According to the records of the Catholic Church, there have been 266 men who have been Pope.

However, for centuries, it was thought that there was one other Pope that was not on the list,

and they were different from all the others.

What made this Pope different is that the pope was a woman.

Learn more about the legend of Pope Joan,

both the fact and the fiction,

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Untangling the legend of Pope Joan is difficult because there are so many

stories and many of them are conflicting. So the best place to start is to just start with the basics of the story as it's been passed down throughout the years.

Sometime in the Middle Ages, could have been in the 9th or possibly the tenth or 11 century.

There was a girl born in England by the name of Joan or Joanne or Joanna.

However, the story is told it's always a feminine version of the name John. For the purposes

of this episode I am going to stick with Joan. Joan was very intelligent but

education was denied to women in the Middle Ages. So she disguised herself as a man and entered

a monastic school in Manse, Germany. Or perhaps she was originally from Manse

again it depends on the story. While at school she excelled and was a top student. She learned

Latin and Greek as well as the other liberal arts which was at the core of an

education in the Middle Ages. She eventually kept with the ruse of being a

man and became a priest and worked her way up the church hierarchy.

She may or may not have been involved with the man and followed him to Rome.

While in Rome, she became a highly respected teacher, and during a papal conclave, she was

chosen as Pope.

The entire time she had hidden the fact that she was a woman, and everyone thought she was a man.

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