1675 POPE JOAN & HER BASTARD CHILD. Rare, Red-Hot 17th Century Anti-Catholic Puritan Polemic.

Very rare imprint of the early Puritan, Alexander Cooke's blistering polemic against the Roman Catholic church via its hypocrisy in covering up their accidental selection of a female pope and then of her surprise delivery of an illegitimate child while in public procession.  The Pope Joan history is ostensibly the reason for the creation of the infamous "Pope's Jewels" chair in the Vatican where one unlucky Cardinal was assigned to verify that the Pope-elect was in fact a male. With the advent of modern medical records, etc., this has long been out of use, but, at least according to legend, continued to be normal practice throughout the Middle Ages and perhaps up through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.  Cooke, Alexander. A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan, Plainly Proving Out of the Printed Copies, and Manuscripts 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 S