[Mb-hair] Did a Woman Serve as Pope in the Ninth Century?

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Did a Woman Serve as Pope in the  Ninth Century?
 
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(Dec. 29) -- In a medieval mystery of the Catholic Church  lies evidence of a 
woman pope, with clues buried in ancient parchment, artwork  and writings, 
even in tarot cards and a bizarre chair once used in a Vatican  ritual. 
Was there a Pope Joan -- a woman with nerve enough to  disguise herself as a 
man and serve as pope for more than two years in the ninth  century? It is one 
of the world's oldest mysteries. Her story first appeared in  histories 
written by medieval monks, but today the Catholic Church dismisses  it. 
"Ninety percent of me thinks there was a Pope Joan," says  Mary Malone, a 
former nun who wrote a history of women and Christianity. 
Donna Cross, a novelist who spent seven years researching  the time period, 
says the historical evidence is there. "I would say it's the  weight of 
evidence -- over 500 chronicle accounts of her existence." 
Escaping a Brutal Life 
Life was often short and brutal for women living in A.D.  800. 
"No woman would have been allowed to appear on the streets  in public," says 
Malone. "That named you as a prostitute immediately. Women were  confined to 
their homes." 
In the town of Mainz, Germany, where it is thought the girl  who might have 
became Pope Joan grew up, most people lived in mud huts. The  average life span 
was only 30 or 40 years. 
But English missionaries were bringing Christianity to  Germany, and they 
created a monastery called Fulda, which became a center of  education, books and 
conversation for travelers -- but it was only for boys. 
In his "History of Emperors and Popes," a monk named Martin  Polonus who was 
a close adviser to the pope wrote about a young woman from Mainz  who learned 
Greek and Latin and became "proficient in a diversity of branches of  
knowledge." 
Cross and other historians say a girl studying at the  monastery would have 
no choice but to disguise herself as a boy. But how was it  possible to keep 
the secret? 
"First of all, you might want to remember that clerical  robes are very 
body-disguising," says Cross. "Also, in the ninth century,  personal hygiene was 
nonexistent. Nobody bathed. They washed their hands, their  face, their feet, 
but they didn't bathe." 
Also, clergy members were required to be clean shaven, and  malnutrition made 
most men and women physically gaunt. 
Polonus wrote that this woman was "led to Athens dressed in  the clothes of a 
man by a certain lover of hers." Then, according to the 500  accounts, the 
woman made her way to Rome. 
In the ninth century, Rome and the Vatican were nothing  like today's solemn 
and civilized center of culture and faith. Then the center  of the Christian 
faith was home to bawdy monks, scheming cardinals,  cross-dressing saints, 
intrigue, melodrama, corruption and violence. 
"Popes ... killed each other off, hammered each other to  death," says Mary 
Malone, the former nun. "There were 12-year-old popes ... we  have knowledge of 
a 5-year-old archbishop. ... It was a very odd time in  history." 
That also means it would have been a time of opportunity  for someone with 
ambition and nerve. The chronicles say that's how Joan, known  as John Anglicus, 
or English John, became secretary to a curia, a cardinal, and  then, as 
Polonus writes, "the choice of all for pope" in the year A.D. 855. 
Clues in Art 
If you travel to Italy and ask questions about Pope Joan,  many people will 
direct you toward the clues embedded in art, literature and  architecture. 
The Renaissance poet Giovanni Boccaccio, best known for  writing "The 
Decameron," also wrote a book on "100 Famous Women." No. 51 is Pope  Joan. 
Rare book dealers in Rome pull ancient tarot cards from  their shelves. The 
card for hidden knowledge is "La Papessa" -- the Female  Pope. 
Travel north to Siena to the Duomo, where inside the  cathedral is a gallery 
of terra-cotta busts depicting 170 popes, in no  particular order. In the 17th 
century, Cardinal Baronuis, the Vatican librarian,  wrote that one of the 
faces was a female -- Joan the Female Pope. 
Baronius also wrote that the pope at the time decreed that  the statue be 
destroyed, but some say the local archbishop didn't want a good  statue go to 
waste. 
"The statue was transformed," believes Cross. "I mean,  literally, it was 
scraped off, her name and written on top of Pope Zachary." 
At the Basilica in St. Peter's Square are carvings by  Bernini, one of the 
most famous artists of the 17th century. Among the carvings  are eight images of 
a woman wearing a papal crown, and the images seem to tell  the story of a 
woman giving birth and a baby being born. 
Medieval manuscripts tell a similar tale: Two-and-a-half  years into her 
reign, Pope Joan was in the midst of a papal procession, a  three-mile trip to the 
Church of the Lateran in Rome, when suddenly at a  crossroads, she felt sharp 
pains in her stomach. 
