Moreover, Joseph Garampi[20] has proved beyond dispute, that between the death of Leo IV. and the nomination of Benedict III., there was no interval in which to place Pope Joan, and the most virulent antagonists of the court of Rome make no mention of her.
In 991 Arnolphus, bishop of Orleans, addressed to a council held at Reims, a discourse in which he vehemently attacked the excesses and turpitudes of which Rome was guilty. Not a word, however, was said on the subject of Joan. The patriarch of Constantinople, Phocius, who was the author of the schism which still divides the Greek and Latin churches, and who died in 890, says nothing respecting her.
The Greeks, who after him maintained eager controversies against Rome, are silent respecting Joan.
It is clear that the author who first speaks of this event, after a lapse of two centuries, is not worthy of credit, and that those who, after him, related the same thing, have copied from one another, without due examination.
Whilst rejecting as apocryphal the legend under our consideration, some writers have at the same time sought to explain its origin.
The Jesuit Papebroch, one of the most industrious editors of the Acta Sanctorum, thinks that the name “papesse” was given to John VII., because he shewed extreme weakness of character in the exercise of his functions.
The Cardinal Baronius starts an hypothesis of the same kind, but this conjecture is somewhat far-fetched.
A chronicle inserted in the collection of Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, contains an anecdote that has some analogy with our subject.
A patriarch of Constantinople had a niece to whom he was much attached. He disguised her in male attire and made her pass for a man. At his death he recommended her to his clergy, without divulging the secret of her sex. She was very learned and virtuous, and was elected Patriarch. She remained eighteen months on the throne, but the Prince of Benevent, having become acquainted with the truth, denounced the fraud at Constantinople, and the patriarchess was immediately expelled.
This anecdote was very generally reported and credited in Italy in the 11th century, for Pope Leo IX., in a letter of 1053, written to the Patriarch of Constantinople, expresses himself thus:—