in Rome.
There is solid evidence, too. Our most reliable sources record that Leo IV died on July 17, 855, and that Benedict III was consecrated on September 29. We also know that the Emperor Lothair I died in the Ardennes within hours of Benedict’s consecration. Naturally, however, the news took some time to reach Rome, during which denarii were minted there with the words BENEDICT PAPA on one side and HLOTHARIUS IMP PIUS on the reverse. It follows that Benedict could not have succeeded any later than the records state and that there would simply have been no room for Joan.
But perhaps the best argument of all is the sheer improbability of a female pope, a long deception, a hidden pregnancy, a sudden birth in public. Female popes are unlikely enough in the first place, and in real life it is rare indeed for a woman to give birth in the street. Are these events not stretching our credulity just a little too far? Of course they are, yet there is another improbability, almost as great as these, which we are obliged to accept: that this mildly grotesque story was almost universally accepted within the Catholic Church for several centuries, and that poor incautious Joan still has her champions today. 4
1. Both these popes existed in their own right. As it was generally agreed that Joan was to be ignored, the numeration was not affected; but the reputation of the admirable John VIII, a ruthless warrior pope who fortified Rome against the Saracens, founded the papal navy, and came to a violent end, beaten to death after an attempt to poison him failed, regrettably suffered: a book was published in 1530 entitled Puerperium Johannis Papae VIII. He deserved better.
2. The Milanese historian Bernardino Coreo certainly thought so. At the close of his eyewitness account of Alexander’s coronation in 1492 he writes, “Finally, when the usual solemnities of the sancta sanctorum ended and the touching of testicles was done, I returned to the palace.”
3. Is it still there? “When we enquired after the one in the Louvre we were told by a representative that the Museum ‘ ne conserve pas de trône pontifical .’ ” (Stanford, The She-Pope , p. 50).
4. In the eighteenth century Pope Joan was a popular card game, and as recently as 1972 the legend was the subject of a film starring Liv Ullmann with Trevor Howard and Olivia de Havilland.
CHAPTER VII
Nicholas I and the Pornocracy
(855–964)
P ope Joan was a myth; Pope Benedict III—who, had Joan existed, would have succeeded her—was a nonentity. After Benedict there came a joke, and after that a giant.
The joke was the bid for the Papacy by Anastasius. He was born in about 815 into a distinguished Roman priestly family; his uncle was the highly influential Arsenius, Bishop of Orte. A man of outstanding abilities and culture, Anastasius mastered Greek at an early age and was created cardinal priest by Leo IV in 847 or 848, but almost immediately he quarreled with his benefactor and fled to Aquileia. Leo, who was well aware of his ambitions and saw him as a potential rival, repeatedly summoned him back to Rome; when Anastasius refused, he was successively excommunicated, anathematized, and deposed. On Leo’s death in 855, his successor was duly elected as Benedict III, but Bishop Arsenius, determined that his nephew should be next on the papal throne, seized the Lateran by force, taking Benedict prisoner.
For three days confusion reigned; but it soon became clear that Anastasius lacked any degree of popular support. How, moreover, could any man under sentence of excommunication be made pope? The Bishops of Ostia and Albano, two of the three by whom the pope was traditionally consecrated, could not be induced—even by threats of torture—to perform the ceremony. Benedict was released from his imprisonment and was finally consecrated, Anastasius stripped of his papal insignia and expelled from the Lateran, but Benedict treated him with more leniency than he deserved,
There is solid evidence, too. Our most reliable sources record that Leo IV died on July 17, 855, and that Benedict III was consecrated on September 29. We also know that the Emperor Lothair I died in the Ardennes within hours of Benedict’s consecration. Naturally, however, the news took some time to reach Rome, during which denarii were minted there with the words BENEDICT PAPA on one side and HLOTHARIUS IMP PIUS on the reverse. It follows that Benedict could not have succeeded any later than the records state and that there would simply have been no room for Joan.
But perhaps the best argument of all is the sheer improbability of a female pope, a long deception, a hidden pregnancy, a sudden birth in public. Female popes are unlikely enough in the first place, and in real life it is rare indeed for a woman to give birth in the street. Are these events not stretching our credulity just a little too far? Of course they are, yet there is another improbability, almost as great as these, which we are obliged to accept: that this mildly grotesque story was almost universally accepted within the Catholic Church for several centuries, and that poor incautious Joan still has her champions today. 4
1. Both these popes existed in their own right. As it was generally agreed that Joan was to be ignored, the numeration was not affected; but the reputation of the admirable John VIII, a ruthless warrior pope who fortified Rome against the Saracens, founded the papal navy, and came to a violent end, beaten to death after an attempt to poison him failed, regrettably suffered: a book was published in 1530 entitled Puerperium Johannis Papae VIII. He deserved better.
2. The Milanese historian Bernardino Coreo certainly thought so. At the close of his eyewitness account of Alexander’s coronation in 1492 he writes, “Finally, when the usual solemnities of the sancta sanctorum ended and the touching of testicles was done, I returned to the palace.”
3. Is it still there? “When we enquired after the one in the Louvre we were told by a representative that the Museum ‘ ne conserve pas de trône pontifical .’ ” (Stanford, The She-Pope , p. 50).
4. In the eighteenth century Pope Joan was a popular card game, and as recently as 1972 the legend was the subject of a film starring Liv Ullmann with Trevor Howard and Olivia de Havilland.
CHAPTER VII
Nicholas I and the Pornocracy
(855–964)
P ope Joan was a myth; Pope Benedict III—who, had Joan existed, would have succeeded her—was a nonentity. After Benedict there came a joke, and after that a giant.
The joke was the bid for the Papacy by Anastasius. He was born in about 815 into a distinguished Roman priestly family; his uncle was the highly influential Arsenius, Bishop of Orte. A man of outstanding abilities and culture, Anastasius mastered Greek at an early age and was created cardinal priest by Leo IV in 847 or 848, but almost immediately he quarreled with his benefactor and fled to Aquileia. Leo, who was well aware of his ambitions and saw him as a potential rival, repeatedly summoned him back to Rome; when Anastasius refused, he was successively excommunicated, anathematized, and deposed. On Leo’s death in 855, his successor was duly elected as Benedict III, but Bishop Arsenius, determined that his nephew should be next on the papal throne, seized the Lateran by force, taking Benedict prisoner.
For three days confusion reigned; but it soon became clear that Anastasius lacked any degree of popular support. How, moreover, could any man under sentence of excommunication be made pope? The Bishops of Ostia and Albano, two of the three by whom the pope was traditionally consecrated, could not be induced—even by threats of torture—to perform the ceremony. Benedict was released from his imprisonment and was finally consecrated, Anastasius stripped of his papal insignia and expelled from the Lateran, but Benedict treated him with more leniency than he deserved,
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