The present volume gathers the entire literary tradition concerning the legend of Pope Joan and that of the masculinity test allegedly undergone by every new pope after his election, from their earliest records (1250-1254) until 1500. This book is the only complete collection of all the literary attestations of these two legends, published in their original language (Latin, Greek, medieval vernaculars [German, French, Italian]) and accompanied by an Italian translation. Each text is also integrated by an extensive historic-literary commentary. The entire collection is divided into ten sections: the first one contains the two texts that preserve the legend of the female patriarch of Constantinople, two centuries older than the tale of the She-pope; the 109 literary attestations of Pope Joan’s legend occupy sections II-IX, while section IV is devoted to the analysis of the information contained in the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, written by the Dominican friar Martin of Opava – the source of as many as 101 accounts, including Joan’s biography in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris. The last section contains an analysis of the apocryphal reports on the She-pope found in sixteenth-century printed editions of eleventh- and twelfth-century chronicles. The volume begins with an in-depth introductory study (pp. 3-113), that culminates in a new theory on the origin and the evolution of these two famous legends. For didactic purposes, the book is also complemented by a series of twenty-three summary tables; moreover, an ample set of 124 color illustrations allows the reader to observe how the story of this extraordinary «new» pontificate was materially written in late medieval manuscripts, and how the She-pope’s childbirth has been depicted in the Middle Ages.