Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/190

 Church for a time. She is commonly called the Papess Joan. During the five subsequent centuries the witnesses to this extraordinary event are without number; nor did any one, prior to the Reformation by Luther, regard the thing as either incredible or disgraceful to the Church.” Such are Mosheim’s words, and I give them as a specimen of the credit which is due to his opinion. The “Ecclesiastical History” he wrote is full of perversions of the plainest facts, and that under notice is but one out of many. “During the five centuries after her reign,” he says, ”the witnesses to the story are innumerable.” Now for two centuries there is not an allusion to be found to the events. The only passage which can be found is a universally acknowledged interpolation of the “Lives of the Popes,” by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, and this interpolation is stated in the first printed edition by Busæus, Mogunt. 1602, to be only found in two MS. copies.

Mosheim is false again in asserting that no one prior to the Reformation regarded the thing as either incredible or disgraceful. This is but of a piece with his disregard for truth, whenever he can hit the Catholic Church hard. Bart. Platina, in his “Lives of the Popes,” written before Luther