COSTANTINO II, ANTIPOPE. – At the death of Paolo I (28 June 767), Toto, duke of Nepi, by force had his own brother C., still a simple layman, elected; the bishop Giorgio of Palestrina was compelled to confer the orders upon him and then, on 5 July, to consecrate him with the assistance of the bishops of Albano and Porto.
But the primicerius Cristoforo, together with his brother Sergio, appealed to Desiderio, king of the Lombards, who gave him the priest Valdiperto as a companion and sent instructions to the duke of Spoleto to assist him. In July 768 the Lombard soldiers who had entered Rome killed Toto and took C. prisoner. Valdiperto, having gathered some Romans favorable to the Lombards, had the priest Filippo elected pope; he directed a monastery near the church of S. Vito. However, when the primicerius Cristoforo arrived shortly afterward, Filippo peacefully relinquished the papal see and returned to his monastery.
Cristoforo, by then master of the situation, assembled the clergy, the people, and the lay aristocracy on 1 August and had Stefano, a priest of the title of S. Cecilia, elected pope. The unfortunate C. was subjected to the humiliation of an ignominious ride through the streets of Rome; then, on 6 August, the eve of the consecration of Stefano III, he was brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal. After the prisoner had been confined in the monastery of S. Saba, his eyes were torn out; then, summoned once more before a council assembled after Easter 769 in the Lateran basilica, he was slapped and driven out, although he asked for pardon and mercy. The decree of his election was burned, and all his acts were declared invalid. Nothing more is known of him thereafter.