STEFANO I, king of UNGHERIA, saint — Prologue of the Vita s. Stephani
regis, twelfth-century codex — Budapest, Biblioteca, cod. Ernst, f. IV.
he played a most deplorable part when Lamberto,
consecrated emperor in 892 by Pope Formoso,
entered Rome with his mother Agiltrude in 897.
The descendant of the dukes of Spoleto did not forgive the
deceased Formoso for having consecrated his rival Arnolfo
emperor on 22 February 896. S. agreed to preside over the
sinister Council at which the body of the dead man,
clothed in pontifical vestments, was brought forward, and he believed
that he could profit from the sentence declaring null the ordinations
performed by Formoso and thus consolidate his own power, since
the canonical impediment to his promotion was thereby removed.
But in the course of a popular uprising he was
seized, confined in a prison, and strangled (August 897).