Pope Leo VI (928-929)

A pope almost without a biography

Leo VI is one of those medieval popes whose life forces the historian to read between the lines. The early notices give neither date of birth, nor education, nor developed career. Horace K. Mann sums up the problem with rare frankness: the two immediate successors of John X are "mere shadows whose entrances and exits we barely know" (translation).^[8]

This documentary poverty does not mean the pontificate is without interest. On the contrary, it reveals the state of the Roman papacy in the 920s: the institution endures, pontifical succession continues, canonical letters are dispatched, but the Roman political scene absorbs almost all of the pope's visibility. Leo VI is not known because he failed; he is little known because the archives of the moment are themselves poor and his reign too brief to produce a lasting work.

A short pontificate at a crossroads

Leo VI arrives between two important sequences. Before him, John X had pursued an energetic policy: struggle against the Saracens, Italian alliances, intervention in Slavic and Dalmatian affairs.^[9][10] After him, the papacy passes swiftly to Stephen VII, then to John XI, son of Marozia — disputed paternity between Sergius III (Liutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, II, 48, and the Liber Pontificalis) and Alberic I of Spoleto (Mann's deduction from Flodoard of Reims, who presents John XI as son of Marozia and brother of Alberic II)^[11] — which marks the maximum grip of the Roman aristocracy on the see of Peter.^[12]

His interest therefore lies in his position: he is the transitional pope between the violent collapse of John X's government and a papacy even more directly tied to the house of Marozia. Where John X had tried to govern Italy, Leo VI mostly administers the immediate legacy: he concludes, in writing, the Dalmatian dossier his predecessor had left open.

A single letter can suffice to measure a pontifical function

For Leo VI, the letter to Dalmatia is almost everything. But it is rich enough to understand the pontifical function of the tenth century: confirming a provincial council, granting the pallium (the white woollen band given to the metropolitan, sign of his jurisdiction received from Rome), arbitrating between a metropolitan and a rebellious bishop, threatening excommunication in case of usurpation of jurisdiction, and attaching a local conflict to the canonical order received from the ancient councils.^[13]

This point is theologically important. A politically humiliated papacy is not a doctrinally abolished papacy. Leo VI does not dominate Rome like a great prince; yet, from Rome, he still speaks as the ultimate judge of an ecclesiastical controversy located across the Adriatic.

The solid data

The most solid data fits in a few lines: Leo VI was Roman, son of a certain Christopher; he served the church of Santa Susanna before his election; he reigned during the second half of 928; he intervened in Dalmatia; he was probably buried in St Peter's.^[14][15]

The Holy See's official list gives a pontificate begun in May or June 928 and ended in December 928 or January 929.^[16] Mann proposes a slightly later alternative: following Jaffé, election in June 928 and death in February 929; following Duchesne, consecration a little before June and death in December 928 or January 929.^[17]

The fragile data

Three claims circulate often but must be handled with caution. First, the idea that Leo VI was directly placed on the throne by Marozia: Mann judges it "perhaps probable" (translation), but not demonstrated by any decisive source.^[18] Second, the idea that he died in prison: Mann judges it on the contrary "certainly improbable". Finally, the assertion of a precise age or year of birth, sometimes repeated online, is not sufficiently grounded to be retained here.

Why are the sources so poor?

The problem comes partly from the very tradition of the Liber Pontificalis. After the great notices of previous centuries, the pontifical biographies of the tenth and eleventh centuries become extremely brief: they often give the origin, the length of the reign, a few ordinations, sometimes the burial, and almost nothing more.^[19] Leo VI belongs exactly to this poor zone.

The case therefore requires a rule of method: not turning the silence of the sources into historical fiction. The true article on Leo VI is not a biography full of anecdotes; it is a sober reconstruction of what the sources allow us to affirm.

Rome under the aristocratic families

At the beginning of the tenth century, Rome was not governed as a stable pontifical monarchy. The great local families controlled fortresses, alliances, appointments and often even access to the Lateran. The figure of Marozia, daughter of Theophylact and Theodora, dominates this moment. She married successively Alberic of Spoleto, Guy of Tuscany and Hugh of Italy; she held political power strong enough to make and unmake Roman balances.^[20]

This period has received violent names in modern historiography: saeculum obscurum, pornocracy, rule of the courtesans. These phrases say something of the crisis, but they often come from polemical sources and must be purged of their taste for scandal. What is historically certain is the weakening of the Roman see's political freedom and the growing dependence of several pontifical elections on aristocratic factions.

John X, a powerful then imprisoned predecessor

John X was not an insignificant pope. He intervened in Italian affairs, worked to contain the Saracen threats, acted in Dalmatia and the Slavic world, and tried to play a political role of his own.^[21][22] It was precisely this autonomy that ended by making him dangerous in the eyes of Marozia and her husband Guy of Tuscany.

