This must be in the Interim asserted , that this Joane was a great and sudden proficient in all the Studies of that place ; nor is it thought she ever attained to them by any Magick ( of which without the cavil of any Protestant , some Popes have been Condemned ; as namely , Sylvester the second , whose Character as not so immediately necessary to this work in hand may be forborn ) but by the course and ordinary method of the place , though by the unusual extraordinary felicity of her parts , Nature and Ingenuity .

But this debonarity of her intellectuals was not defaecated and freed from the soyls and pollutions of her naturals and morals ; the Records of her being in this place are not altogether silent what Acts she kept in this University with her Enamourato , though how she past from the Dignities and Honours here ( as perhaps infamed and secretly withdrawn hence to avoid publique scandal ) is not manifestly and evidently described .

But that such a person came to Rome from Athens , from the Dame to the Empresse of the world ( not to say from the Matron to the Prostitute ) it will be no difficulty to evince ; and that this Pope Joane did sit in Saint Peters Chaire , and performed all the Offices of that pretended Supremacy during that Papacy will be as little ; and when we have settled her in that Chair , it will be no incongruous complement to bring her to Bed . And therefore we betake our selvs to Testimonies , wherein following my Authors Rule , I will use some part of their own Language in the Original Latine , and because the verity thereof depends upon number of Authentique witnesses ( of their own party too , ) I will not grudge the Reader my trouble , nor deceive him by any designe ; and first we will mention the names of all such Historians or other Writers that do maintain there was such a Pope as Joan , and then those of the Papal side , who oppugne and deny it .

The maintainers of it are Marianus Scotus , Sigebert , Gote-fridus , Viterbiensis , Johannes de Parisiis , Martinus Polonus , Petrarch , Boccace , Ranulphus Cestrensis , Johannes Lucidus , Alphonsus E Carthagena , Theodoricus de Niem , Chalcocondilas a Grecian Writer , and Wernerus Rolerink , Platina , ( the chief and most resented and quarrelled ) Palmerius , Nauclerus , Sabellicus , Trithemius , Volateran , Bergomensis , Schedel , Laziardus , Fulgosus , Textor , an Epistle Written by the Univerfities of Paris , Oxford , and Prague , to all at Rome , Mantuan , Crantius , and Charanza , and a number more of the Papistical Faction of all Nations : in short , Onuphrius himself , the great and first opposer of this Truth , confesseth ; Multos & magni nomini viros , Historiam hanc suscipere , eam quoque vulgo veram existimari ; that a great many men , and of great Fame doe receive this story , and that among the vulgar it is believed for true .

The other Antagonists besides this Onuphrius a Fryar ( who writ in One Thousand five Hundred sixty six , & was the first Champion of them all , though almost Seven Hundred years after the prank was plaid ) were no lesse then Cardinal Bellarmine , Cardinal Baronius , and one Flerimundus a French-man , a fine quirking fellow , whose disputes like his Country Fashions , were as gay and pretty , so vain and ridiculous ; but when the two great Cardinals , as any the Church of Rome can boast of , applied themselves to the stresse of the Controversie , we may be sure something more then ordinary engaged their appearance ; Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus .

Come we now to the matter of fact , and because Platina in his lives of the Popes , an Historian of good Credit among themselves , being counted a most Learned man by Trithemius , hath fairly and equally delivered the story , we will shew it in his words — Johannes Anglicus ex Moguntia oriundus malis artibus , &c. Pontificatum Adeptus est , mentitus enim sexum cum faemina esset , &c. the whole English was thus , — John English born at Mentz , got the Popedome , as men say , by evil Means ; For he dissembled his Sex being a Woman indeed , and when she was very young she went to Athens with a Scholar who was in Love with her , where by hearing of good Readers , all good Learning she profited so well , that when she came to Rome , she had few fellows , but never a one her better . Now by reading and disputing learnedly and wittily , she got so much credit , that upon Pope Leo the Fourth his Death , she was chosen in his room ( as Martian writes ) by common consent .

But within a while after she proved with Child by one of her own servants , and though she carried all closely for a time , yet at length as she went to St. John Laterans , between the Theatre , called the Collosses and St. Clements , she fell in Travel , and was delivered of a Child , ( a Boy ) and dyed in the place ( others add she was also buried under that stone or monument of this disgrace ) which was in the second year , first moneth , and fourth day of her Raigne , and she was buried without any Solemnity .

Let not the Reader wonder at this her Assumption to the Mitre by reason of her Learning , for in that age very little sufficed the whole Conclave , and a bigger place then that , the whole world , for a Pedant Grammarian , passed then for a Sophy , and ABC's were almost Oracles ; Nay Bellarmine in return of this story was not afraid of this happy luxuriancy , as to confess it in a more critical and curious age , by way of Droll , upon Queen Elizabeth , that the Church ( meaning of England ) had got a Woman also to her Head .

