Pope Lando

Lando reigned only a matter of months and is among the most obscure popes, leaving almost no documentary trace. He held office during the period later polemically dubbed the 'pornocracy' or Saeculum obscurum, when the Roman noble house of Theophylact—especially Theodora and her daughter Marozia—dominated papal appointments. The 'Annales' record his Sabine origin and his father's name but little else; no decrees or significant acts survive. He is also notable as the last pope, until John Paul I in 1978, to take a previously unused papal name. His brief, undocumented pontificate epitomizes the instability of tenth-century Rome.