[Footnote 5: At this period the church was as yet without the advantages of the great reform effected by Gregory VII. in 1073, and the choice of a pope by the bishops or cardinals was ratified or rejected by the Roman people, too often, at that time, the dupes or tools of such men as the marquises of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, who, says Gibbon, "held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful servitude.">[
Long series of years preceding and following these events were anything but times of pleasantness and peace to the successors of St. Peter. Even Gibbon says, "The Roman pontiffs of the ninth and tenth centuries were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered by their tyrants, and such was their indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince nor exercise the charity of a priest."
Now, with such materials as these, a Pope Joan story is easily constructed; for, with the license of speech that has always existed in Rome in the form of pasquinades, it is more than likely to have been satirically remarked by the Romans under one or all of the three popes John, that Rome had a popess instead of a pope, and that the chair of St. Peter was virtually occupied by a female. These things would be repeated from mouth to mouth by men who, according to their temper and ability, would comment on them with bitter scoff, irreverent comment, snarling sneer, or ribald leer, and they might readily have been received as matter of fact assertions by German and other strangers in Rome.
Carried home and spread by wandering monks and soldiers, it is only wonderful that they did not sooner come to the surface in some such fable as the one under consideration. Diffused among the people, and acquiring a certain degree of consistence by dint of repetition through two centuries, it finally reached the ear of the individual who inserted it in the Marianus chronicle in the form of an on dit, and so he put it down "ut asseritur"—"they say."
Certain it is that no such story was known in Italy until it was spread from German chroniclers, and the absurdity was too monstrous to pass into contemporary history even in a foreign country.
But, it is answered, by Coeffetau and others, we do not hear of it for so many years afterward because the church exerted its omnipotent authority to hush up the story. There needs but slight knowledge of human nature to decide that such an attempt would have only served to spread and intensify the scandal. As Bayle wisely remarks, "People do not so expose their authority by prohibitions which are not of a nature to be observed, and which, so far from shutting their mouth, rather excite an itching desire to speak."
Then, too, it is claimed that for a period of several hundred years after 855, writers and chroniclers, by agreement, tacit or express, not only maintained a profound silence on the subject of the scandal, but, in all Christian countries of the world, conspired to alter the order of papal succession, forge chronicles, and falsify historical records. And yet those who use this argument tell us that in the city of Rome, under papal authority, a statue was erected, an order issued, turning aside processions from their time-consecrated itinerary, and customs as remarkable for their indecency as their novelty were introduced, in order to perpetuate the memory of the very same events tyrannical edicts were issued to conceal and blot out! Comment is not needed.
The total silence of contemporary writers, and the immense chasm of two hundred years (taking the earliest date claimed) between the event and its first mention, was, of course, found fatal. Consequently, an attempt was made to prop up the story by the assertion that it was chronicled by Anastasius the Librarian, who lived in Rome at the alleged Joannic period, was present at the election of all the popes from 844 to 882, and must, therefore, have been a witness of the catastrophe of 855. The testimony of such a witness would certainly be valuable—indeed irrefutable. Accordingly a MS. of the fourteenth century, a copy of the Anastasian MS., was produced, in which mention was made of Pope Joan. But this mention was attended with three suspicious circumstances. First, it was qualified by an "ut dicitur" "as is said." Anastasius would scarcely need an on dit to qualify his own testimony concerning an event that took place under his own eyes, and must have morally convulsed all Rome. Secondly, it was not in the text, but in a marginal note. Thirdly, and fatally, the entire sentence was in the very words of the Polonus chronicle. Naturally enough, it was found singular that Anastasius, writing in the ninth century, should use the identical phraseology of Polonus, who was posterior to him by four hundred years.
But, in addition to these reasons, Anastasius gives a circumstantial account of the election of Benedict III. to succeed Leo IV., absolutely filling up the space needed for Joan. In view of all which the critical Bayle is moved to exclaim, "Therefore I say what relates to this woman (Joan) is spurious, and comes from another hand." A zealous Protestant, Sarrurius, writes to his co-religionist, Salmasius, (the same who had a controversy with Milton,) after examining the Anastasian MS., "The story of the she-pope has been tacked to it by one who had misused his time." And Gibbon says, "A most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan which has been foisted into some MSS. and editions of the Roman Anastasius."