Benedict IV

Benedict was a Roman, the son of Mammalus, ordained priest by Formosus and elected early in 900 by the party John IX had left in control. His three and a half years are thinly recorded and unusually well spoken of. Flodoard, the historian of Reims, praised his generosity to the poor and his love of justice, and his epitaph called him great; in a decade of popes who lasted weeks, one who lasted years and did no visible harm earned the adjective.

He acted, when he acted, on the side of order. When Archbishop Fulk of Reims was murdered in June 900 by men of Count Baldwin of Flanders, Benedict excommunicated Baldwin and his accomplices and confirmed the sentence of the Frankish bishops. He restored Bishop Argrim of Langres, who had been driven from his see, and he took in a Greek bishop, Malacenus of Amasea, who had fled the Byzantine court, with letters commending him to every church he passed. In Italy he had one card and played it. Louis, king of Provence, grandson of the emperor Louis II through his mother, was invited south by magnates who had tired of Berengar, and in February 901 Benedict crowned him emperor in Saint Peter's. Louis lasted a year. Berengar drove him back over the Alps in 902, and when he came again in 905 Berengar caught him at Verona and put out his eyes.

Benedict died in July 903 and was buried in Saint Peter's. His successor Leo V lasted a month before a priest of the Lateran threw him into prison, and the Iron Century began.