The following is text written by the Dominican, Jean de Mailly, in his chronicle of Metz, Chronica Universalis Mettensis, written in the early 13th century. I have pasted the text in part for your reading. There is some proof that the story is true and that the actual woman who served as Pope upon her discovery was systematically removed from the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Because there is no verifiable and for certain proof (and I will use the burden of proof for academic purposes here as beyond a reasonable doubt), the evidence is circumstantial and the story is more than likely a legend. But, I tend to think it is real but regardless, the fact that as early at least the 13th century, there was talk of woman serving God as priests.

Here goes the text in part:

" Concerning a certain Pope or rather female Pope, who is not set down in the list of Popes or Bishops of Rome, because she was a woman who disguised herself as a man and became, by her character and talents, a curial secretary, then a Cardinal and finally Pope. One day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth to a child. Immediately, by Roman justice, she was bound by the feet to a horse's tail and dragged and stoned by the people for half a league, and where she died, there she was buried, and at the place is written: 'Petre, Pater Patrum, Papisse Prodito Partum' [Oh Peter, Father of Fathers, Betray the childbearing of the woman Pope]. At the same time, the four-day fast called the "fast of the female Pope" was first established" ...

And an other account (text in part):

"John Anglicus, born at Mainz, was Pope for two years, seven months and four days, and died in Rome, after which there was a vacancy in the Papacy of one month. It is claimed that this John was a woman, who as a girl had been led to Athens dressed in the clothes of a man by a certain lover of hers. There she became proficient in a diversity of branches of knowledge, until she had no equal, and afterwards in Rome, she taught the liberal arts and had great masters among her students and audience. A high opinion of her life and learning arose in the city, and she was chosen for Pope. While Pope, however, she became pregnant by her companion. Through ignorance of the exact time when the birth was expected, she was delivered of a child while in procession from St Peter's to the Lateran, in a lane once named Via Sacra (the sacred way) but now known as the "shunned street" between the Colisseum and St Clement's church. After her death, it is said she was buried in that same place. The Lord Pope always turns aside from the street and it is believed by many that this is done because of abhorrence of the event. Nor is she placed on the list of the Holy Pontiffs, both because of her female sex and on account of the foulness of the matter." (Martin of Opava, Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum).

The exact time when the Woman Pope existed is debated but there is a general idea she was Pope somewhere from 700 to 900 A.D.

The Catholic Encyclopedia states the following with regard to this issue:

“Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17 July 855, and immediately after his death Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome; but owing to the setting up of an Antipope, in the person of the deposed Cardinal Anastasius, he was not consecrated until 29 September. Coins exist which bear both the image of Benedict III and of Emperor Lothair I, who died 28 September 855; therefore Benedict must have been recognized as Pope before the last-mentioned date. On 7 October 855, Benedict III issued a charter for the Abbey of Corvey. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, informed Nicholas I that a messenger whom he had sent to Leo IV learned on his way of the death of this Pope, and therefore handed his petition to Benedict III, who decided it (Hincmar, ep. xl in P.L., CXXXVI, 85). All these witnesses prove the correctness of the dates given in the lives of Leo IV and Benedict III, and there was no interregnum between these two Popes, so that at this place there is no room for the alleged Popess.”

Rosemary and Darrell Pardoe, authors of The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan. Presented what some consider the first complete documentation of the facts behind the legend of the female Pope known as Pope Joan. They theorize that a more plausible time frame would be 1086–1108, when there were several Antipopes, and the reign of the legitimate Popes Victor III, Urban II and Paschal II was not always established in Rome, since this city was occupied by Emperor Henry IV, and later sacked by the Normans.

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