John VI

John, a Greek, was consecrated on 30 October 701, and his first test came from the side he was supposed to be on. The new exarch Theophylact, sailing from Sicily to Ravenna, stopped at Rome in 702 with orders that the Italians suspected were aimed at the pope, and the militias of the whole duchy rose against him. John shut the city gates, sent the clergy out to reason with the soldiers, and got the exarch away unharmed; the Liber Pontificalis says that the troops turned instead on the informers who had accompanied him. It was the second time in a decade that the Italian army had shown it would fight the emperor's officers for the pope, and the first time a pope had used the fact to protect one.

The Lombards were the other constant. In 702 Gisulf, duke of Benevento, raided Campania, burned and captured his way to within sight of Rome, and John sent priests with money from the church's treasury to buy him off and ransom the prisoners, which worked. The pattern of Gregory the Great's day, the pope as the paymaster who kept the Lombards out because the exarch could not, was now the settled order of things.

He died on 11 January 705 and was buried in Saint Peter's. Nothing is recorded of his origins beyond the word Greek, or of his life before the chair.