Pope Lando

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Lando (also known as Landus)Template:Efn<ref>Template:Citation</ref> was the pope from Template:Circa September 913 to his death Template:Circa March 914.<ref>Pietro Fedele, "Ricerche per la storia di Rome e del papato al. sec. X", Archivo della Reale Società Romana di Storia Patria, 33 (1910): 177–247.</ref><ref name="ce">Template:CathEncy</ref><ref name="Oxford">J. N. D. Kelly and Michael Walsh, "Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 120.</ref> His short pontificate fell during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum (904–964).

According to the Liber pontificalis, Lando was born in the Sabina (Papal States), and his father was a wealthy Lombard count named TainoTemplate:Efn from Fornovo.<ref name="Oxford" /><ref name="Longo">Umberto Longo, "Landone, papa", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 63 (2004).</ref><ref name="Zimmerman">Harald Zimmerman, "Lando", in Philippe Levillain, ed., The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, Gaius–Proxies (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 896.</ref> The Liber also claims that his pontificate lasted only four months and twenty-two days. A different list of popes, appended to a continuation of the Liber pontificalis at the Abbey of Farfa and quoted by Gregory of Catino in his Chronicon Farfense in the twelfth century, gives Lando a pontificate of six months and twenty-six days. This is closer to the duration recorded by Flodoard of Reims, writing in the tenth century, of six months and ten days.<ref name="Longo" /> The end of his pontificate can be dated to between 5 February 914, when he is mentioned in a document of Ravenna, and late March or early April, when his successor, John X, was elected.<ref name="Longo" />

Lando is thought to have been the candidate of Count Theophylact I of Tusculum and Senatrix Theodora, who were the most powerful couple in Rome at the time.<ref>"Lando", The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, ed. J. N. D. Kelly, (Oxford University Press, 1988), 121.</ref> The Theophylacti controlled papal finances through their monopoly of the office of vestararius, and also controlled the Roman militia and Senate.<ref name="Longo" /> During Lando's reign, Arab raiders, operating from their stronghold on the Garigliano river, destroyed the cathedral of San Salvatore in Vescovio in his native diocese.<ref>Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, (Basic Books, 2009), 175.</ref> No document of Lando's chancery has survived. The only act of his reign that is recorded is a donation to the diocese of Sabina mentioned in a judicial act of 1431.<ref name="Longo" /> Lando made the large personal gift in order to restore the cathedral of San Salvatore so that the clergy who were then living at Toffia could return.<ref name="Zimmerman" /><ref name="Oxford" />

Lando was the last pope with a papal name never used before until Pope John Paul I in 1978 and the last with a unique name requiring no regnal number until Pope Francis in 2013.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

External links

• Catholic Forum: Pope Lando
• New Catholic Dictionary: Pope Lando