Pope Lando

Who was Pope Lando?

Pope Lando was the head of the Catholic Church from either July or November 913 to his death in 914. His short pontificate fell during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum. He was the last pope to use a papal name that had not been previously used until the election of Pope Francis in 2013.

According to the Liber pontificalis, Lando was born in the Sabina and his father was named Taino. The Liber also claims that his pontificate only lasted four months and twenty-two days. A different list of popes, appended to a continuation of the Liber pontificalis at the Abbey of Farfa was quoted by Gregory of Catino in his Chronicon Farfense in the twelfth century. It gives Lando a pontificate of six months and twenty-six days. This is closer to the duration recorded by Flodoard of Reims of six months and ten days. 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.

Lando is thought to have been a candidate of Theophylact I, Count of Tusculum, who was the powerful man in Rome at the time. His family controlled papal finances through their monopoly of the office of vestararius, and also controlled the Roman militia and Senate. During his reign, Arab raiders destroyed the cathedral of Vescovio in Sabina. No document of Lando's chancery has survived. The only act of his reign that is recorded is a donation to his native diocese mentioned in a judicial act of 1431.