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I'm sorry to do this again but I can't say it loud enough. There was never a Pope Joan. It is unthinkable that the Catholic church would even have accepted a woman as priest let alone pope. The story and the pregnancy cannot be separated. The pregnancy is the whole point of the story. It is a scurrilous tale that seems to have begun circulating late in the eleventh century. Naturally, it is set vaguely in some earlier period, usually prior to the mid tenth century probably to take advantage of other scurrilous stories circulated by imperialist chroniclers about the papacy before its "cleansing" by the German emperors. Those contemporary stories, however, concern the womanizing exploits of various popes, particularly their putative liaisons with Roman noblewomen. The story rises out of the atmosphere of intense misogny surrounding the investiture conflict and the imposition of celibacy on the clergy. Its purpose seems to be to warn the clergy that any impingement of females on the clerical precinct would have the direst consequences. The "sexing of the popes" is another canard that seems to arise from a mistaken proto-archeologist's interpretation of a marble latrine chair found in the vicinity of the Lateran palace. I cannot imagine why feminists want to perpetuate this story or why any historians would for a moment accept a tale so completely lacking in authenticating sources. Jo Ann McNamara
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