Pope Lando

Lando (also known as Landus)[lower-alpha 1][1] was pope from c. September 913 to his death c. March 914.[2][3][4] His short pontificate fell during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum (904–964). He was the last pope to use a papal name (in his case, his birth name) that had not been used previously until the election of Pope Francis in 2013.[lower-alpha 2]

Pope Lando
Papacy began	August or September 913
Papacy ended	February or March 914
Predecessor	Anastasius III
Successor	John X
Personal details
Birth name	Lando
Born	Sabina, Papal States
Died	March 914 Rome, Papal States
Previous post	Cardinal-Deacon of the Holy Roman Church (910–913)

According to the Liber pontificalis, Lando was born in the Sabina, and his father was a wealthy Lombard count named Taino[lower-alpha 3] from Fornovo.[4][6][7] The Liber also 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.[6] 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.[6]

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.[8] The Theophylacti controlled papal finances through their monopoly of the office of vestararius, and also controlled the Roman militia and Senate.[6] 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.[9] No document of Lando's chancery has survived. The only act of his reign that is recorded is a donation to the diocese of Sabina mentioned in a judicial act of 1431.[6] 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.[7][4]

Notes

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. Pope John Paul I, elected in 1978, took a new combination of already used names, in honour of his two immediate predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI.[5]
3. 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.

References

1. Platina, Bartolomeo (1479), The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII, I, London: Griffith Farran & Co., p. 245, retrieved 2013-04-25
2. 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.
3. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope Lando" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
4. J. N. D. Kelly and Michael Walsh, "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 120.
5. The Conclave: August 25–26, 1978. Accessed 2013-03-18.
6. Umberto Longo, "Landone, papa", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 63 (2004).
7. Harald Zimmerman, "Lando", in Philippe Levillain, ed., The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, Gaius–Proxies (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 896.
8. "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, ed. J. N. D. Kelly, (Oxford University Press, 1988), 121.
9. Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, (Basic Books, 2009), 175.

External links

• Catholic Forum: Pope Lando
• New Catholic Dictionary: Pope Lando

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Anastasius III	Pope 913–914	Succeeded by John X