieval Church, and why Jan Hus ended up at Constance in the first place in our article on indulgences. And if you want more stories that everybody believed and nobody checked, our collection of medieval myths is the place to start.

Frequently asked questions

Was Pope Joan real?

No. Historians agree that she is a legend. No source from her supposed lifetime mentions her, and the list of popes in the 850s leaves no room for her.

When was Pope Joan supposed to have been pope?

The most popular version, by Martin of Opava, places her right after Leo IV, who died in 855, and gives her a reign of two years, seven months and four days. The earliest version puts her around the year 1100 instead.

What happened to Joan in the legend?

She gave birth during a procession between the Colosseum and the church of St Clement in Rome, and her secret was revealed. Accounts of her fate vary: in some she died on the spot, in others she was stoned or removed from office.

Has there ever been a female pope?

No. All the popes in the official list of the Catholic Church have been men, and Joan’s story is the only well-known claim of a woman holding the office.

Sources

• C. M. Aherne, “Joan, Popess, Fable of”, New Catholic Encyclopedia (via Encyclopedia.com)
• Johann Peter Kirsch, “Popess Joan”, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910)
• Peter Kauffner, “Pope Joan”, World History Encyclopedia (2022)