Jo'ah (Heb. Yodch', nsi"^, Jehovah is his brother, i. e. helper), the name of four men.
1. .(Sept. 'loiua v. r. TwhS, Vulg. Joaha.) The third son of Obed-edom (q. v.), appointed with his brethren to take charge of the sacred furniture (1 Chron. xxvi, 4). B.C. 1014.
2. (Sept. 'lioax V. r. 'Iaia/3-, 'Iiduq, 'lujad ; but iu 2 Chron. first occurrence 'liod v. r. 'IwSadd, second 'Iioa- xd ; Vulg. Joah.) A Levite of the family of Gershom, the son of Zimmah and father of Iddo (1 Chron. vi, 21) ; apparently the same elsewhere called Ethan, and father of Adaiah (ver. 42). He is probably the same as the person who, with his son Eden, aided Hezekiah in his efforts at a religious reformation (2 Chron. xxix, 12). B.C. 726.
3. (Sept. 'Iwae, in Isa. 'lu)dx,'^vilg. Joahe.) Son of Asaph and historiographer of king Hezekiah, who was one of the messengers that received the insultmg mes- sage of Rabshakeh (2 Kings xvili, 18, 26, 37 ; Isa. xxxvi, 3,11,22). B.C. 712.
4. (Sept. '\ovdx V. r. 'Iwoc? Vulg. Joha; Josephus '\(x)a-i]Q, Ant. x, 4, 1.) Son of Joahaz and historiogra- pher of king Josiah ; he was one of the officers that su- perintended the repairs of the Temple (2 Cliron. xxxiv, 8). B.C. 623.
Jo'ahaz (Heb. Yoachaz', tHXi'^, a contracted form of the name Jehoahaz, for which it occurs in speaking of others of the same name; Sept. 'Ia>«;^a^,Vuig. Joa- chaz), the father of Joah, which latter was historiogra- pher in the reign of Josiah (2 Chron. xxxiv, 8). B.C. ante 623.
Joan, pope(ss), is the name of a fictitious female who was suiijwsed to have occupied the chair of St. Pe- ter, as John VIII, between the popes Leo IV and Bene- dict III, about 853-855. This personage is first said to have been spoken of as a Roman pontiff by Jlarianus Scotus. a monk of the abbey of Fulda. who died at Jlentz in 1086, and who says in his chronicle (which many authorities declare to be spurious), under the year 853, the thirteenth year of the reign of the emperor Lotha- rius, that Leo IV died on the 1st of August, and that to him succeeded Joan, a woman, whose pontificate lasted two years, five months, and four days, after which Ben- edict III was made pope. But Anastasius, who lived at the time of the supposed pope Joan, and who wrote the lives of the popes down to Nicholas I, who succeeded Benedict III, says that fifteen days after Leo IV's death Benedict III succeeded him. Further, Hincmar of Rhcims, a contemporary, in his twenty-sixth letter to Nicholas I. states that Benedict III succeeded Leo IV immediately. It is f roved, moreover, by the uuqucs-
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tionable evidence of a diploma still preserved, and of a contemporary coin whicli (iarampi has ])ublished, that Benedict III was actually reigning before the death of the emperor Lothaire, which occurred towards the close of 855. It is true that some ]\IS. copies of Anastasius, among others, one in the king's library at Paris, contain the story of Joan ; but this has been ascertained to be an interpolation of later copyists, who have inserted the tale in the very words of Martinus Polonus, a Cistercian monk and confessor to Gregory X (latter part of the 12th century), who wrote the Lives of the Popes, in which, after Leo IV, he places "John, an Englishman," and then adds, '• Hie, ut asseritu?; foemina fuit." Other au- thorities for this story are Sigbert of Gemblours (f 1113) and Stephen de Bourbon, who wrote about 1225.
According to these accounts, she was the daughter of an English missionary, was born at Mayence or Ingel- heim, and was a woman of very loose morals. She is said to have removed to Fulda, and having there estab- lished an improper intimacy with a monk of the con- vent, assumed male attire, entered the convent, and afterwards eloped with her paramour, who was a very learned man, to Athens, where she applied herself to the study of Greek and the sciences under her lover's able directions. After the death of her companion she went to IJome, where she became equally proficient in sacred learning, for which her Reputation became so great, un- der the assumed name of Johannes Anglicanus, that she easily obtained holy orders, and with such ability and adroitness clad the deception that at the death of Leo she Avas unanimously elected as his successor, under the general belief of her male sex. Continuing to indulge in sexual intercourse, the fraud was finally discovered, to tlie iutinite mortification of the lioman Church, by her sudden delivery of an infiint in the public streets, near the Colosseum, while heading a religious procession to the Lateran Basilica. The mother and child died 80on after, and were buried in 85G. This event is said to have caused the adoption of the Sella stercoraria, which was in use from the middle of the 11th century to the time of Leo X, for the pui-pose of proving the sex of the popes elect.
The story was generally credited from the latter part of the 11th until the opening of the 16th century. AU Church historians after INIartinus generally copied it from him, and presented it as an authentic narrative. The first to doubt the accuracy of the story was Platina (1-121-11:81), who, although repeating it in his Lives of the Popes, concludes with these words : '• The things I have above stated are current in vulgar reports, but are taken from uncertam and obscure authorities, and I have inserted them briefly and simply not to be taxed with oljstinacy." Panvinius, Platina's continuator, seems to have been more critical: he subjoins a very elaborate note, in which he shows the absurdity of the tale, and proves it to have been an invention. Later Roman Catholic writers, seeing the arguments which their op- ponents in doctrine obtained from this story agauist pa- pal succession, took great pains to impeach its accuracy ; but it is truly curious that the best dissertation on the subject is that of David Blondel, a Protestant, who com- pletely refutes the story in his Faniilier Eclaircissement de 1(1 question si une Femme a ete assise au Sier/e Papal eiitre Leon IV et Benoit II J (Amsterdam, 1649). He was followed on the same side hy Leibnitz (Flores sparsi in tumuliim Papissa, in [Chr. L. Scheldt] Biblioth. Hist. [Gutting. 1758], i, 297 sq.), and, although attempts have been made from time to time by a few writers to main- tain the tale (among which one uf the most noted was a work, published in 1785 by Humphrey Shuttleworth, entitled .1 Present for a Papist, or the History of the Life of Pope Joan, proving that a Woman called Joan realhi vas Pope of Pome), it has been all but universal- ly diacarded, its latest patron being professor Kist, of Leyden, who but a few years since devoted an elaborate essay {Verhandeling over de Pausin Joanna) to the sub- ject. Nearly all ecclesiastical writers of our day seem