Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/185



And when there arose a high opinion in the city of her virtue and knowledge, she was unanimously elected Pope. But during her papacy she became in the family way by a familiar. Not knowing the time of birth, as she was on her way from S. Peter’s to the Lateran she had a painful delivery, between the Coliseum and S. Clement’s Church, in the street. Having died after, it is said that she was buried on the spot, and therefore the Lord Pope always turns aside from that way, and it is supposed by some, out of detestation for what happened there. Nor on that account is she placed in the catalogue of the Holy Pontiffs, not only or account of her sex, but also because of the horribleness of the circumstance.”

Certainly a story at all scandalous crescit eundo.

William Ocham alludes to the story, Thomas de Elmham (1422) quaintly observes, “A.D. 855. Joannes. Iste non computatus. Fœmina fuit;” and John Huss, only too happy to believe it, provides the lady with a name, and asserts that she was baptized Agnes, or, as he will have it with a strong aspirate, Hagnes. Others, however, insist upon her name having been Gilberta, and some stout Germans, not relishing the notion of her being a daughter of Fatherland, palm her off on England.