But a female pope was once the head of the church! Dreadful reproach to come from those who call themselves Reformed, Evangelical, and Puritans, who have not only tolerated but established, nay, and even forced some queens and princesses to declare themselves Head of the Church or Defender of the Faith in their own dominions, and dispose--as one of them does to this day--of church dignities and benefices, and order other matters ecclesiastical according to their personal will and pleasure. Let us now look into the story and examine the testimony on which it is founded. The popess is said to have reigned two years and more. Rome was then the greatest city and the very centre of the civilized world, and always full of strangers from all parts of the earth. {3} The catastrophe of the discovery brought about by the street delivery took place under the eyes of a vast multitude of people, and must have been known on the same day to the entire city before the sun had set. An event so strange, so romantic, so astounding, so scandalous, concerning the most exalted personage in the world, must surely have been written about or chronicled by the Italians who were there, and reported by letter or word of mouth by foreigners to their friends at home, and found its way from a thousand sources into the writings of the time; for it must be remembered the pope, of all living men, was of especial interest to the class who at that period were in the habit of writing. Such testimony as this, being the evidence of eye-witnesses, would be the highest testimony, and would settle the fact beyond dispute. Where is it? Silence profound is our only answer. Nothing of the kind is on the record of that period. Ah! then in that case we must suppose the matter to have been temporarily hushed up, and we will consent to receive accounts written ten, twenty--well, we'll not haggle about a score or two--or even fifty years later. Silence again! Not a scrap, not a solitary line can be found. And so we travel through all the history which learning and industry have been able to rescue from the re-cords of the past down to the end of the ninth century, and find the same unbroken silence. We must then go to the tenth century, where the murder will surely out. Silence again, deep and profound, through all the long years from 900 to 1000, and all is blank as before! And now we again go on beyond another half-century, still void of all mention of Pope Joan, until we reach the year 1058, just two hundred and three years after the assigned Joanide.