Pope John VI (701-705)

The pope who saved a Byzantine exarch from his own army

The first major episode of the pontificate is striking. In the 7th century, the exarch of Italy was the Byzantine emperor's military and civil representative in the peninsula, residing at Ravenna and exercising nominal control as far as Rome.^[7] In 701, Emperor Tiberius III Apsimar sent his chamberlain and patrician Theophylact from Sicily to Rome as the new exarch.^[8] The army of Italy, meaning the urban militias of the Italian cities, saw him as a threat to the newly elected pope. These militias marched on Rome, camped outside the walls and demanded that the exarch be lynched.

John VI did not send troops against the exarch. He did exactly the opposite: he sent priests to the militias and obtained their dispersal without bloodshed. The episode reveals a fact sometimes forgotten by Latin historiography: a Greek pope, at the beginning of the 8th century, could be more effective in protecting a senior Byzantine imperial official than the imperial institutions themselves.^[9]

The pope who ransomed the captives of a Lombard duke

While the exarch was isolated in Rome, the Lombard duke of Benevento, Gisulf I, took advantage of the disorder. He crossed the southern frontier of Roman territory, captured the towns of Sora, Arpino and Arce, advanced as far as Horrea, and pillaged and burned.^[10][11] John VI had no army with which to repel him. He therefore sent priests carrying money into the Lombard camp; they ransomed all the captives and secured Gisulf's withdrawal to his own lands.^[12][13]

This diplomatic intervention, without military victory, is one of the most Catholic acts of the whole pontificate. It embodies a conviction that will run through centuries of papal history: the liberation of a captive is reason enough for the successor of Peter to act, and the money of the Roman See is first of all a treasure for the poor and prisoners, not a treasure of prestige.

The pope who restored Wilfrid of York

In 704, an elderly bishop arrived in Rome from York. His name was Wilfrid, one of the great organizers of the English Church, already twice a traveler to Rome. He had again been expelled from his see by an English synod held at Austerfield around 702, under the authority of Archbishop Berhtwald of Canterbury.^[14][15] Wilfrid appealed to the pope. John VI convened a Roman synod lasting several months, which examined the case in an assembly of bishops speaking Greek — an embarrassment for the Northumbrian appellant, who did not understand that language, according to Eddius's account.^[16][17]

The synod ruled in Wilfrid's favor. John VI sent him back to England with letters to Kings Æthelred of Mercia and Aldfrith of Northumbria, as well as to Archbishop Berhtwald, requiring the convocation of a new English synod and the restoration of Wilfrid to his bishopric.^[18][19] The episode is decisive in two ways: it consecrates the appellate jurisdiction of the Apostolic See over the English Church; and it shows the solidity of universal communion between York, Canterbury and Rome, down to Eddius's account of the debates conducted in Greek before the Northumbrian appellant.^[20]

The pope and the Cottian Alps dossier

The fourth major dossier continues the same logic: recovering what belongs to the Church. The papal patrimony of the Cottian Alps, a band of territories across the western Alps, had been confiscated by the Lombards during the expansions of the 7th century. The Lombard king Aripert II (701-712) sought to maintain good relations with the papacy.^[21][22] It is under John VII that the donation is attested: the Catholic Encyclopedia credits him with the recovery of the papal patrimonies in the Cottian Alps, confiscated by the Lombards.^[23]

“He recovered from the Lombard king Aripert II the papal patrimonies in the Cottian Alps, which the Lombards had confiscated.” — Catholic Encyclopedia, notice of Pope John VII^[24]

For a modern reader this episode may seem technical. In reality it is a sign of things to come: Lombard power, despite its raids, begins to recognize legally a form of Church property in the peninsula. This logic will lead, half a century later, to the Donation of Pepin (754-756) and then to the birth of the Papal States. John VI does not lay the foundation stone: at most his pontificate sketches the idea — a mere hypothesis, since no act of restitution is attested under his name.

The Holy See file

The official biographical page of the Holy See gives three very sober reference points: 85th pope, beginning of pontificate on October 30, 701, end on January 11, 705, and Greek origin.^[25] No precise birth date is supplied. The official file serves as the canonical reference for the ordinal number and dates of the pontificate.