She was having contractions, the stories say. The  unthinkable happened -- 
the pope was having a baby. 
"And then, shock and horror," says Malone. "And then the  story gets very 
confused, because some of the records say she was killed and her  child was 
killed right on the spot. Other records say she was sent to a convent  and that her 
son grew up and later became bishop of Ostia." 
Stories vary -- some say the crowd stoned her to death,  others say she was 
dragged from the tail of a horse -- but in most accounts,  Pope Joan perished 
that day. 
In the decades that followed, the intersection was called  the Vicus Papissa 
-- the Street of the Female Pope -- and for more than 100  years, popes would 
take a detour to avoid the shameful intersection. 
Polonus writes: "The Lord Pope always turns aside from the  street ... 
because of the abhorrence of the event." 
Or Just an Urban Legend? 
The modern Catholic Church and many scholars dismiss the  story of Pope Joan 
as a sort of Dark Ages urban legend. 
Valerie Hotchkiss, a professor of medieval studies at  Southern Methodist 
University in Texas, says that the story of Pope Joan was  actually added to 
Martin Polonus' manuscript after he died. 
"So he didn't write it, but it was put in very soon after  his death, like 
around 1280 to 1290," says Hotchkiss. "And everyone picks it up  from Martin 
Polonus." 
Medieval monks were like copy machines, say some scholars,  simply 
replicating mistakes into the historical record. 
"And they're picking it up from each other and changing it  and embellishing 
it," Hotchkiss says. 
Monsignor Charles Burns, the former head of the Vatican  secret archives, 
says the story intrigued people in the Middle Ages just as it  intrigues people 
today. "This was almost like an Agatha Christie," he says,  referring to the 
classic mystery writer. 
Burns says there is no evidence and no documentation in the  secret archives 
that Pope Joan existed, no relic of Pope John Anglicus  anywhere. 
And disbelievers can explain away the other clues. The  Bernini sculptures 
were modeled after the niece of the pope; the Vicus Papissa  was named for a 
woman who lived in the area. 
Powerful, Dangerous Women 
Yet even those who laugh at the story of the female pope  agree that the 
story opens a window on the history of women and sex in the  Catholic Church. 
Women were at one time a potent and threatening force in the  medieval church. 
Many scholars say there were many women martyrs in that  era, women who were 
tortured for their religious beliefs. And there were women  who became saints 
while cross-dressing as monks. 
St. Eugenia, for example, became a monk while disguised as  a boy, and was so 
convincing she was brought to court on charges of fathering a  local woman's 
child. She finally proved her innocence only by baring her breasts  in public. 
"There are over 30 saints' lives in which women dress as  men for a variety 
of reasons, and with a variety of outcomes," says Hotchkiss,  who has written 
about these "transvestite nuns." 
Perhaps most threatening to the church were two groups of  women known as 
beguines and mystics, who claimed they could bypass the church  hierarchy and 
communicate directly with God. 
"And they really terrified the church because they went  around saying things 
like 'My real name is God,'" says Malone. "And so  mysticism, then, gave 
these women ... an access to God that was parallel to the  church." 
These powerful women could have inspired a so-called  crackdown by the church 
after A.D. 1000, consolidating its ranks and reaffirming  the rules on 
celibacy among its priests, a requirement that's still  controversial today. 
One school of thought says the story of Pope Joan was  invented as a 
cautionary tale. The lesson to women: Don't even think about  reaching for power or 
you will end up like her -- exposed and humiliated. 
Another school argues that it was the fear of female power  that led the 
church to essentially expunge Pope Joan from history. 
But how do historians explain the enormous purple marble  chair on which 
popes once sat as they were crowned. The chair has a strange  opening, something 
like a toilet seat, reportedly used to check "testiculos  habet" -- or whether 
the pope had testicles. 
David Dawson Vasquez, the director of Catholic University  of America's Rome 
program, says that the Vatican was just using the most  impressive chair it 
had. 
"Because it's elaborate, it's purple. It was the most  expensive marble of 
Roman times, and so it was only used for the emperor,"  Vasquez says. "The hole 
is there because it was used by the imperial Romans,  perhaps as a toilet, 
perhaps as a birthing chair. It doesn't matter if there's a  hole there, because 
you can still sit there and be crowned." 
Others say it was a symbol of the pope giving birth to the  mother church. 
Either way, newly minted Protestants in the 1500s had a field day  making fun of 
the chair, and so it was hidden from view. 
And so the last relic in the tale of Pope Joan is  withdrawn. But Pope Joan 
lives on in some other place, in the shadows of a Dark  Ages legend that is 
terrifying to some and inspiring to others. 
Dec. 29, 2005 
Copyright 2005 ABCNEWS.com
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