the claims and suggested timings, argued that no such events could have happened. The 16th-century Italian historian Onofrio Panvinio, commenting on one of Bartolomeo Platina's works that refer to Pope Joan, theorized that the story of Pope Joan may have originated from tales of Pope John XII; John reportedly had many mistresses, including one called Joan, who was very influential in Rome during his pontificate. At the time of the Reformation, various Protestant writers took up the Pope Joan legend in their anti-Catholic writings, and the Catholics responded with their own polemic. According to Pierre Gustave Brunet, Various authors, in the 16th and 17th centuries, occupied themselves with Pope Joan, but it was from the point of view of the polemic engaged in between the partisans of Lutheran or Calvinist reform and the apologists of Catholicism. An English writer, Alexander Cooke, wrote a book entitled Pope Joane: A Dialogue between a Protestant and a Papist, which purported to prove the existence of Pope Joan by reference to Catholic traditions. It was republished in 1675 as A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan, Plainly Proving Out of the Printed Copies, and Manscriptes of Popish Writers and Others, That a Woman called Joan, Was Really Pope of Rome, and Was There Deliver'd of a Bastard Son in the Open Street as She Went in Solemn Procession. The book gives an account of Pope Joan giving birth to a son in plain view of all those around, accompanied by a detailed engraving showing a rather surprised looking baby peeking out from under the Pope's robes. Even in the 19th century, authors such as Ewaldus Kist and Karl Hase discussed the story as a real occurrence. However, other Protestant writers, such as David Blondel and Gottfried Leibniz, rejected the story. Modern analysis and critique Most modern scholars dismiss Pope Joan as a medieval legend. British historian John Julius Norwich dismissed the myth with a logical assessment of evidence. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes declares that there is "no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign", but nonetheless acknowledges that Pope Joan's legend was widely believed for centuries, even by Catholics. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia elaborated on the historical timeline problem: Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17