Pope Lando

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Pope

Lando
Bishop of Rome
Church Catholic Church
Papacy beganAugust or September 913
Papacy endedFebruary or March 914
Predecessor Anastasius III
Successor John X
Previous postCardinal-Deacon of the Holy Roman Church (910–913)
Personal details
Born
Sabina, Papal States
DiedMarch 914
Rome, Papal States

Lando (also known as Landus) [a] [1] was the pope from 913 until his death in 914. [2] [3] [4] His short pontificate fell during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum (904–964).

Contents

According to the Liber pontificalis , Lando was born in the Sabina (Papal States), and his father was a wealthy Lombard count named Taino [b] from Fornovo. [4] [5] [6] The start of his pontificate has been placed as early as July or as late as November 913. [5] The Liber claims that his pontificate lasted only four months and twenty-two days. A different list of popes, appended to a continuation of the Liber pontificalis at the Abbey of Farfa and quoted by Gregory of Catino in his Chronicon Farfense in the twelfth century, gives Lando a pontificate of six months and twenty-six days. This is closer to the duration recorded by Flodoard of Reims, writing in the tenth century, of six months and ten days. [5] The end of his pontificate can be dated to between 5 February 914, when he is mentioned in a document of Ravenna, and late March or early April, when his successor, John X, was elected. [5]

Lando is thought to have been the candidate of Count Theophylact I of Tusculum and Senatrix Theodora, who were the most powerful couple in Rome at the time. [7] The Theophylacti controlled papal finances through their monopoly of the office of vestararius , and also controlled the Roman militia and Senate. [5] During Lando's reign, Arab raiders, operating from their stronghold on the Garigliano river, destroyed the cathedral of San Salvatore in Vescovio in his native diocese. [8] No document of Lando's chancery has survived. The only act of his reign that is recorded is a donation to the diocese of Sabina mentioned in a judicial act of 1431. [5] Lando made the large personal gift in order to restore the cathedral of San Salvatore so that the clergy who were then living at Toffia could return. [6] [4]

Lando was the last pope to have a papal name never used before until Pope John Paul I in 1978, and the last with a unique name requiring no regnal number until Pope Francis in 2013. [9] [10]

Notes

  1. ↑ In the second declension. Although sometimes less common in Medieval Latin, names ending in -o in Latin tend to be written in third declension (e.g. Landonis, Platonis in genitive case).
  2. ↑ Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1897), Vol. 3, p. 238, gives his father's name as Raino.

References

  1. ↑ Platina, Bartolomeo (1479), The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII, vol. I, London: Griffith Farran & Co., p. 245, retrieved 2013-04-25
  2. ↑ Pietro Fedele, "Ricerche per la storia di Rome e del papato al. sec. X", Archivo della Reale Società Romana di Storia Patria, 33 (1910): 177–247.
  3. ↑ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Lando"  . Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  4. 1 2 3 J. N. D. Kelly and Michael Walsh, "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 120.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Umberto Longo, "Landone, papa", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani63 (2004).
  6. 1 2 Harald Zimmerman, "Lando", in Philippe Levillain, ed., The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, Gaius–Proxies (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 896.
  7. ↑ "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, ed. J. N. D. Kelly, (Oxford University Press, 1988), 121.
  8. ↑ Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, (Basic Books, 2009), 175.
  9. ↑ Budde, Michael L. (June 2, 2017). New World Pope: Pope Francis and the Future of the Church. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN   9781498283724 – via Google Books.
  10. ↑ Collinge, William J. (August 15, 2021). Historical Dictionary of Catholicism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   9781538130186 – via Google Books.
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