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that Peter, the pope's brother and prefect of Rome, was murdered in June 928; John X was then seized and cast into prison, where he died shortly after. Smothering in his bed is only a rumour reported by Liutprand, to which Kirsch gives little credit; Flodoard of Reims asserts, for his part, that John X died of anguish.^[23] In any case, Leo VI was elected in the wake of a violent dispossession of the previous pope.

Leo VI and Marozia: necessary caution

Britannica presents Leo VI as elected by the senatrix Marozia.^[24] Mann is more cautious: those who say he was put on the throne by Marozia say something perhaps probable, but the historian cannot prove it absolutely.^[25] The nuance matters. In a Catholic encyclopaedia, the crisis must be named without turning a probability into a certainty.

What can be said with certainty is more limited: Leo VI reigned in a Rome controlled by Marozia; his election immediately followed the removal of John X; nothing shows he could have resisted this regime politically. But his Dalmatian letter proves he was not merely a figurehead: his pontificate had at least one real canonical act.

A Roman, son of Christopher

Leo VI is given as Roman. His father, Christopher, had been primicerius under John VIII; his name appears in several pontifical documents of 876.^[26] The primicerius was not a mere secretary: in the Roman administration, it designates a head of office or dignitary of first rank. If the identification is correct, Leo VI thus came from a background familiar with the pontifical chancery.

The Catholic Encyclopedia sums up this filiation by saying that Christopher had been "prime-minister of John VIII". The formula is modern and approximate, but it conveys the idea well: Leo's family was not unknown to the Roman apparatus.^[27]

Santa Susanna: an ancient Roman title

Before his election, Leo VI served the church of Santa Susanna, on the Quirinal. Mann simply writes that he "was serving the Church of St. Susanna"; the Catholic Encyclopedia designates him as cardinal-priest of Santa Susanna.^[28][29] We must avoid importing too hastily into the tenth century the later cardinal structure: the Roman title exists, historians use the vocabulary of cardinal-priest, but the college of cardinals did not yet have the institutional form it would take later.

Santa Susanna nevertheless places Leo VI within the urban clergy of Rome. He was not a foreign bishop parachuted into the Lateran, nor a great reforming monk come from afar: he was a Roman cleric, from the local ecclesiastical fabric, chosen in a moment of crisis by a city dominated by its families.

Why Dalmatia was a problem

Tenth-century Dalmatia was a complex space: ancient Roman cities on the coast, Slavic and Croat populations inland, the heritage of the Church of Salona, the rise of the see of Split/Spalato, and tensions around the see of Nin. The question was not only religious; it also touched relations between the romanised Dalmatian cities, Croat power and Roman influence.^[30][31]

Under John X, a synod of Split/Spalato had already tried to settle the question. The most sensitive point was the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Spalato over the Croat bishop of Nin. The council had affirmed this dependence, but Bishop Gregory of Nin had appealed to Rome.^[32]

The synod of Split/Spalato and the legacy of John X

Mann explains that John X had reserved the decision of the conflict to Rome. He had sent new legates, led by Bishop Madalbert. They first negotiated a peace between Croats and Bulgars, then presided at Spalato over a synod — the one Mann dates to 926-927 and recent historiography identifies as the second synod of Split, dated 928 — in the presence of the king of Croatia and his nobles.^[33][34]

After examining the ancient customs of the province, the synod decided that Spalato would keep the primacy. As there had formerly been no bishop at Nin, Gregory had to choose an ancient see and exercise his ministry there — Leo VI's letter would fix Scardona.^[35] The synod even added, with an irony Mann notes, that if Gregory absolutely wanted the weight of the episcopate, he could take two other ancient dioceses "to his loss and theirs", so difficult were communications in the country.^[36]

Leo VI's letter to the bishops of Dalmatia

The death of John X prevented the previous pope from closing the dossier. Leo VI thus inherited a decision ready to be confirmed. His letter begins by recalling that bishops must honour their metropolitan of Spalato and walk "in order and according to the norm of justice" to reach divine contemplation without fear.^[37]

"It is fitting that you render to your metropolitan, the archbishop of the holy Church of Spalato, sovereign reverence, so that, walking in order and according to the norm of justice, you may reach, safe and intrepid, divine contemplation." — Leo VI, letter to the bishops of Dalmatia (Epistola ad episcopos Dalmatiae, PL 132, col. 814C-815A; translation)^[38]

