Anastasius III

Anastasius was a Roman, the son of Lucian, and he was elected in the spring or early summer of 911 with the assent of Theophylact, whose family had put Sergius III on the throne and would keep his successors there for a generation. He reigned about two years, and the sources for them are the privileges he signed. He confirmed the rights of the church of Pavia, gave the pallium to the bishop of Vercelli, and settled the standing of Hamburg-Bremen in favor of its archbishop, who was trying to keep the mission to the Danes alive with no converts to show for it. A letter of the patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, restored at Constantinople after the emperor's death, complained to him about Rome's approval of the fourth marriage and asked him to disown Sergius's legates; whether Anastasius answered is not known.

Rome under Anastasius was Theophylact's city: the master of the militia held the treasury and the fortresses, his wife Theodora held the title of senatrix, and the pope held the Lateran. The arrangement produced quiet, and Anastasius, who seems to have wanted nothing else, kept it. He died in 913, before the Saracens on the Garigliano had been dealt with and before the family that chose him had produced a pope with a will of his own. He was buried in Saint Peter's.