Stephen III

Stephen was a Sicilian brought to Rome as a boy under Gregory III, a monk whom Zachary ordained priest, and an official trusted by Stephen II and Paul. He came to the throne through the worst election in a century. When Paul lay dying in June 767, Duke Toto of Nepi marched into Rome with armed men and had his brother Constantine, a layman, ordained through every grade in a day and consecrated pope. Constantine held the Lateran for a year. In July 768 the primicerius Christopher and his son Sergius, who had escaped to the Lombards, came back with Lombard troops; Toto was killed, Constantine was seized, and a Lombard priest produced a monk named Philip as pope for a day before Christopher sent him home. Stephen was elected on 1 August and consecrated on the 7th. The reprisals were savage: Constantine was blinded, and his supporters had their eyes and tongues torn out.

At the Lateran synod of April 769, with twelve Frankish bishops present, Stephen annulled Constantine's ordinations and laid down rules against another Toto: only cardinal priests and deacons of Rome could be elected, and the laity, though they might acclaim, could no longer vote. The synod also condemned the iconoclast council of 754.

Then Stephen changed sides, or was made to. The chamberlain Paul Afiarta, Desiderius's man, gained control of the palace; in 771, with the king at the gates, Christopher and Sergius were handed over, blinded, and killed. Stephen died on 24 January 772, a pope in the keeping of the faction he had been elected to defeat.