The heart of the text is disciplinary. Leo VI reproaches the Dalmatian bishops for appropriating foreign parishes "as by brigandage" and for taking a profane name of which the ancient Fathers had deprived them. He orders each bishop to remain within his own limits; he wills the archbishop of Spalato to keep his parish in Croat land as the ancient Church of Salona kept it; he commands Gregory to exercise his ministry only at Scardona and threatens excommunication should he again usurp foreign parishes.^[39]

The pallium granted to Archbishop John of Spalato

Leo VI also states he entrusted to John, archbishop of Spalato, the pallium and the use of the pallium, according to ancient custom.^[40] The pallium is not a decoration: it manifests the metropolitan's communion with Rome and the jurisdiction recognised to him over an ecclesiastical province. In this dossier, the pontifical gesture confirms Spalato's authority against Nin's excessive autonomy.

This decision matters for Croat religious history. It shows Rome did not suppress the ecclesial presence in Croat land, but attached it to a metropolitan architecture inherited from Dalmatian Christian antiquity. The continuity from Salona to Spalato here becomes a canonical argument.

The papacy can be politically weak and canonically active

Leo VI does not have the stature of a Leo the Great, a Nicholas I or a John VIII. Nor did he have time to leave a great work. But his case avoids a frequent error: believing that political weakness cancels all ecclesial function.

His Dalmatian letter shows the contrary. The pope intervenes in a distant territorial conflict, confirms a metropolitan organisation, speaks in the name of conciliar discipline, threatens a spiritual sanction, and grants the pallium. In other words, at a moment when Roman freedom is damaged, the Petrine function continues to produce concrete acts.

The silence of the sources is no proof of spiritual insignificance

Ptolemy of Lucca, quoted by Mann, already said he found nothing on Leo VI except that he "exercised no tyranny and died in peace" and that most authors said he was buried in St Peter's.^[41] The formula is thin, but it is also precious. In a brutal century, exercising no tyranny and dying in peace is no small thing.

"He exercised no tyranny and died in peace." — Ptolemy of Lucca, summary of Leo VI's memory (Historia ecclesiastica, bk 17, ch. 4; translation), quoted by Horace K. Mann^[42]

This sentence cannot be turned into an implicit canonisation. Leo VI is not venerated as a saint in the Roman calendar. But it suffices to correct a purely scandalous reading of the tenth century: not all pontiffs of this period reduce to the intrigues surrounding them.

A useful pontificate for understanding continuity

Leo VI counts above all as a link. Between John X and Stephen VII, between Rome and Dalmatia, between Salona's ancient prestige and Split's rise, he ensures administrative and canonical continuity. The history of the Church is not composed only of great doctors and reforming popes; it also holds through these short pontificates that transmit, confirm and stabilise.

A memory almost reduced to a duration

The chronicler Flodoard preserves the traditional duration of the pontificate: seven months and five days. Mann quotes his Latin verses (De triumphis Christi apud Italiam, PL 135, col. 832A):

"Pro quo celsa Petri sextus Leo regmina sumens, Mensibus haec septem servat, quinisque diebus : Praedecessorumque petit consortia vatum." That is (translation): "In his place, Leo the sixth assumes Peter's august government; he keeps it seven months and five days, then joins his predecessors in the company of the seers." — Flodoard of Reims, verses on Leo VI (De triumphis Christi apud Italiam, PL 135, col. 832A; translation), quoted by Horace K. Mann^[43]

The poetry is more solemn than informative. It gives almost nothing on the pope's acts; it simply inscribes Leo VI in Peter's succession. That is precisely the point: pontifical memory retains less his personality than his place in the chain.

A modern error to avoid: confusing Pope Leo VI with Leo VI the Wise

The name Leo VI also designates the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), far more famous for his legislative work and Byzantine matrimonial crises.^[44] The two figures must not be confused. Pope Leo VI was a Roman who died around 928-929; Emperor Leo VI was a ruler of Constantinople who died in 912. The homonymy explains some misleading search results.

Place in the series of Pope Leos

In the series of Pope Leos, Leo VI is a small pontificate between two historical masses. The first Leos — above all Leo the Great — embody Rome's doctrinal and pastoral authority in late antiquity. The later medieval and modern Leos, such as Leo IX or Leo XIII, carry great moments of reform or social doctrine. Leo VI, for his part, recalls that pontifical succession also passes through poor hours, when the pope can do almost nothing but hold his office and posit one just act.

• Read the neighbouring article on John X, indispensable for understanding the crisis of 928.
• Read the article on John VIII, whose pontificate explains the administrative milieu of Christopher, Leo VI's father.
• Read the article on Leo VII, a close successor in the same obscure period.
• Read the dossier on the Papal States to place Rome, the aristocratic families and the temporal weakness of the Holy See.