Sylvester I, Pope (SILVESTRO I, PAPA) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, p. 371

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

SILVESTRO I, PAPA, santo - S. S. presents to Constantine, still afflicted with leprosy, the icon of SS. Peter and Paul who had appeared to him in a dream. Detail of 12th-century frescoes in the chapel of S. Silvestro - Rome, church of SS. Quattro Coronati.

(from G. Ladner, I ritratti dei papi, Città del Vaticano 1941, p. 183, fig. 189)
SILVESTRO II, PAPA - S. II, seated on a throne. Detail of the ivory holy water stoup offered by Otto III to the cathedral of Aachen (late 10th cent.).

(January 23, 1002) could have proved fatal to him. He returned to Rome and accommodated himself to a political regime in which the patrician John Crescentius left him scant power. He died on May 12, 1003.

Gerbert had enemies and was a victim of the Italian nationalists who ill brooked the imperial enterprise. The Liber pont. (II, p. 263) contains a legendary account that portrays the pope as an astrologer and a necromancer and attributes his rise to honors to a pact concluded with the devil.

His works have been printed by Migne (PL 139) and by A. Olleris (Oeuvres de Gerbert, Paris 1867).

BIBL.: M. Buedinger, Über Gerberts wissenschaftliche und politische Stellung, Kassel 1851; F. Lot, Les derniers Carolingiens, Paris 1891; K. Werner, Gerbert von Aurillac, 2nd ed., Vienna 1891; K. Schulthess, Papst Silvester II (Gerbert) als Lehrer und Staatsmann, Hamburg 1891; F. Picavet, Gerbert, un pape philosophe, d'après l'histoire et d'après la légende, Paris 1897; C. Lux, Papst Silvester II. Einfluss auf die Politik Kaiser Ottos III., Breslau 1898; F. Lot, Etudes sur le règne de Hugues Capet, Paris 1903; Fr. Eichongrun, Gerbert (Silvester II.) als Persönlichkeit, Berlin 1928; ed. of the Historiae of Richerio monaco di St-Denis, publ. by R. Latouche, Paris 1930 (preferable to MGH, Scriptores, III, pp. 561-694 (Richerio was raised by Gerbert and received much information about events directly from his master); Fliche-Martin-Frutaz, VII, nn. 71-79, 371. Guglielmo Mollat