every description to whom it was known. On those of the ixth and
xth centuries, the recent event would have flashed with a double force.
Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed
such scandal? It is scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings
of Martinus Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even Marianus Scotus;
but a most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been
foisted into some Mss. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.]

[Footnote 131: As false, it deserves that name; but I would not
pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our own
times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church, instead
of the army: her merit or fortune might have raised her to St. Peter's
chair; her amours would have been natural: her delivery in the streets
unlucky, but not improbable.]

[Footnote 132: Till the reformation the tale was repeated and believed
without offence: and Joan's female statue long occupied her place among
the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p.
624-626.) She has been annihilated by two learned Protestants, Blondel
and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their
brethren were scandalized by this equitable and generous criticism.
Spanheim and Lenfant attempt to save this poor engine of controversy,
and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p.
289.)]

[Footnote 1321: John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not of her
lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly proved, Ann. ad
ann. 911, tom. p. 268. Her grandson Octavian, otherwise called John
XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot be discovered in any of
the succeeding popes; nor does our historian himself, in his subsequent
narration, (p. 202,) seem to know of one. Hobhouse, Illustrations of
Childe Harold, p. 309.--M.]

[Footnote 133: Lateranense palatium... prostibulum meretricum ... Testis
omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum, quae sanctorum
apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere, cum nonnullas ante dies
paucos, hunc audierint conjugatas, viduas, virgines vi oppressisse,
(Liutprand, Hist. l. vi. c. 6, p. 471. See the whole affair of John
XII., p. 471-476.)]

[Footnote 134: A new example of the mischief of equivocation is the
beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope conferred on
the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may signify either a