**STEPHEN V (VI)**, POPE. — Of a Roman family, he was a cardinal priest of the title of the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs. His election, which took place in September 885, displeased Emperor Charles the Fat, who sent an envoy to Rome to have it annulled by an assembly of bishops. But Stephen succeeded in thwarting the dark designs of the sovereign and encountered no difficulty in having his election recognized.
The dissolution of the Carolingian Empire created no small difficulties for the Pope. Guy, Duke of Spoleto, had adopted the Lombard manner of proceeding; Stephen, having vainly implored the help of Arnulf of Germany against him, resigned himself to consecrating as emperor (21 February 891) the very man whom he had previously treated as a bad Christian.
From a spiritual standpoint, Stephen exercised his authority over the Christian world without encountering too many obstacles. Nicholas I had established Bremen as a metropolitan see to the detriment of the archbishop of Cologne; now the latter claimed to recover his rights. The Pope therefore entrusted Folc, archbishop of Reims, with the task of convening a council at Worms to examine the case and provide him with the necessary elements for a decision. In France, Fraterius, bishop of Bordeaux, who had been transferred uncanonically to Bourges, was obliged to return to his former diocese. Aurelian, archbishop of Lyon, vainly opposed the election of Thibaud as bishop of Langres; the Pope himself consecrated the elected bishop and entrusted the archbishop of Reims with facilitating his entry into possession of his see. Between the Ignatian party and the patriarch of Constantinople, enthroned by the emperor after Photius’s second deposition (886), Stephen maintained a prudent reserve.
He fell victim to the intrigues of Bishop Vichingus, a partisan of the anti-Moravian liturgy inaugurated by St Methodius with the consent of John VIII. Unaware that the passage in question had been falsified by a scribe in the papal chancery in the registers of his predecessor, he forbade the use of that liturgy; for this reason Prince Svatopluk banished the adherents of St Methodius, who took refuge in Bulgaria.
Stephen died on 14 September 891.
**