We Are Our Brains by D. F. Swaab Page A

VIII.
    And then there’s the chair with the hole, referred to in Italian as
La Sedia Gestatoria
—meaning “litter” or “sedan chair.” But why would a sedan chair have a hole in the seat? The story goes that, to prevent another female pope from being elected, candidates for the papacy were required to sit on the chair. The youngest cleric present had to stick his hand through the hole, feel the papal candidate’s genitals, and then call out loudly, “
Testiculos habet et bene pendentes
” (“He has testicles and they hang well”). The cardinals present would then respond, “
Habe ova nostra Papa
” (“Our father has balls”—as if they were any use to him). The need for such testing suggests that the story of Pope Joan may very well be true. Maria New, a New York pediatric endocrinologist, has put forward the theory that Pope Joan had a form of intersex called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH (see earlier in this chapter). But this diagnosis is pure speculation.
    In her article (1993), New referred to a red marble chair that apparently stood in the Vatican Museum. When I met Dr. New in 2007 at a conference in Rome, however, I asked where exactly the chair was, because I’d been invited to the Vatican the following morning. She told me that she had never gotten to see it. The one depicted in her article had been an identical chair looted by Napoleon, now in the Louvre, to which she had only gained access after negotiating a great deal of red tape.
    At the Vatican the next day, on a private tour organized by one ofthe pope’s doctors, a collaborator of mine immediately said to the head of security that I was especially interested in seeing the chair. No problem, our security man responded, though he immediately added that Maria New’s theory was nonsense. According to him, the chair was simply an ancient commode. At the time I wondered how he knew about her article. It was highly technical and published in an academic journal intended for specialists—not the kind of reading you associate with security guards.
    He gave us a tour through the hushed corridors of the Vatican. We saw the room where the cardinals elect the pope, the “crying room” to which newly appointed popes are ushered to shed a few tears, the containers of white and black smoke, the chamber with the famous balcony where the pope appears (and from which Pope John Paul II called out in something faintly resembling Dutch, “Thanks for the flowers!”), the terrible murals everywhere, and the Swiss guards flanking each important doorway. We were shown the papal gardens, the secret escape route to the stronghold, and so on. Our guide even got out all the pope’s gorgeously embroidered mantles for special occasions so that we could admire and feel them. One was pink. “Is that for Saturday evenings?” I asked the cleric, who was lovingly displaying each garment. “No,” he answered seriously, “that’s for prison visits.” The pope’s miters were unpacked for us, along with a crucifix that he takes with him on his travels—there was no end to it all.
    It was all most impressive and yet not quite what we’d come for, and I reminded our guide of the chair. Yes, yes, it was a bit farther on, he said soothingly. When we had emerged from the silence of the private rooms, had passed the Sistine Chapel with its hordes of tourists, and had gone once again through a series of doors opened and locked behind us by Swiss guards, I mentioned the chair once more.
    â€œOh, what a pity,” said the head of security. “We passed it about fifteen minutes ago. I’m so sorry, I completely forgot about it.”
    â€œNo problem,” I said airily, “we can just go back.”
    Alas, this was impossible, “for security reasons,” the security officersaid, as he told us exactly which country had donated each of the