John XI

John was Marozia's son, born about 910, and the Liber Pontificalis says his father was Pope Sergius III; other sources make him the son of her first husband, Alberic of Spoleto, and the question has never been settled. Marozia had waited through two caretaker popes for him to be old enough, and in March 931, aged about twenty, he was consecrated. He did what she required. He confirmed the privileges of Cluny for its abbot Odo, gave the pallium to the archbishop of Reims whom Marozia's ally Hugh of Provence favored, and in 932, when Marozia married Hugh, now king of Italy, in Castel Sant'Angelo, he presided at a wedding the canons forbade, since Hugh was the brother of her late husband Guy.

The wedding was the family's undoing. Alberic, Marozia's son by her first husband, then about eighteen, was made to wait on Hugh at the feast, was struck for spilling the water, and raised the city. In December 932 the Romans stormed Castel Sant'Angelo; Hugh escaped over the wall, Marozia was imprisoned for the rest of her life, and Alberic made himself prince of the Romans. His half-brother the pope he kept in the Lateran under guard, allowed to say Mass and sign privileges and nothing else. John XI lived so for three years, the property of one brother as he had been of the mother, and died in December 935, aged about twenty-five. He was buried in the Lateran. The next four popes were Alberic's, and the one after them was Alberic's son.