* Vatican Hill (in Latin, Mons Vaticanus ) is the name given, long before the founding of Christianity, to one of the hills on the side of theTiber opposite the traditional seven hills of Rome. It may have been the site of an Etruscan town called Vaticum. The name "Vatican" has often been thought to derive from the Latin "vates", meaning "seer, soothsayer", though this is uncertain and it is also possible that "Vaticanus" comes from an unrelated Etruscan loan-word. Indeed, the Vatican Hill was the home of the Vates long before pre-Christian Rome. Vaticanus, also known as Vagitanus, was an Etruscan god of prophecy, and his temple was built on the ancient site of Vaticanum (Vatican Hill). In the 1st century AD, the Vatican Hill was outside the city limits and so could feature a circus (the circus of Nero) and a cemetery. St. Peter's Basilica is built over this cemetery, the traditional site of St. Peter the Apostle's grave.

Alain Boureau (Boureau 1988:23) quotes 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: "the vulgar tell the insane fable that he is touched to verify that he is indeed a man" a sign that this corollary of the Pope Joan legend was still current in the Roman street.*

Pope Joan is a legendary female Pope who supposedly reigned for a few years some time in the Middle Ages. The story first appeared in the writings of 13th-century chroniclers, and subsequently spread through Europe. It was widely believed for centuries, though modern historians and religious scholars consider it fictitious, perhaps deriving from historicized folklore regarding Roman monuments or from anti-papal satire.
The first mention of the female pope appears in the chronicle of Jean Pierier de Mailly, but the most popular and influential version was that interpolated into Martin of Troppau's Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum somewhat later in the 13th century. Most versions say that she was a talented and learned woman who disguised herself as a man, often at the behest of a lover. Due to her abilities she rises through the church hierarchy, eventually being chosen as pope. However, while riding on horseback one day, she gives birth to a child, thus revealing her sex. In most versions she dies shortly after, either by being killed by an angry mob, or from natural causes, and her memory is shunned by her successors.