Gregory V

Bruno was born about 972, son of Otto, duke of Carinthia, and great-grandson of Otto I, and was chaplain to his cousin Otto III, aged twenty-four, when the king, marching to Rome for his crown in 996, heard that John XV was dead and named him. He was consecrated on 3 May 996 as Gregory V, the first German pope, and on 21 May he crowned Otto emperor in Saint Peter's. He asked the emperor to pardon Crescentius II, who had bullied John XV; Otto did, and went home. In the autumn Crescentius threw Gregory out, and in February 997 set up as pope John Philagathos, a Calabrian Greek who had been Otto's tutor and was bishop of Piacenza; Gregory, from Pavia, condemned them both and waited for the emperor.

Restored, Gregory was severe. At a synod in 998 he condemned Robert II of France's marriage to his cousin Bertha and put the king under penance; he reinstated Arnulf at Reims, and Gerbert, who had lost the see, got Ravenna instead. He died on 18 February 999, aged about twenty-seven, so suddenly that poison was suspected, though malaria in a Roman February is the likelier cause. He was buried in Saint Peter's, and Otto chose his old tutor Gerbert to replace him. The antipope's number, John XVI, was never reused.