Pope Benedict VII

Record of Benedict’s reign as pope is scant.

There is a letter dated to Benedict’s reign from Piligrim, Bishop of Passau, asking for Benedict to confer on him the Pallium, and make him a Bishop so that he could continue his mission to convert the Hungarian people to Christianity.

However, the response from Benedict is considered to be a forgery.

He is also known to have confirmed privileges assumed by certain monasteries and churches.

At the request of King Lothair of France and his wife, Benedict placed the monastery of Blandin under papal protection.

There is also a papal bull from Benedict in which Frederick, Archbishop of Salzburg and his successors are named Papal vicars in the former Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Pannonia and Noricum; however, the authenticity of this bull is disputed.

Otto I had died soon after Benedict's election in 973, and with the accession of Otto II, troubles with the nobility emerged in Germany.

With the new emperor so distracted, a faction of the Roman nobility opposed to the interference of the German emperors in Roman affairs, took advantage of the opportunity to move against Benedict VI.

Led by Crescentius the Elder and the Cardinal-Deacon Franco Ferrucci (who had been the preferred candidate of the anti-German faction), Benedict is taken in June 974, and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, at this time a stronghold of the Crescentii.

Ferrucci is then proclaimed as the new pope, taking the name Boniface VII.

Hearing of the overthrow of Benedict VI, Otto II sends an imperial representative, Count Sicco, to demand his release.

Unwilling to step down, Boniface orders a priest named Stephen to murder Benedict while he is in prison, strangling him to death.

Benedict is succeeded, after the overthrow of the Antipope Boniface VII, by Pope Benedict VII.

Otto II, following his brief war with Francia over Lower Lorraine, leads an expedition into Italy in 980 to restore Pope Benedict VII, who had been driven from his see by a Roman faction.