would doubtless be found. The pope does not miscalculate. In due time the delegates of the Jews of Magonza, headed by Simeon, the pope's father, arrive in Rome. Simeon questions the cause of the cruel edict; but his astonishment is increased when, upon being given audience, he detects in the pope a quite rare degree of Jewish knowledge. The pope, moreover, invites Simeon to call in the evening for the purpose of playing chess with him. During the game, Simeon, a noted chess player, has great cause for wonderment as the pontiff uses a move that Simeon taught only his son El-hanan. The pope, unable to contain himself longer, puts the mask aside and embraces his father. He is anxious to return to the religion of his fathers, and his resolve is strengthened as his father points out to him the Jewish doctrine concerning the regenerative power of repentance. Simeon then returns to Mainz, bearing with him a repeal of the edict, while Elhanan stays in Rome long enough to compose an anti-Christian dissertation, which he charges all his successors to peruse. He then flees to Mayence, where he lives as a pious Jew." His father Simon writes a hymn of gratitude for his son's return: El hanan nahalato be-no'am le-hashper: "God has dealt graciously" [= El hanan] with the name acrostic of both his son and himself. According to other versions, the pope leaps to his death. In Rome his fate remains forever unknown. The sources The legend first appears in print in 1602 in the Basle edition of the Yiddish . Four earlier Hebrew versions of the legend, written between the early fourteenth and the early sixteenth century, are preserved in manuscripts. Three of them occur within commentaries on the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah. See also Pope Joan, a medieval legend of a woman who entered the clergy disguised as a man and was elected pope Edgardo Mortara, a 19th-century Italian Jewish boy who was baptized by a servant without his parents' knowledge and consequently removed from their custody to be given a Christian upbringing, later becoming a priest in the Catholic Church References Jewish folklore Legendary Jews Medieval legends Andreas Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism Catholicism and Judaism