[Steppes] Pope Joan special on tonight
Elinor Salter
elinorsalter at comcast.net
Thu Dec 29 18:16:01 PST 2005
If you don't have other plans, tonight on Channel 8 (ABC) from 9-10pm,
Primetime Live is featuring a Diane Sawyer report on the mystery of Pope
Joan, a medieval urban legend.
If you've never heard of her, the story of Pope Joan first appeared in
the 9th C (although the 13th C accounts are when it first really became
popular), alleging that a woman made it into the papacy during that time
and was only discovered when she gave birth in the middle of a
procession. As usual, there are many versions of the story. There is
also reputedly a bottomless stool that a papal candidate once had to sit
on in order to confirm the presence of testicles (the story says as a
reaction to Pope Joan). She was declared a myth in 1601 by the pope at
that time.
Here's the Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
I'm not holding my breath too hard to find out what she's discovered.
They're hyping this up to be "the next Da Vinci code". I'm hoping I'll
learn something new, but it could always turn out to be another Al
Capone's vault (which I did see live, sad to say).
Elinor
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