Unintended Consequences?

The most entertaining detail of the Joanna [Pope Joan] legend, however, is the chaise percée, a red porphyry seat which is said to have been used to ensure that subsequent Popes could not practice the same deception. According to Felix Haemerlein’s De Noblitatis et Rusticitata Dialogus (c. 1490), before the election could be confirmed, a junior cleric was deputed to grasp the pontifical testicles through the hole in the chair.