Thursday, January 3, 2013
The Myth: All Popes when elected must sit on the Sedes Stercoraria, a chair with a hole in the centre of the seat, without underwear on, in order to have their genitals touched, to prove that they are a man. This arose after Pope Joan ruled to make sure that the same mistake would not occur again.
In the item above we discussed the Pope Joan myth, the is the first step of disproving the myth of the Sedes Stercoraria. If Joan never existed, the need to prove the elected Pope male also does not exist.
The thrones with holes in it at St John Lateran’s do indeed exist, and were used in the elevation of Pope Pascal II in 1099 (Boureau 1988). In fact, one is still in the Vatican Museums another at the Musée du Louvre. They do indeed have a hole in the seat. However, the reason for the hole is disputed, but as both the seats and their holes predated the Pope Joan story, and indeed Catholicism by centuries, they clearly have nothing to do with a need to check the sex of a pope. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman bidets or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonies by popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims.
The humanist Jacopo d’Angelo de Scarparia who visited Rome in 1406 for the enthronement of Gregory XII in which the pope sat briefly on two “pierced chairs” at the Lateran, said: “the vulgar tell the insane fable that he is touched to verify that he is indeed a man”
In closing
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