Pope Lando

Contents

Lando (also known as Landus)[1][2] was the Pope for about 6 months from 913 until his death in 914.[3][4][5] His short pontificate is very poorly attested and occurred during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum (904–964).

Pontificate

According to the Liber pontificalis, Lando was born in the Sabina (Papal States), and his father was a wealthy Lombard count named Taino[6] from Fornovo.[5][7][8] The start of his pontificate has been placed as early as July or as late as November 913.[7] The Liber claims that his pontificate lasted only four months and twenty-two days. A different list of popes, appended to a continuation of the Liber pontificalis at the Abbey of Farfa and quoted by Gregory of Catino in his Chronicon Farfense in the twelfth century, gives Lando a pontificate of six months and twenty-six days. This is closer to the duration recorded by Flodoard of Reims, writing in the tenth century, of six months and ten days.[7] The end of his pontificate can be dated to between 5 February 914, when he is mentioned in a document of Ravenna, and late March or early April, when his successor, John X, was elected.[7]

Lando is thought to have been the candidate of Count Theophylact I of Tusculum and Senatrix Theodora, who were the most powerful couple in Rome at the time.[9] The Theophylacti controlled papal finances through their monopoly of the office of vestararius, and also controlled the Roman militia and Senate.[7] During Lando's reign, Arab raiders, operating from their stronghold on the Garigliano river, destroyed the cathedral of San Salvatore in Vescovio in his native diocese.[10] No document of Lando's chancery has survived. The only act of his reign that is recorded is a donation to his native diocese of Sabina mentioned in a judicial act of 1431.[7] Lando made the large personal gift in order to restore the cathedral of San Salvatore so that the clergy who were then living at Toffia could return.[8][5]

Lando was the last pope to have a papal name never used before until Pope John Paul I in 1978, and the last with a unique name requiring no regnal number until Pope Francis in 2013.[11][12]

References

  1. 1.In the second declension. Although sometimes less common in Medieval Latin, names ending in -o in Latin tend to be written in third declension (e.g. Landonis, Platonis in genitive case).
  2. 2.Platina, Bartolomeo (1479), The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII, vol. I, London: Griffith Farran & Co., p. 245, retrieved 2013-04-25
  3. 3.Pietro Fedele, "Ricerche per la storia di Rome e del papato al. sec. X", Archivo della Reale Società Romana di Storia Patria, 33 (1910): 177–247.
  4. 4.Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Lando". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  5. 5.[5.2][5.3]J. N. D. Kelly and Michael Walsh, "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 120.
  6. 6.Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1897), Vol. 3, p. 238, gives his father's name as Raino.
  7. 7.[7.2][7.3][7.4][7.5][7.6]Umberto Longo, "Landone, papa", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 63 (2004).
  8. 8.[8.2]Harald Zimmerman, "Lando", in Philippe Levillain, ed., The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, Gaius–Proxies (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 896.
  9. 9."Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, ed. J. N. D. Kelly, (Oxford University Press, 1988), 121.
  10. 10.Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, (Basic Books, 2009), 175.
  11. 11.Budde, Michael L. (June 2, 2017). New World Pope: Pope Francis and the Future of the Church. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781498283724 – via Google Books.
  12. 12.Collinge, William J. (August 15, 2021). Historical Dictionary of Catholicism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538130186 – via Google Books.