Gregory V
Bruno of Carinthia · 996 – 999
The first German pope, appointed by his cousin Otto III at age twenty-four, he was briefly exiled before being restored by imperial force.
Bruno was a Carinthian nobleman and chaplain to Emperor Otto III, who was his cousin. Appointed pope at about twenty-four years of age, he was the first pope of German origin. He crowned Otto III emperor in 996. The Roman nobleman Crescentius II soon drove him from Rome and installed an antipope, but Otto III returned, executed Crescentius, and restored Gregory. He died in 999, possibly poisoned, at around twenty-seven years old.
Young, German, and Papal
Gregory V was barely into his twenties when he became pope, and he was dead before thirty. He was the first non-Italian pope in decades and the first German ever. His youth and foreign origin made him a target in Rome, but with his cousin's army behind him, he held on long enough to leave a small mark on canon law.