Pope Benedict VI was pope from January 973 to June 974. His brief pontificate came in the political context of the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, during the transition between the reigns of German emperors Otto I and Otto II and the struggle for power of aristocratic families such as the Crescentii and Tusculani in the region of Rome.
Benedict VI was born in Rome, the son of Hildebrand. He was elected and installed as pope under the protection of Otto I, whose dominance in Roman and ecclesial affairs was resisted by local aristocracy. Record of his reign as pope is scant, though he is known to have confirmed privileges assumed by certain monasteries and churches.
Otto I died soon after Benedict's election in 973, and in 974 Benedict was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, at that time a stronghold of the Crescentii. When Otto II sent an imperial representative, Count Sicco, to secure his release, Crescentius I and Cardinal-Deacon Franco Ferrucci, who would subsequently become Boniface VII, an antipope, had Benedict murdered while still in prison.
Famous quotes containing the words pope and/or benedict:
“Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You’ve played, and loved, and eat, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose follies please.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“... it is a commonplace that men like war. For peace, in our society, with the feeling we have then that it is feeble-minded to strive except for one’s own private profit, is a lonely thing and a hazardous business. Over and over men have proved that they prefer the hazards of war with all its suffering. It has its compensations.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)