robin hood:
In my daughters Catholic school, the children were taught as fact that their was a female pope called Joan plus other errors.
I know that this is not true and as I am writing a letter to the head of the RE department, I just wonder if any body could share some relevant facts on this subject.These facts I could use in the composition of my letter.
Yours in Christ
library.saint-mike.org/Essays-JohnPaul/Pope_Joan.html
then there is…
POPE “JOAN”
Code:
At about the time of Pope Leo IV (847-855), some anti-Catholic
polemicists alleged that a so-called “Pope Joan” held the papal office.
There is in fact, no truth in the story of the woman-pope. The legend is
based on ignorance of Latin, since this purported “Joan” is simply the common
abbreviation “Joan,” for “Joannes” (John) in early mediaeval manuscripts!
Code:
In fact, it was a Protestant Calvinist who first (1657)
demonstrated the unhistorical character of the allegation. He was
followed by Petrarch, Leibniz, Dollinger, and all historians since. An array
of reference books, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Oxford
Dictionary of Popes, as well as Edward Gibbon, author of “The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire,” dismiss “Pope Joan” as a mythical or legendary
figure, no more real than Paul Bunyan or Old King Cole.
Code:
The chief weakness of the Pope Joan story is the absence of any
contemporary evidence of a female pope during the dates suggested for her
reign. In each instance, clerical records show someone else holding the
papacy and doing the deeds that are transcribed in church history.
Code:
Another problem is the gap between the alleged event and the news of
it. Not until the 13th century – 400 years after Joan, by the most accepted
accounts, ruled – does any mention of a female pope appear in any documents.
That’s akin to word breaking out just now that England in 1600 had a queen
named Elizabeth.
Code:
So, if a woman didn't become pope, what did happen? One explanation
is that somebody was trying to be humorous. On the narrow Roman street,
where Joan was supposed to have been exposed as a woman in the papal
procession, is called the Vicus Papissa, named after the wealthy family of
Giovanni Pape. Years after the Papes were gone, it is suggested that a
visitor joked that Vicus Papissa meant “the street of the woman pope
[papissa]” instead of what it really means, “the street of Mrs. Pape”!
