The scandalous history of Pope Joan: The only woman to become leader of the Catholic Church?

According to the most widely shared version of the story, Pope Joan lived during the 9th century.

Her birthplace was often listed as Mainz, though some later texts gave England as her background.

Under the name John Anglicus, she dressed as a man and studied in Athens, where she gained a reputation for intelligence and theological skill.

After she completed her studies, she travelled to Rome and joined the clergy. Over several years, she impressed those around her with her knowledge and calmness.

Higher positions in the church soon followed and, eventually, her talent and popularity among the Roman clergy brought her to the papal throne.

According to later chroniclers, she held the office for more than two years. Martin of Opava placed her reign between the terms of Pope Leo IV and Benedict III.

Other versions placed it after the papacy of John VII in the early 8th century or during the 11th century.  

During a public procession near the Church of San Clemente, Pope Joan went into labour.

In full view of the crowd, she gave birth, and the secret of her identity could no longer be hidden.

Some accounts claimed the mob reacted violently and killed her on the spot.

Others claimed she died of problems after childbirth or was taken to a convent to live out her remaining years in silence.

A few versions suggested that her child entered the Church and became a bishop. 

In later medieval versions, writers added even more dramatic details. One of the most common additions involved a ritual to check that a new pope was a man.

According to this tradition, each pope had to sit on a specially designed chair with a hole in the seat so that a cleric could confirm the new pope was male.

The Latin term for this object, sedia stercoraria, originally referred to a coronation throne, but later interpretations gave it a more disturbing purpose.

Two ancient chairs with openings in the seat still exist in the Vatican, but experts now believe they were likely Roman birthing chairs later misinterpreted during the Middle Ages. 

In the middle of the 13th century, the Martin of Opava we mentioned earlier, included a brief mention of Pope Joan in his Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum record.

Martin was a Dominican friar and church official and it is from him that we get the description of her as “John Anglicus” and that she had held the papacy for a little over two years.

Also, he wrote that she died in childbirth. Around the same period, the Chronicon Universale of Metz also included a short version of the tale, though its dating and reliability is uncertain. 

Before Martin’s account, no clear source mentioned Pope Joan by name. Some scholars have suggested that Jean de Mailly, who wrote earlier in the 13th century, provided the first known reference in a brief and simple story.

Regardless, from the time of Martin’s chronicle onward, the story appeared in a growing number of works.

Some authors repeated his timeline, while others inserted Joan’s papacy at different points in the historical record. 

During the following century, the tale spread into broader popular culture.

Boccaccio included her in his De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of famous women.

Other writers, including Stephen of Bourbon, repeated versions of the story in moral or satirical settings.

In many of these later accounts, the details became more specific, and the purpose of the tale shifted toward either entertainment or moral instruction.

As the story expanded, artists produced illuminated manuscripts, woodcut prints, and Tarot cards.

They created the fifteenth-century "Papess" card, which may have been inspired by Pope Joan even though no clear evidence confirms this connection. 

Her story became so well known that some lists of popes began to include her name, either as a historical error or a acknowledgment of popular belief. 

At the time when Pope Joan supposedly lived, no records from that time noted her existence.

Papal documents from the 9th century show an unbroken succession from Leo IV to Benedict III, with no gap or odd event in the succession.

Official records such as the Liber Pontificalis, plus letters and decrees from the period, give no sign that a disguised woman occupied the papacy. 

Martin of Opava did not identify a source for his information. He also made other mistakes in dates in his record, which makes his account less trustworthy here.

Early modern scholars suggested that the tale grew from names misread in papal lists or confusion about Pope John VIII's reign, whose weak or gentle reputation may have sparked rumours of femininity.

Others suggested that the story began as a street performance, parody procession, or folktale that was eventually mistaken for actual history.

If true, the widespread belief in Joan’s existence did not arise because someone intended to deceive.

Instead, it probably stemmed from the story appearing repeatedly in a variety of texts. 

During the 16th century, Protestant writers adopted the tale and used it to criticise the Roman Church.

Figures like Matthias Flacius Illyricus printed her name as part of their arguments against papal infallibility and clerical corruption.

He included the story in the Magdeburg Centuries, a major Protestant historical work that sought to expose what it saw as abuses within the Catholic hierarchy.

In response, Catholic historians launched efforts to disprove the story and show it was an invention.

Onofrio Panvinio, who had papal backing, published a detailed rebuttal based on a close look at early sources.

Later, the Protestant scholar David Blondel also argued against the historicity of Pope Joan, even though he remained critical of the Church.

His research became one of the first academic disproofs of the story from a non-Catholic perspective, following earlier Catholic efforts. 

Among modern historians, there is general agreement that Pope Joan never existed.

The evidence remains based only on indirect evidence, and no document from the period of her supposed reign supports the idea.

From the time of its first appearance, the Church rejected the story of Pope Joan.

The Vatican has always maintained that there has never been a female pope.

During the Reformation, Catholic scholars became especially vocal in their efforts to dismiss the tale.

They viewed it as a deliberate attempt to undermine the Church’s authority. 

In the Counter-Reformation period, the Church promoted detailed historical research to disprove Protestant claims.

They noted that no source from the 9th, 10th, or 11th centuries included any reference to Pope Joan, and they criticised later chroniclers who had repeated baseless rumours. 

As time passed, the Church treated the tale as a story rather than a genuine threat.

Some scholars acknowledged that belief in Pope Joan had been common for centuries, but they argued that this belief came from repeated errors and the popularity of medieval storytelling.

While the Church never officially addressed the story beyond scholarly refutations, it quietly maintained that the entire episode was fictitious.

Today, Pope Joan appears in discussions of medieval folklore, gender in Church history, and the differences between fact and fiction in historical writing.

Even if she never existed, her story continues to inspire novels, television series, and films, which demonstrates the lasting interest in a tale that has long blurred the line between scandal and speculation.