Leo VI

Leo was a Roman, the son of a primicerius named Christopher, and cardinal priest of Santa Susanna when Marozia and her husband Guy of Tuscany overthrew John X in May 928. They needed a pope at once, since the deposed one was alive in prison, and Leo was consecrated within days, an old man, the sources suggest, with no following of his own. He reigned about seven months. His one surviving act is a letter to the bishops of Dalmatia continuing John X's work at the synod of Split: it confirmed the archbishop of Split as metropolitan of the whole province, ordered the bishops to stay within their dioceses, and told the Croats and their prince to keep the peace with their neighbors.

He was the first of the popes who were Marozia's, and their character is his: chosen for age or harmlessness to hold the see while her son John, born about 910, grew old enough to take it. Stephen VII, who followed him, was the second placeholder; John XI, in 931, was the point. Leo VI's reign shows the office at its lowest as an institution, filled and emptied by a laywoman with soldiers, and the popes of the next decade would rise no higher until Alberic, her other son, threw her into prison and took the city for himself.