Stephen V

Stephen was a Roman noble, son of Adrian, educated by his kinsman Zachary, the papal librarian, and cardinal priest of Santi Quattro Coronati; he was elected unanimously in September 885, on the news of Adrian III's death, and consecrated without waiting for Charles the Fat. Charles sent his chancellor to depose him, and gave up when he found that the whole city had chosen the same man. Stephen inherited a Lateran treasury that was empty, a countryside stripped by the Saracens, and a year of drought and locusts. He opened his father's house and fortune, fed the city, ransomed captives, and replaced the church plate.

The empire went first. Charles the Fat was deposed in November 887 and died the next January, and no Carolingian could hold Italy against the two men who claimed it, Berengar of Friuli and Guy of Spoleto. Stephen asked Arnulf of Carinthia, the new king of the East Franks, to come south, and when Arnulf would not, he made his peace with the house that had besieged John VIII: on 21 February 891 he crowned Guy emperor in Saint Peter's and adopted him as his son. It was the first imperial coronation of a man who was not a Carolingian, and the Spoletans would treat the papacy as their property for a decade.

Stephen died on 14 September 891 and was buried in Saint Peter's. He had been a good steward of a city and a poor judge of what was leaving it.