The Liber Pontificalis

The notice of the Liber Pontificalis devoted to John VI is the only Roman narrative source on his government. It is brief. It recalls his Greek origin, mentions gifts made to several Roman basilicas, recounts the arrival of Exarch Theophylact, the invasion of Gisulf, and concludes with his death and burial at St. Peter's.^[26] As with all popes of the early Middle Ages, the standard critical edition remains that of Louis Duchesne, vol. 1 (1886); the English translation used is that of Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs, Liverpool University Press, 1989, which covers the notices up to 715 and therefore includes John VI.^[27]

“Ioannes, natione Graecus.” — Liber Pontificalis, opening words of the notice of John VI^[28]

The lives of Saint Wilfrid

The episodes involving Wilfrid are illuminated by two Anglo-Latin narratives. The first is the Vita Wilfridi of Stephen of Ripon (Eddius Stephanus), a disciple of Wilfrid, who reports the Roman appeal and the saint's embarrassment before the Greek language spoken by the bishops summoned by John VI.^[29] The second is book V, chapter 19 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede the Venerable, completed in 731, which summarizes the papal decision with great sobriety.^[30]

Modern syntheses

Three works dominate contemporary research:

• Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1, part 2 (London, Kegan Paul, 1902), the basis for Mann's notice in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910).^[31]
• Andrew J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590-752 (Lexington Books, 2007), a reference synthesis for the sequence of the Greek popes of the 7th-8th centuries.^[32]
• Ottorino Bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzio e ai Longobardi (Bologna, Cappelli, 1941), an Italian reference for relations between Rome, the exarchate and the Lombard duchies.^[33]

The table below summarizes the chronological markers of the pontificate, from the death of Saint Sergius I to the return of Justinian II, indicating for each milestone the ancient or official source that establishes it.

An almost uninterrupted succession of Eastern popes

Since the election of Pope Agatho in 678, the Roman see had been held, with very rare exceptions, by Eastern popes, Greeks from Anatolia, Sicily, Calabria, Syria or the Christian Levant. Andrew Ekonomou described an “almost unbroken succession of Eastern pontiffs extending over the next three-quarters of a century.”^[34] John VI belongs to this series, between Saint Sergius I (Syrian family from Antioch, educated in Sicily according to tradition^[35]) and John VII (a Greek, son of Plato^[36]).

This Orientalization was not a “Byzantine captivity” of the papacy, despite an old Latin interpretation. It was first of all the result of population movements: the Arab conquest displaced thousands of Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian monks and clerics toward Italy; Muslim pressure on Asia Minor also pushed families from the East and other cities toward Rome. The Roman clergy became bilingual; Greek monasteries multiplied on the seven hills.^[37]

The meaning of a Greek pope

The future John VI belonged to that ancient and deeply Marian Greek Church which, since the ecumenical council of 431 (Council of Ephesus), had defined Mary as Theotokos against Nestorius. It was in the liturgical and theological culture of the Christian East — the very culture that had defended the divinity of Christ and the divine motherhood of Mary — that a Greek pope of the early 8th century was formed.

This memory is not anecdotal for our dossier. When Wilfrid of York heard the Roman bishops debating in Greek around him in 704, he discovered concretely that the see of Peter in Rome was served by priests formed in the liturgical and theological culture of the Christian East, the same culture that had defended the divinity of Christ against Arius and the divine motherhood of Mary against Nestorius.

Roman deacon before the election

The sources do not specify the exact office John VI held in the curia before October 30, 701. The Catholic Encyclopedia notice only indicates that he was present as a cleric in Rome and was raised to the pontificate at the death of Sergius I.^[38] Mann's Lives of the Popes repeats this information cautiously, in the absence of primary testimony. Several modern secondary notices present him as a deacon in Rome; but this qualification, though possible, rests on no preserved mention in the Liber Pontificalis or in papal letters of the time.

Within that uncertainty, the one sure fact is the continuity of the Greek Roman clergy. A Greek cleric raised to the pontificate in Rome only weeks after the death of his predecessor implies a career already long in the service of the Lateran.

After Saint Sergius I

Saint Sergius I died in Rome on September 8, 701, after fourteen years as pope. He had been a pope of authority — see the article Pope Saint Sergius I for his refusal of the Quinisext canons and his liturgical contributions. His death left Rome in a state of relative peace with Constantinople, where Tiberius III Apsimar now reigned in place of Justinian II, deposed in 695.

A brief vacancy

The vacancy lasted about seven and a half weeks — 52 days between September 8 and October 30, 701.^[39] John VI could therefore be consecrated on October 30, 701, without a long diplomatic delay.^[40] This practical autonomy is one of the key factors that made possible, a few weeks later, the episode of Exarch Theophylact.

A Greek pope acceptable to all

The election itself seems to have been peaceful. John VI arrived neither as a Byzantine court candidate nor as an opposition champion. His quality as a Roman cleric of Greek origin matched exactly the dominant profile of the curia of the time; his personal qualities enabled him, from the first months, to calm a serious crisis between the exarch and the Italian militias.

