We must come to the 13th century to find in the _Chronicon_ of Martinus Polonus, Bishop of Cosenza in Calabria, some particulars respecting the female Pope Joan.[18] At this period a belief in the truth of her existence is spread abroad, and the evidences become more numerous, but they are little else but repetitions and hear-says; no details of any weight are given. David Blondel,[19] although a Protestant clergyman, treated the story of Pope Joan as a fable. The English bishop John Burnet is of the same opinion, as well as Cave, a celebrated English scholar. Several other learned men have amply refuted this ancient tradition. Many have thought to sustain the romance of Marianus against the doubt excited by a silence of more than 200 years, by asserting that the authors who lived from the year 855 to 1050, refrained from making any mention of the story on account of the shame it occasioned them; and that they preferred to change the order of succession of the Popes by a constrained silence, rather than contribute, by the enunciation of an odious truth, to the preservation of the execrable memory of the woman who had dishonoured the papal chair. But how is it possible to reconcile this with the other part of the same story, that the Roman court was so indignant at the scandal, that, to prevent a repetition of it, they perpetuated its remembrance by the erection of a statue, and the prohibition of all processions from passing through the street where the event had happened. What shadow of truth can exist in things so totally contradictory? Moreover, Joseph Garampi[20] has proved beyond dispute, that between the death of Leo IV. and the nomination of Benedict III., there was no interval in which to place Pope Joan, and the most virulent antagonists of the court of Rome make no mention of her. In 991 Arnolphus, bishop of Orleans, addressed to a council held at Reims, a discourse in which he vehemently attacked the excesses and turpitudes of which Rome was guilty. Not a word, however, was said on the subject of Joan. The patriarch of Constantinople, Phocius, who was the author of the schism which still divides the Greek and Latin churches, and who died in 890, says nothing respecting her. The Greeks, who after him maintained eager controversies against Rome, are silent respecting Joan. It is clear that the author who first speaks of this event, after a lapse of two centuries, is not worthy of credit, and that those who, after him, related the same thing, have copied from one another, without due examination. Whilst rejecting as apocryphal the legend under our consideration, some writers have at the same time sought to explain its origin. The Jesuit Papebroch, one of the most industrious editors of the _Acta Sanctorum_, thinks that the name “_papesse_” was given to John VII., because he shewed extreme weakness of character in the exercise of his functions.