Romanus

Romanus came from Gallese, like Marinus I, whose kinsman the lists make him, and he was cardinal priest of San Pietro in Vincoli when the party that had strangled Stephen VI elected him in August 897. He reigned about four months. What he did in them has to be inferred: he confirmed privileges for the churches of Girona and Elne in Spain, which shows the chancery working, and the sources that condemn Stephen VI's synod do not condemn Romanus, which suggests he had begun to undo it, or at least had not defended it. A pope elected by the Formosan reaction would hardly have done otherwise.

The candidate they liked better was Theodore II, who lasted twenty days and did in them what Romanus, in four months, may not have dared: he held the synod that rehabilitated Formosus and reburied him. Romanus is one of the least documented popes of the Middle Ages, a name and a length of reign in the year the papacy came closest to being nothing but a prize for Roman gangs. He is remembered, when he is remembered, as the man between the trial and the reversal.