JOHN XI, POPE. - A Roman, elected in Feb.-March 931, d. in Dec. 935. Born of Marozia and, according to a highly questionable assertion by Liutprand, of Pope Sergius III, or, according to others, of her and Alberic I of Spoleto, he was elected pope at a very young age through the will of his mother. After the expulsion of King Hugh from Rome and the obscure end of Marozia, he remained at the mercy, and perhaps in the imprisonment, of Alberic II, his brother or half-brother.
During his pontificate, relations were cordial with the Byzantine Empire, whose era was adopted; indeed, negotiations were undertaken to conclude a marriage between a sister of the Pope and a son of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, and to enthrone another son of his, still a boy, as Patriarch of Constantinople. In the early years of the pontificate (931-32), when relations between Rome and Hugh were still close, the monastery of Cluny was taken under the protection of the Roman See; thus, even in this obscure period, the seeds of the future reform of the Church were unwittingly being sown.
G. Battista Picotti