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Pope Leo V

Pope Leo V

?904 CE · Ardea (near Rome)

Leo V, reportedly a priest from near Ardea rather than a member of the Roman clergy, reigned about two months in 903 before being overthrown by the priest Christopher, who imprisoned him and seized the papacy as antipope. Both men were soon disposed of when Sergius III took power; Leo is generally believed to have been murdered in prison around 904. Almost nothing of his governance survives. His fate epitomizes the brutal instability of the early tenth-century Roman church, on the threshold of the period later polemically termed the 'pornocracy' or saeculum obscurum.

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Ardea (near Rome)

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About Ardea (near Rome)

Ardea, an ancient town in Lazio south of Rome, near the Tyrrhenian coast, Italy. It is linked to the origins of one or more early-medieval popes.

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Leo V’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

In the same tradition

Pope Benedict IV

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Leo V’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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