BLONDEL, DAVID French Protestant minis ter, was professor of history at Amsterdam. His works show a con siderable critical faculty. They include a treatise on the so-called False Decretals; and two treatises, Eclaircissement de la question si une femme a ete assise au siege papal de Rome (1647), and De Joanna Papissa (1659), in which, with much learning, the myth of "Pope Joan" is destroyed. The exposure caused some indigna tion in Protestant circles, since it disposed of a scandal useful in polemics; nevertheless all the works of Blondel were in 1925 still on the Index of books forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church.