STEFANO VIII (IX), POPE. — A Roman, elected on
14 July 939, during his brief pontificate he performed no act worthy of note; he died in October 942.
Alberico, who had secured the tiara for him, seized control of the temporal power. Nevertheless, the Pope intervened in favor of Luigi IV, son of Carlo il Semplice, and threatened his disobedient subjects with excommunication; this forestalled any resistance against the King of France. The pacification of tempers was moreover facilitated by the granting of the archbishopric of Reims and the pallium to Ugo, son of one of the sovereign’s strongest opponents.
BIBL.: Ph. Lauer, Le règne de Louis IV d'Outremer, Parigi
1899; Flodoardo, Historia Ecclesiae Remensis e Annales, ed. Ph.
Lauer, Parigi 1906; Lib. Pont., II, p. 244; Fliche-Martin-Frutaz,
VII, n. 37. Guglielmo Mollat