I omit other Confirmations of this Truth , onely I shall particularize that she succeeded Leo the Fourth , in the year 855 , and was succeeded By Pope Benedict the Third , in 858. which answers the time above mentioned of two years and some moneths , and supplies that place which the Papists have endeavoured to continue from Leo to Benedict , though they justle out a Pope John by number the Eighth , ( which name this Joane borrowed , as the Papall Custom is upon their Election ) and instead of a Four and Twentieth , of that name will not reckon but a three & twentieth ; imputing this their false reckoning , to the impiety of John the Twelfth , whose story we avoid ; Onely thus much in Honour to the Name may be added , that the reason why Joane and other her Successors chose this name , was for this reason out of the New Testament — There was a man sent from God whose name was John ; but sure there was never a Woman of that name had any mission . But I will not too far anticipate my matter .

For to return , Joan having by her Learning , and the Fame she had raised of her self by her disputations in the Schools , ( whether the Nobles and great Personages resorted ) two years together , ( a rarity in those dayes , as before ) ascended the Chaire , did with no lesse gravity , seeming prudence and Authority , as well as Piety , behave her self to a general good esteeme and respect ; She Consecrated and made Prelates , She ordained Presbyters and Deacons ; She Administred the Sacraments , and Finally all the Offices that pertained to the pretended High Priest , as came in her way during the short time of her Raign , she executed in every respect ; and this Cornelius Agrippa , a man much Commended by Pope Leo the Tenth , writ in a book of his solemnly priviledged by the Emperour Charles the Fifth .

And this had been no great scandal to the Church of Rome , who yet deny this to be true , and call for an account of her Transactions , with the Emperour or any other Christian Prince ; ( as it was then the Popes Fashion to intermeddle with Temporal Affairs , and to inaugurate and Confirme Christian Potentates ) but her Raign was so short , that no such occurrence happened no more then in other Popes times , as Anastatius , &c. Withal Joan had other private business to mind , which might take her off from busying her self in those wrangling matters and angry Debates and Disputes about power and jurisdiction . She had mancipated her self to sensuality and Cupids Dominion , to the loving embraces of her own Chamberlaine , whom she more minded then all the Monarchs in the world . I forbear out of respect to the Venerable Dignity of St. Peters Chaire , to mention her libidinous converse with that fellow any further , leaving them in those abominable secrets , which need a night , and the darkness of oblivion to conceale and abolish them .

It will suffice to the Ingenious Reader , that she was impregnated by this fellow , and no other person made privy to the burden of her Belly , which through her ignorance , or want of right Computation , or some precipitatancy of nature delivered it self in her pompous procession from the Vatican , to St. John of Lateran : but with such pain and speedy Torment , that the Mitred Mother died instantly thereof , and the Heir to the Popedome left it to her Successors at the same instant , at the old rack rent of Simony .

The Papists here again cavil at the unlikeliness of this story , for that none but aged persons are elected to this dignity , when they have exceeded the years within which this teeming may be supposed , and that by the smoothnesse of her Face she might likewise have been discovered ; to the first it is answered , that several Popes have been elected under the Age of Forty , as Leo the Tenth , as Gregory the Eleventh , and Boniface the Ninth , John the Twelfth , alius Thirteenth , Benedict the Ninth ; as to the second , it was in those times the Fashion for the Clergy to shave themselves : and as men by shaving may make themselves look like Women , so Women by often shaving , may make themselves look like men , and therefore there was no reason they should suspect her for want of a Beard .

All the City upon news of this strange accident , were in amazement , but the Clergy recovering themselves out of the stun and perplexity thereof , caused her to be buried in the same place instantly , whereafter a Marble Image was set up as a Monument thereof in the same place where she miscarried ; which monument was likewise to be seen within these few years , even in Pius the Fifth his time : representing a Woman in Childbed , with a Boy or Infant new born , which the said Pius Quintus threw into the Tyber , upon pretence , that it cumbred the street : but in truth that he might extinguish the Memory of that shamefull Fact , and this a Jesuite hath acknowledged , one Elias Hassen Muller , in his History of the Order of Jesuits , and of their Father and Mother . The like Image was set up among the rest of the Images of the Popes , in the renowned Church of Siena ( the birth place of this Pope Alexander the Seventh ) in Italy , and was to be seen there within lesse then Sixty years , ( but thrown down by Pope Clement the Eighth ) which the Bishop of the place would not suffer to be defaced , at the last repayring of the Church , though the Jesuits did earnestly press and request him to deface it ; The like is in pictures in several Romish books .

Now because of that Marble Image standing in one of the chief streets of Rome ; the Popes when they go in procession , refuse to go through that street in detestation of the Fact , and go further about ; though to slur this remarque also , the Papists say it is because that street is little and winding , and is not roomy enough for the Popes great Train in such Solemnities : but that 's a meer shift , for as soon as ever by going into narrower lanes and circumambulation , the Pope hath left the place of that Image behind him , he turns into the same street again , and proceeds directly in his way .

But of further evidences of the Truth hereof , the Chair whereon the Pope is set immediately after his Nomination and Election in the Conclave of the Cardinals is none of meanest ; It is a Chair made like a Close Stool , wherein he then sits before publication is made of his Assumption to the papacy , which the lowest Cardinal Deacon , ( whose office it is ) underfeels to try if the Pope have Male Genitals , and upon his being certified thereof by attrectation of them ; he cries out to the rest — Mas nobis Dominus est , i.e. we have a Man to our Lord ; so justly fearful are they to have the same trick put upon them again .