from the
Visconti-Sforza tarot deck, c. 1450 Most scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries have dismissed Pope Joan as a medieval
legend. British historian
John Julius Norwich dismissed the myth after assessing evidence. In the
Oxford Dictionary of Popes,
J. N. D. Kelly declares the legend "Scarcely needs painstaking refutation today, for not only is there no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign, but the known facts of the respective periods make it impossible to fit one in." The appendix entry also cites chronological and material differences in the instances of the legend's telling, suggests an origin, and points to the Protestant historian
David Blondel, who "effectively demolished it in treatises published at Amsterdam in 1647 and 1657." The 1910
Catholic Encyclopedia elaborated on the historical timeline problem: Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17 July 855, and immediately after his death Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome; but, owing to the setting up of an
Antipope, in the person of the deposed Cardinal Anastasius, he was not consecrated until 29 September. Coins exist which bear both the image of Benedict III and of Emperor
Lothair, who died 28 September 855; therefore Benedict must have been recognized as pope before the last-mentioned date. On 7 October 855, Benedict III issued a charter for the Abbey of Corvey.
Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, informed Nicholas I that a messenger whom he had sent to Leo IV learned on his way of the death of this Pope, and therefore handed his petition to Benedict III, who decided it (Hincmar, ep. xl in P.L., CXXXVI, 85). All these witnesses prove the correctness of the dates given in the lives of Leo IV and Benedict III, and there was no
interregnum between these two Popes, so that at this place there is no room for the alleged Popess. It has also been noted that enemies of the papacy in the 9th century make no mention of a female Pope. For example,
Photios I of Constantinople, who became
Patriarch of Constantinople in 858 and was deposed by
Pope Nicholas I in 863, had a contentious relationship with the Pope. He strongly defended his own authority as patriarch and opposed the influence of the Pope in Rome and would have likely highlighted any scandals of that time regarding the papacy; but he never mentions the story once in any of his voluminous writings. Indeed, at one point he mentions "Leo and Benedict, successively great priests of the Roman Church". Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe, authors of
The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan, theorize that if a female pope did exist, a more plausible time frame is 1086 and 1108, when there were several antipopes; during this time the reign of the legitimate popes
Victor III,
Urban II, and
Paschal II was not always established in
Rome, since the city was occupied by
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and later sacked by the
Normans. Stanford's work has been criticised as "credulous" by one mainstream historian, Vincent DiMarco. Against the lack of historical evidence to her existence, the question remains as to why the Pope Joan story has been popular and widely believed.
Philip Jenkins in
The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice suggests that the periodic revival of what he calls this "anti-papal legend" has more to do with
feminist and
anti-Catholic wishful thinking than historical accuracy. The
sedes stercoraria, the throne with a hole in the seat, now at
St. John Lateran (the formal residence of the popes and center of Catholicism), is to be considered. This and other toilet-like chairs were used in the consecration of
Pope Pascal II in 1099. In fact, one is still in the
Vatican Museums, another at the
Musée du Louvre. The reason for the configuration of the chair is disputed. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman
bidets or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonies by Popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims (as they did also with their
Latin title,
Pontifex Maximus). Medieval popes, from the 13th century onward, did indeed avoid the direct route between the Lateran and St Peter's, as Martin of Opava claimed. However, there is no evidence that this practice dated back any earlier. The origin of the practice is uncertain, but it is quite likely that it was maintained because of widespread belief in the Joan legend, and it was thought genuinely to date back to that period. Although some medieval writers referred to the female pope as "John VIII", a genuine
Pope John VIII reigned between 872 and 882. Due to the scarcity of records in the
Early Middle Ages, confusion often reigns in the evaluation of events. The Pope Joan legend is also conflated with the gap in the
numbering of the Johns. In the 11th century,
Pope John XIV was mistakenly counted as two popes. When Petrus Hispanus was elected pope in 1276, he believed that there had already been twenty popes named John, so he skipped the number XX and numbered himself
John XXI. In 2018, Michael E. Habicht, an archaeologist at
Flinders University, published new evidence in support of an historical Pope Joan. Habicht and grapho-analyst Marguerite Spycher analyzed papal monograms on medieval coins and found that there were two significantly different monograms attributed to Pope John VIII. Habicht argues that the earlier monogram, which he dates from 856 to 858, belongs to Pope Joan, while the latter monogram, which he dates to after 875, belongs to Pope John VIII. Habicht argues that Joan's brief reign occurred between that of Benedict III and Nicholas I. However, other historians have been critical of Habicht's conclusions. Bry Jensen "describes the findings as “intriguing” but remains unconvinced of Joan’s existence. At the height of the myth’s popularity, fabricated relics were prized commodities, raising the possibility that a devious craftsmith coined fake deniers referencing the legendary female pope. Although Habicht debunks the possibility of forgery, noting that contemporary demand for medieval coins is not strong enough to warrant such deception, Jensen argues this explanation fails to account for medieval forgeries." and thus "[t]here is no room for Joan, although [some traditions] tried to put her in the Benedict slot." Additionally, the "coins Habicht examines for his book, Noble said, are hardly evidence of a papal cover-up. "That coin is John VIII," which Habicht would have known if he had looked up the definitive literature, he noted. The "coins prove nothing…[and] Habicht's tortured reasoning does not hold up."" ==In fiction==