The legend of Pope Joan first crept into literature in the middle of the 13th century. A beautiful and intelligent Anglo-Saxon woman, she supposedly posed as a man to get into a monastery, and eventually wound up in Rome. Her secret was revealed when, mounting a horse one day, she gave birth. She was tied to the horse's tail, dragged around the city, then stoned to death. The legend was propogated by antipapal forces right up to the 19th century.