Collection

The first edition of the legend of Pope Joan takes us back to the time of the Italian Renaissance, when a scholar of the day, a close friend of Cardinal Bessarion’s, Bartolomeo Sacchi – known as Platina – in the chronicle of the popes that he composed by request of Pope Sixtus IV, wrote that Pope John VIII was a person whose gender was undeclared. It was said he/she was of British origin, with brilliant studies in Athens, who settled in Rome where her profound erudition and knowledge of theology and the Scriptures was acknowledged. After the death of Pope Leo VI (855) she filled his place by decision of the Conclave (omnium consensus). Platina’s publication Vitae Pontificum was already printed in 1479 and had many reprints and translations into various languages, becoming a popular Christian fiction until the early twentieth century. First printed representation in Hartmann Schedel’s Chronicle (Nüremberg, 1493), while she was frequently depicted riding the Monster of Revelation, as the Antichrist.

References: Brunet IV/1, 692 (= Vitae Pontificarum)

Entity: Theology

Item Type: Book