LEO VIII, Pope. - He was the protoscriniarius of the Roman Church, chosen as pope by the council convoked by Emperor Otto I of Saxony and presided over by him in St. Peter's (Dec. 4, 963); L. was a layman and all the Sacred Orders were rapidly conferred upon him; he must have been a worthy person and his election greatly pleased the sovereign, but evidently the appointment was illegal because the legitimate pontiff John XII was still alive.
The reasons for Otto's opposition to John lay in the fact that the latter, after having crowned him, had turned to the side of Berengar 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. suffered an attempt on his life; Otto hurried there and immediately quelled the uprising, but through the intercession of his Pope he punished no one. John took advantage of this to return and drive out L., who had to take refuge in Camerino while another synod declared his election null. Then, when John died in May, the Romans chose another Pope, Benedict V, but Otto marched again against the city to restore his protégé to the throne; there followed a siege that reduced the inhabitants to extremities and convinced them to abandon Benedict. Thus finally, at the end of June 964, a third synod deposed the latter and legitimized the choice of L.; in turn the Pope was generous with concessions toward Otto, recognizing his right of choice in the appointment of bishops and reconfirming to him all the privileges granted by his predecessors to the Carolingian emperors. The Emperor spent Christmas of 964 in Rome as well, but in the following spring L. died and there is no record of other incidents.
Of his activity in the more properly ecclesiastical field, apart from some confirmations of privileges to various monasteries, nothing has been handed down.
Bibliography4 works
Paolo Brezzi