The Cardinal Baronius starts an hypothesis of the same kind, but this conjecture is somewhat far-fetched. A chronicle inserted in the collection of Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, contains an anecdote that has some analogy with our subject. A patriarch of Constantinople had a niece to whom he was much attached. He disguised her in male attire and made her pass for a man. At his death he recommended her to his clergy, without divulging the secret of her sex. She was very learned and virtuous, and was elected Patriarch. She remained eighteen months on the throne, but the Prince of Benevent, having become acquainted with the truth, denounced the fraud at Constantinople, and the _patriarchess_ was immediately expelled. This anecdote was very generally reported and credited in Italy in the 11th century, for Pope Leo IX., in a letter of 1053, written to the Patriarch of Constantinople, expresses himself thus:-- “Public report asserts as an undeniable fact, that in defiance of the canons of the first council of Nice, you Greeks have raised to the pontifical throne, eunuchs, and even a woman.” At this period Rome had not yet begun to occupy herself with the legend of Joan, which was scarcely spread abroad in Germany. If in the East there had been any idea of the scandal of the female Pope, which was afterwards so prevalent, the reproach of Leo IX. would undoubtedly have been turned against himself. We give another explanation: “The strangest stories have always their foundation in some truth,” says _Onuphrius Panvinius_, in his notes upon _Platina_: “I think that this fable of the woman Joan takes its origin from the immoral life of Pope John XII., who had many concubines, and amongst others Joan, who exercised such an empire over him that for some time it might be said it was she who governed. Hence it is that she was surnamed “_papesse_,” and this saying, taken up by ignorant writers and amplified by time, has given birth to the story which has had such wide circulation. We find in the history of the Bishop of Cremona, Luitprand,[21] that the love of John XII. for his concubine Joan went so far that he gave her entire cities, that he despoiled the church of St. Peter of crosses and of golden chalices in order to lay them at her feet; and we are told that she died in childbed. This death is a remarkable circumstance. In it we may trace the source of the most striking event in the story of Pope Joan. ABELARD AND ELOISA. A. D. 1140.