Why Tiberius III sent his exarch to Rome

The unusual presence of the exarch in Rome, his normal residence being Ravenna, was probably linked to the election of John VI itself. According to an old hypothesis — a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica notice later repeated by Wikipedia — Emperor Tiberius III Apsimar, disapproving the Roman election, is said to have sent Exarch Theophylact from Sicily to put pressure on the new pope, or even to prepare his deposition; an interpretation not corroborated by modern syntheses.^[41] The episode directly recalls the humiliations inflicted half a century earlier on Saint Martin I, arrested in Rome in 653, deported to Constantinople, tried and exiled in Crimea by Constans II.

Arrival in Rome and mobilization of the militias

No sooner had Theophylact arrived in Rome than the urban militias of all Italy, the exercitus Italiae, those local troops forming the basis of Byzantine defense in the peninsula, converged on the City. They camped outside the walls and displayed open hostility toward the exarch. The memory of Martin I's fate was still vivid. According to several ancient notices, rumor had it that the soldiers demanded the surrender of certain informers who had stirred the emperor against the pope.^[42]

The pope's intervention: priests and appeasement

John VI did not name the informers. He handed no one over. He performed exactly the gesture expected from a Catholic bishop in the strong sense of the word: he sent a group of priests to meet the militias, speak to them, calm them and obtain their dispersal. The sedition subsided without massacre. The exarch was saved.

“Unwilling that blood should be shed, the most holy pope sent a number of priests, and he succeeded in pacifying them.” — Liber Pontificalis, notice of John VI, paraphrasing Mann (1902)^[43]

What John VI saved: an exarch's life and the peace of Rome

What was at stake in this episode went beyond Theophylact himself. If the army of Italy had lynched the exarch beneath the walls of Rome, imperial reprisals would have followed immediately. The peninsula would probably have seen the reopening of the sequence begun fifty years earlier against Martin I. John VI avoided that scenario in a matter of days. Andrew Ekonomou stresses that this intervention quietly changed the relationship between Rome and Constantinople: from now on, it was the pope who defended, morally, a senior imperial official against local sedition, not the reverse.^[44]

That reversal would remain. A few decades later, Pope Gregory II would openly refuse Emperor Leo III the Isaurian the application of the iconoclastic edicts. The trajectory that made such resistance possible begins in part under John VI: in Rome, the pope becomes the only authority capable of holding together the Italian militia, the Latin and Greek clergy, and the imperial representative.

The Lombard duchy of Benevento in 702-705

The duchy of Benevento, founded at the end of the 6th century, was one of the two great southern Lombard duchies, alongside Spoleto. It enjoyed broad autonomy from the Lombard king established at Pavia. Gisulf I probably ruled there from 689 until about 706.^[45] His foreign policy consisted in methodically extending Beneventan territory westward and southward, at the expense of the Byzantine territories still held by Naples and by the Roman duchy.

The capture of Sora, Arpino, Arce and the march to Horrea

During the Roman crisis caused by Exarch Theophylact, or very shortly afterward, Gisulf went on the offensive. He took in succession the frontier places of Sora, Arpino and Arce, in the south of present-day Lazio. He pushed as far as Horrea — which the Catholic Encyclopedia locates either at Pozzuoli (Horrea Puteoli) or at the fundus Horrea on the Via Latina^[46] —, pillaged, burned and captured a large population.^[47][48] The Roman frontier retreated by several dozen kilometers.

Papal diplomacy: priests, money, captives

John VI had no army. The exarchate of Ravenna was distant, and the army of Italy had only just dispersed after the Theophylact affair. The pope therefore sent into the Lombard camp a delegation of priests carrying money. These priests ransomed the captives whom Gisulf had taken and persuaded the duke to return to his own territories.^[49][50]

“Moved by the sufferings of the people, Pope John sent a number of priests carrying money into the camp of the Lombard duke, to redeem all the captives Gisulf had taken.” — Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 1, part 2, 1902, paraphrased by Ekonomou^[51]

Why this intervention matters

The episode is one of the most precious preserved by the sources on papal practice at the time. There is no battle, no anticipated crusade, no threat of anathema; there is a corporal work of mercy in the classical sense: to ransom captives, one of the seven corporal works of mercy according to tradition.

The Catholic pope does, by the means available, what imperial officials no longer know how, or no longer can, do. This feature will become one of the most durable justifications of the papal temporal power: to ensure the minimal order that makes ordinary Christian life possible in Italy. John VI had no elaborate political theory; he acted according to the demands of charity, and without formulating it opened the furrow that the popes of the 8th century would deepen.

