Pope Joan was real. Copy from the Convent of Discalced Augustinians in Vienna.

[Pope Joan] / Friedrich Spanheim / Jacques Lenfant [trans.]. Histoire de la Papesse Jeanne fidelement tirée de la dissertation latine de Monsieur De Spanheim. Cologne: s.n. [“Chez *****”], 1694. 12mo [14.9 x 8.9 cm], [1] f. engraved frontispiece, [21] ff., 320 pp, [2] ff., title page printed in red and black, with woodcut title-page vignette, head-pieces & tail-pieces. Bound in contemporary mottled calf, gold-stamped lettering piece, gold tooled spine, remnants of self-mark labels on spine, red edges. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards, indentations of lower board suggesting that book once was tied shut. Contemporary inscription to title, minor edge wear, a few minor stains.
 
 
First edition (1694) of this first French translation of the Protestant theologian Friedrich Spanheim’s (1632-1701) critical study of sources relating to Pope Joan, the female pontiff who is said to have reigned in the 9th century. The work first appeared in Latin in 1691 under the title De Papa foemina inter Leonem IV et Benedictum III Disquisitio historica.
 
This copy is interesting for the inscription on its title page indicating that the volume once formed part of the library of the Convent of Discalced Augustinians of Vienna (“Est Conventus Vjennensis Erem. Discal. S.S. August.”).
 
Spanheim cites some five hundred sources and concludes that Pope Joan was a real historical figure. This French translation was accomplished by Jacques Lenfant (1661-1728).
 
Of note here is the full-page frontispiece engraving, which depicts Pope Joan enthroned, wearing the papal tiara, her breasts clearly visible beneath her tunic.
 
 
OCLC locates U.S. copies at Fordham, Morgan Library, Loyola Marymount, Berkeley, Yale, Newberry, Boston College, Harvard, Minnesota & Princeton
 
*Philomneste Junior [i.e., Gustave Brunet], La Papesse Jeanne, Étude historique et littéraire (1862); J. J. Gavigan, “The Discalced Augustinians in Vienna (With a sketch of their Germanic province),” Augustiniana, vol. 20 (1970), pp. 495-580.