Pope Benedict VI
?–974 CE · Rome
Benedict VI was elected with imperial approval as the candidate of the Ottonian party in Rome, but his pontificate was fatally undermined by the death of his protector, Emperor Otto I, in 973. With imperial backing gone, the anti-imperial Roman faction led by Crescentius the Elder rose against him. Benedict was seized, imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, and strangled in 974 at the instigation of his rivals, who installed the antipope Boniface VII. His violent end exemplifies how the papacy remained a prize fought over by Roman aristocratic factions and imperial interests. His brief reign left little beyond this grim episode of papal politics.
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RomeרומאItaly
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Rome in this era
Between the 8th and 15th centuries Rome was the seat of the popes and capital of the Papal States, which grew from the Frankish king Pepin's grant of 756; Charlemagne was crowned emperor in St Peter's in 800. The city shrank far below its ancient size, and from 1309 to 1377 the popes resided at Avignon before returning to Rome.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Pope John XIX, Pope Sergius IV, Pope John XVIII, Pope John XVII, Pope John XV, Pope Benedict VII
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Benedict VI’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Pope John XIX, Pope Sergius IV, Pope John XVIII, Pope John XVII, Pope John XV, Pope Benedict VII
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Benedict VI’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.