Who was Saint Wilfrid of York?

Wilfrid (c. 633-709) was one of the great English bishops of the 7th century. Formed at Lindisfarne and then sent to Rome for further training, he was the most effective defender, at the Synod of Whitby in 664, of the Roman practice for the calculation of Easter against the Celtic tradition. Bishop of York on several occasions and founder of abbeys (Ripon, Hexham), he was first driven from his see by King Ecgfrith in 678, and then made his first journey to Rome to appeal, an appeal received favorably by Pope Agatho.^[52][53]

The appeal after the Synod of Austerfield (702)

At the end of the 7th century, Wilfrid was again a bishop. But Archbishop Berhtwald of Canterbury, supported by King Aldfrith of Northumbria and by Bishops Bosa of York and John of Beverley (then bishop of Hexham), convened around 702 the Synod of Austerfield, which confirmed his removal from the see of York. Wilfrid, already elderly, then chose to make a third and final journey to Rome. There he found Pope John VI, twenty-five years after his first appeal, received favorably by Pope Agatho in 679.^[54][55]

A Roman synod of several months

John VI did not decide by summary decree. He convened a real Roman synod, which examined the case for several months during the year 704. The assembly was composed chiefly of Greek-speaking bishops, a direct sign of the previously described Orientalization of the Roman clergy of the period. Eddius Stephanus reports the detail in the Vita Wilfridi, chapters 46 and following (Colgrave edition), with a mixture of admiration and embarrassment: Wilfrid found himself unable to follow deliberations held in Greek, a language he did not know.^[56][57]

The judgment: acquittal and letters to the English kings

At the end of the synod, the assembly unanimously judged that the accusers had in part brought false accusations against Wilfrid, and John VI undertook to write to the kings of the English — Æthelred of Mercia and Aldfrith of Northumbria — to have him restored to his bishopric^[58]: he thus confirmed the decisions already rendered in his favor by his predecessors.^[59] The sentence did not execute itself: sent back to England with the pontifical letters, it was obeyed only the following year^[60], through a new English settlement.

The result would be obtained after an additional delay. At the Synod of Nidd in 706, under John VI's successor, Wilfrid was partially reinstated: he recovered Ripon and Hexham, and remained a bishop until his death in 709, without, however, recovering York properly speaking.

Berhtwald of Canterbury and the pallium

At the same time, John VI confirmed Berhtwald in his archbishopric of Canterbury. Berhtwald had been consecrated in 693 by the metropolitan of Lyons, but the Roman sending of the pallium, symbol of full communion with the see of Peter and of the exercise of metropolitan functions, had to come from Rome.^[61][62] The act did not erase the decision in Wilfrid's favor; it framed it: Roman appellate primacy does not abolish the ordinary metropolitan structure of the English Church. It purifies that structure when it has failed in justice.

The papal patrimony in northern Italy

The Patrimony of Saint Peter had designated, since the 6th century, the body of landed estates possessed by the Roman Church in Italy and outside Italy. An important part of this patrimony lay in the Cottian Alps, a region across the western Alps, between present-day Piedmont and the Dauphiné valleys. During the Lombard conquests of the 7th century, this zone passed under Lombard control and the patrimony was effectively confiscated.

Aripert II, a Lombard friend of the papacy

King Aripert II ruled the Lombards from 701 to 712. He belonged to the Bavarian-Lombard branch of the descendants of Agilulf. He pursued a policy of rapprochement with the papacy.^[63]

Negotiations under John VI

The act of restitution is not attested under John VI: the Catholic Encyclopedia attributes the definitive reception of the patrimonies to his successor, John VII.^[64] The Encyclopedia.com notice confirms that the definitive signing of the donation belongs to the pontificate of John VII.^[65]

The distinction is valuable: only the reception under John VII is established by the verified sources; a preparatory agreement concluded under John VI remains a hypothesis, not an attested fact. The two pontificates are almost contemporaries, the second succeeding the first after a vacancy of less than two months.

Ordinations

The Liber Pontificalis indicates that John VI carried out a certain number of ordinations of bishops, priests and deacons during his short pontificate. The numerical detail depends on the manuscripts; the notices of Encyclopedia.com and the Catholic Encyclopedia observe that his sacramental activity, without being considerable, corresponds to the normal rhythm of a pope who does not spend all his time in travel or councils.^[66][67]

Material works in Rome

Like most Byzantine popes, John VI is credited by the Liber Pontificalis with gifts to Roman basilicas.^[68] The precise detail put forward by some modern notices — a new ambo at Saint Andrew's, an altar cloth at San Marco, veils at San Paolo fuori le Mura — is not found in Mann's synthesis for the Catholic Encyclopedia and cannot be maintained as it stands.^[69]

These works are not spectacular. They do, however, signal a liturgical continuity uninterrupted by the pontificate: despite the sedition of Theophylact, the invasion of Gisulf, the Wilfrid synod and the Lombard negotiation, the ordinary government of the Roman basilicas, the sacraments and the ordinations continued.

