With regard to the early chronicle MSS., it must be borne in mind that it was common for their readers (owners) to write additions in the margin, A professional copyist—the publisher of those days—usually incorporated the marginal notes with the text. Books were then, of course, dear and scarce, and readers frequently put in the margin the supplements another book could furnish them, rather than buy two books. Then again—for men are alike in all ages—those who purchased valuable books wanted, as they want to-day, the fullest edition, with all the latest emendations. So a chronicle with the Joan story would always be more saleable than one without it.
But one of the strongest presumptions against the truth of the story is seen in the profound silence of the Greek writers of the period, (ninth to fifteenth century.) All of them who sided with Photius were bitterly hostile to Rome, and the question of the supremacy of the pope was precisely the vital one between Rome and Constantinople. They would have been only too glad to get hold of such a scandal. Numbers of Greeks were in Rome in 855, and if such a catastrophe as the Joanine had occurred, they must have known it. "On writers of the ninth and tenth centuries," says Gibbon, "the recent event would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Would Liutprand have missed such a scandal?"
We have disposed of the absurdity of the supposition that the power and discipline of the church were so great as to enforce secrecy concerning the Joan affair. But—even granting the truth of this assertion—that power and discipline would avail naught with strangers who were Greeks and schismatics. In 863, only eight years after the alleged Joanide, the Greek schism broke out under Photius, who was excommunicated by Nicholas I. There was no period from 855 to 863 when there were not numbers of Greeks in the city of Rome—learned Greeks too. Many of them agreed with Photius, who claimed that the transfer of the imperial residence, by the emperors, from Rome to Constantinople, at the same time transferred the primacy and its privileges. Yet not only can no allusion to any such story be found in any Greek writer of that century, but there is found in Photius himself no less than three distinct and positive assertions that Benedict III. succeeded Leo IV.
The Greek schism became permanent in 1053, under Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who undertook to excommunicate the legates of the pope.
With Cerularius, as with Photius, the papal supremacy was the main question, and neither he nor Photius would have failed to make capital of the Joan fable, had they ever heard of it. So also with all the Byzantine writers, and they were numerous. It was not until the fifteenth century that the first mention of the story was made by one of them, (Chalcocondylas,) an Athenian of the fifteenth century, who, in his De Rebus Turcicis, states the case very singularly: "Formerly a woman was in the papal chair, her sex not being manifest, because the men in Italy, and, indeed, in all the countries of the West, are closely shaved." It is true that Barlaam, a Greek writer, mentioned it in the fourteenth century; but Barlaam was living in Italy when he wrote his book.
And now, as we reach the so-called Reformation period, we find the tale invested with a value and importance it had never before assumed. It was kept constantly on active duty without relief, and compelled to do fatiguing service in a thousand controversial battles and skirmishes. Angry and over-zealous Protestants found it a handy thing to have in their polemical house. And, although the more judicious cared not to use it, the story was generally retained. Spanheim and Lenfant endeavored to think it a worthy weapon, and even Mosheim affects to cherish suspicion as to its falsity. Jewell, one of Elizabeth's bishops (1560) seriously, and with great show of learning, espoused Joan's claims to existence.
Nor were answers wanting; and, including those who had previously written on the subject, it was fully confuted by Aventinus, Onuphrius Pauvinius, Bellarmine, Serrarius, George Scherer, Robert Parsons, Florimond de Rémond, Allatius, and many others.
The first Protestant to cast doubt on the fable was David Blondel. A minister of the Reformed Church, Professor of History at Amsterdam, in 1630, he was held by his co-religionists to be a prodigy of learning in languages, theology, and ecclesiastical history. In his Fable de la Papesse Jeanne, with invincible logic and an intelligent application of the true canons of historical criticism, he demonstrates the absence of foundation for the story, the tottering and stuttering weakness of its early years, the suspicions which stand around its cradle; and, instead of disputing how far the Pope Joan story was believed or credited in this or that century, shows that by her own contemporaries she was never heard of at all; the whole story being, he says, "an inlaid piece of work embellished with time." Blondel was bitterly assailed by all sections of Protestantism, and accused of "bribery and corruption," the question being asked, "How much has the pope given him?" Blondel's work brought out a crowd of writers in defence of Joan, foremost among whom was the Protestant Des Marets or Maresius, whose labors in turn called out the Cenotaphium Papessae Joannae by the learned Jesuit Labbe, the celebrity of whose name drew forth a phalanx of writers in reply.
But the worst for Joanna was yet to come. Another Protestant, undeterred by the abuse showered upon Blondel, gave Joan her coup de grace. This was the learned Bayle, who, with rigid and judicial impartiality, sums up the essence of all that had been advanced on either side, and shows unanswerably the altogether insufficient grounds on which the entire story rests. More was not needed. Nevertheless, Eckhard and Leibnitz followed Bayle in the extinguishing process, and made it disreputable for any scholar of respectability to advocate the convicted falsehood.