Was there a female pope?
The Catholic Church says no outright, but others say it is tough to dismiss over 500 chronicled accounts of her existence.
Joan supposedly came from a town in Germany where a monastery opened. Only boys were allowed, but to disguise a girl as a boy in a monk's robe would be easy to achieve. According to the literature she rose through clerical ranks until she was voted in as pope in 855.
Dressing as a man would be necessary for a woman with educational or vocational ambitions. Women were expected to stay at home. Those who were seen in the streets were labeled prostitutes.
Women in the church dressing as men was not unusual. "There are over 30 saints' lives in which women dress as men for a variety of reasons, and with a variety of outcomes," says Valerie Hotchkiss, a professor of medieval studies at Southern Methodist University in Texas, who has written about these "transvestite nuns."
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