A discreet administration

No large corpus of papal letters from John VI has reached us. This documentary discretion contrasts with the pontificates of Gregory the Great (nearly 900 preserved letters) or, later, Gregory II. It does not allow us to conclude that John VI did not write; it indicates only that the archives have not preserved his correspondence, with the possible exception of the letters to Kings Æthelred and Aldfrith and to Berhtwald concerning Wilfrid, which survive only by mention in the Anglo-Saxon lives.^[70]

January 11, 705

John VI died in Rome on January 11, 705.^[71] The Holy See file gives the date without specifying the cause; no ancient account mentions martyrdom or any famous illness.^[72]

Buried at St. Peter's

According to the Liber Pontificalis, he was buried in the old Constantinian basilica of Saint Peter, in the immediate vicinity of the apostle's tomb.^[73] The tomb would not become the object of a particular cult in later centuries; John VI was not inscribed in the Roman liturgical calendar.

John VII and the return of Justinian II

The see remained vacant for less than two months. On March 1, 705, the Greek John VII was elected and consecrated. Seven months later, Justinian II, the Byzantine emperor overthrown in 695 and then exiled, recovered the throne of Constantinople through an alliance with the Bulgar khan Tervel and had Tiberius III Apsimar executed.^[74][75] Justinian II's return marks the end of the period opened by the deposition of 695 and plunges the Roman Church, under John VII, into new imperial pressure, especially over the reception of the canons of the Quinisext council.

John VI escaped that pressure. Dead in January 705, he did not have to answer a Justinian II returned to power. This historical discretion contributes, paradoxically, to giving his pontificate its Catholic readability: no doctrinal drama, no personal conflict with an emperor, but four concrete dossiers handled in time.

A pope without major doctrinal drama

John VI did not convene a council, did not define a dogma, and did not confront a new heresy. In this respect, his pontificate differs from those of Leo the Great, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Martin I or the great Carolingian popes. This absence of doctrinal brilliance is a fact, not a deficiency: the Catholic mission of the bishop of Rome is not only to define, but also to protect, liberate, judge, restore.

But a pope who shows the moral authority of the See

Across the four great dossiers of his pontificate, John VI acted without armed force, without the advantage of free territory, and with a moral authority sufficient to calm a military mutiny, ransom Lombard captives, restore a Northumbrian bishop, and prepare a Lombard territorial donation. This fourfold intervention gives, twenty years ahead of time, a miniature image of the medieval papacy at work: European moral arbitration, concrete charity, defense of bishops against local political pressures, and firm but uncynical patrimonial management.

A Greek pope in a still Byzantine Rome

The pontificate of John VI is, finally, a discreet turning point. It is one of the last moments when Greek Rome still largely identifies with Byzantine Rome: seven months after his death, Justinian II returned to power and imposed his demands on John VII. Fifteen years later, Gregory II, the first Latin-speaking pope after that long Eastern series — before one last Eastern pope, the Syrian Gregory III —, would openly refuse Leo III the Isaurian the application of the iconoclastic edicts; the political divorce between Rome and Byzantium would begin. Seen from a distance, John VI's pacifying work takes on another meaning: Greek papacy reached in him its point of equilibrium, capable of protecting the imperial exarch without surrendering any of its own jurisdiction.

“This period, between 701 and 750, saw Greeks outnumber Latins in the Roman clergy by nearly three and a half to one.” — Andrew J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes, 2007, paraphrase^[76]

• Pope Saint Sergius I — the immediate predecessor, an Eastern pope who refused to sign the canons of the Quinisext
• Pope John VII — the immediate successor, who obtained the definitive donation of the Cottian Alps by Aripert II
• Pope Sisinnius — elected in 708, after John VII (705-707): 20 days of pontificate (January 15-February 4, 708)
• Saint Wilfrid (c. 633-709) — the bishop of York whose restoration John VI ordered in 704 (partly carried out at Nidd in 706)
• Pope Saint Martin I (649-655) — the extreme earlier case of a Roman pope arrested and deported by a Byzantine emperor
• Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) — the sixth ecumenical council, a doctrinal inheritance still active under John VI
• Council of Ephesus (431) — place of the definition of Mary as Theotokos, in the Greek East from which John VI came