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Pope Valentine

Pope Valentine

?–827 CE · Rome

A Roman of noble family who had served as archdeacon under Pope Paschal I, Valentine was elected with broad support from clergy and aristocracy but died after a pontificate of only about forty days in 827. Because his reign was so brief, almost nothing of substance is recorded of his acts, and he left no lasting policy or monument. He is remembered chiefly as one of several extremely short-lived popes of the turbulent ninth century, a period when Roman factional politics and Carolingian oversight made papal successions rapid and frequently unstable.

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Stop 0 of 1827Born

RomeרומאItaly

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

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.

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Valentine’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Valentine’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

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