John XVIII

John Fasanus was a Roman, the son of a priest named Ursus, and cardinal priest of Saint Peter's when John Crescentius chose him to follow John XVII; he was consecrated on 25 December 1003. His six years were the patrician's: Crescentius kept Henry II out of Rome and the pope inside the Lateran, but let him be pope to everyone beyond it, and John was a competent one. He restored the bishopric of Merseburg in 1004, which Otto II had suppressed. He confirmed Henry II's foundation of the see of Bamberg in 1007, the emperor's own creation on the Slav frontier, after a synod at Frankfurt had approved it. He gave Bruno of Querfurt the pallium and a commission as archbishop for the mission to the Prussians, who killed him in 1009. He sent the pallium to Canterbury, and he threatened the bishops of France with excommunication if they did not come to Rome to answer for their treatment of the abbey of Fleury.

His end is the puzzle. In June or July 1009 he ceased to be pope and became a monk at Saint Paul's Outside the Walls, where he died soon afterward and was buried. The sources do not say whether he resigned or was made to, and Crescentius, who chose his successor within weeks, had reasons for either. Cathedra records the end of the reign as uncertain, the only such entry in the century, and leaves the question where the evidence leaves it.