LEONE VIII, POPE. — He was the protoscriniarius of the Roman Church, chosen as pope by the Council convened by the emperor Ottone I of Saxony and presided over by him in St Peter’s (4 Dec. 963); L. was a layman, and all the Holy Orders were rapidly conferred upon him; he must have been a worthy person, and his election was greatly to the sovereign’s liking, but evidently the appointment was illegal because the legitimate pontiff Giovanni XII was still alive.
Ottone’s opposition to Giovanni stemmed from the fact that, after crowning him, the latter had turned to the side of Berengario II, so that the sovereign had him deposed after his refusal to appear before the aforementioned Synod. The Roman population nevertheless remained, on the whole, favorable to him, and at the beginning of Jan. 964 a revolt broke out in the city and L. was the victim of an attempt on his life; Ottone rushed there and immediately quelled the movement, but at the intercession of his Pope he punished no one. Giovanni took advantage of this to return and drive out L., who was forced to take refuge in Camerino, while another synod declared his election null. After Giovanni died in May, the Romans chose another Pope, Benedetto V, but Ottone once again marched against the city to restore his protégé to the throne; this led to a siege that reduced the inhabitants to the utmost extremity and persuaded them to abandon Benedetto. Thus, finally, at the end of June ’64, a third synod deposed the latter and legitimated L.’s election; for his part, the Pope was generous in his concessions to Ottone, recognizing his right to choose bishops and reconfirming all the privileges granted by his predecessors to the Carolingian emperors. The Emperor again spent Christmas 964 in Rome, but in the following spring L. died, and no further incidents are recorded.
Nothing has been handed down concerning his activity in the more properly ecclesiastical sphere, apart from some confirmations of privileges granted to various monasteries.