BENEDETTO VII, POPE. — After Benedetto VI was strangled in Castel S. Angelo, where Crescenzio, or Cencio, son of the second Teodora, had had him imprisoned, he was briefly replaced by the deacon Francone, who took the name Bonifacio VII. A list of popes that Sigerico, archbishop of Canterbury, brought to England from Rome in the year 990 states: «... Bonifatius sedit dies sexaginta et expulsus est foras» (cf. B. Pesci, L'itinerario romano di Sigerico arcivescovo di Canterbury e la lista dei papi da lui portata in Inghilterra [anno 990], in Riv. di arch. crist., 12 [1936], p. 59). Indeed, the envoy of the emperor Ottone II soon succeeded in restoring his lord’s authority and imposing his will through the election of B. VII. It cannot be stated with certainty whether B.’s election coincided with Bonifacio’s flight, whereas there is no doubt that all three events—the death of Benedetto VI, the intrusion of Bonifacio VII, and the election of B.—took place in the same year, 974. From the bulls issued by the latter, his enthronement would appear to have taken place between 2 and 28 October of that year. B. was Roman by birth and, at the time of his election, bishop of Sutri; his kinship with Alberico, prince of the Romans, rests on an addition made to the chronicle of Leone di Ostia (MGH, Scriptores, VII, p. 631), which, however, does not merit much credence. He was on excellent terms with the emperor, whom he visited in Ravenna during the Christmas festivities of 980 and hosted in Rome when the latter established himself there, making the Eternal City the base for his campaigns in southern Italy. He was generous in granting favors to the clergy of various nations, particularly the German clergy; above all, he was concerned with the flourishing of monasteries, such as that of Cluny in France and that of S. Bonifacio on the Aventine in Rome, where he appointed as abbot the metropolitan Sergio di Damasco, whom the Arabs had driven from his see. At the Roman Synod of 981 he solemnly condemned simony, a condemnation that he is reported to have communicated himself to all archbishops, bishops, abbots, kings, princes, dukes, and counts (PL 137, 336–38).
B. died in Rome on 10 July 983 and was buried in the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme.
premiers temps de l'état pontifical, 3e ed., Parigi 1911, p. 354; F. Baix, Benoît VII, in DIIG, VIII, coll. 43-61.