Stephen IX

Frederick of Lorraine was a great nobleman before he was a monk. His brother was Godfrey the Bearded, duke of Lorraine and, by marriage to Beatrice of Tuscany, the strongest lay power in Italy; Frederick himself had gone to Constantinople in 1054 as one of Leo IX's legates and had stood beside Humbert when the bull of excommunication was laid on the altar of Hagia Sophia. He became abbot of Monte Cassino in the spring of 1057 and a cardinal a week later.

When Victor II died that July, the Roman clergy elected Frederick within four days and consecrated him at once, without waiting for word from the imperial regency in Germany. Nothing in the election was legally novel, but the speed was a statement, and everyone read it as one.

He governed for seven months and used them hard. He pressed the campaign against clerical marriage, drew Peter Damian and Humbert of Silva Candida into the papal circle, and sent Hildebrand to Germany to square the empress Agnes after the fact. He is also said to have planned to make his brother emperor in the south, and he stripped the treasury of Monte Cassino to fund it before conscience made him send the money back.

He died at Florence in March 1058, having ordered that no successor be chosen until Hildebrand returned. The Tusculan nobility ignored him and installed an antipope within a week.