Comment by rsynnott
4 hours ago
... Maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
(She probably didn't actually exist, but it's interesting that until quite recently she was generally believed to have existed.)
4 hours ago
... Maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
(She probably didn't actually exist, but it's interesting that until quite recently she was generally believed to have existed.)
What do you mean? Catcholic Church has records, did they just came up with something about a nonexistent Pope Joan out of thin air? How could they...
Catholic Church's records on early popes are often surprisingly bad, particularly in antipope-heavy eras. There are a _number_ of popes where the detail is pretty vague. Use of damnatio memoriae also confuses the issue, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Formosus#Legacy