We must then go to the tenth century, where the murder will surely out. Silence again, deep and profound, through all the long years from 900 to 1000, and all is blank as before!
And now we again go on beyond another half-century, still void of all mention of Pope Joan, until we reach the year 1058, just two hundred and three years after the assigned Joanide.
In that year a monk, Marianus Scotus, of the monastery of Fulda, commenced a universal chronicle, which was terminated in 1083. Somewhere between these dates, in recording the events of 855, he is said to have written: "Leo the Pope died on the 1st of August. To him succeeded John, who was a woman, and sat for two years, five months, and four days." Only this and nothing more. Not a word of her age, origin, qualities, or circumstances of her death. So far it is not much of a story; but little by little, link by link, line by line, like unto the veridical and melodious narrative of The House that Jack built, we'll contrive to make a good story of it yet. The statement first appears in Marianus. So much is certain. For during the seventeenth century, when the Joan controversy raged, and cartloads of books and pamphlets were written on the subject—a mere list of the titles of which would exceed the limits of this article—every library and collection in Europe was ransacked with the furious industry of which a polemic writer is alone capable, for every—even the smallest—fragment or thread connected with this subject. Nevertheless, this ransacking was neither so thorough nor so successful as during the present century; for, as the learned Döllinger states, "it is only within forty years that all the European collections of mediaeval MSS. have been investigated with unprecedented care, every library, nook, and corner thoroughly searched, and a surprising quantity of hitherto unknown historical documents brought to light."
Comparing the so-called statement of Marianus with the latest sensational and circumstantial relation, it is plain that the story did not, like Minerva, spring full-armed into life, but that it is the result of a long and gradual growth, fostered by the genius of a long series of inventive chroniclers.
But where did the monk of Fulda get the story? Ah! here is an interesting episode. His chronicle was first printed at Basle (1559) from the text known as the Latomus MS. Its editor was John Herold, a Calvinist of note, who, in printing the pas-sage in question, quietly left out the words of the original, "ut asseritur"—that is to say, "as report goes," or "believe it who will"—thus changing the chronicler's hearsay to a direct and positive assertion.
But the testimony of the Marianus chronicle comes to still greater grief, And here a word of explanation. The Original MS. Of Marianus is not known to exist, but we have numerous copies of it, the respective ages of which are well ascertained. Döllinger mentions two of them well known in Germany to be the oldest in existence, in which not a word concerning the popess can be found. The copy in which it is found is of 1513, and the explanation as to its appearance there is simple. The passage in question was doubtless put in the margin by some reader or copyist, and by some later copyist inserted in the text, And so we return to the original dark silence in which we started.
A feeble attempt was made to claim that Sigbert of Gembloux, who died in 1113, had recorded the story; but it was triumphantly demonstrated that it was first added to his chronicle in an edition of 1513. The same attempt was made with Gottfried's Pantheon and the chronicle of Otto von Freysingen, and also lamentably failed. In 1261, there died a certain Stephen of Bourbon, a French Dominican, who left a work in which he speaks of the popess, and says he got the statement from a chronicle which must have been that of Jean de Mailly, a brother Dominican.
To the year 1240 or 1250 may then be assigned, on the highest authority, the period when the Joan story first made its appearance in writing and in history—nearly four hundred years after its supposed date.
In 1261, an anonymous unedited chronicle, still preserved in the library of St. Paul at Leipsic, states that "another false pope, name and date unknown, since she was a woman, as the Romans confess, of great beauty and learning, who concealed her sex and was elected pope. She became with child, and the demon in a consistory made the fact known to all by crying aloud to the pope: