Leo V
Leo · 903 – 903
An outsider pope who lasted barely a month before being overthrown and imprisoned by a rival cleric.
Leo was a priest from outside Rome, possibly from the town of Priapi near Ardea. He was elected pope in July 903 during one of the darkest periods in papal history. After only about thirty days, he was overthrown by Christopher, a cardinal-priest who threw him in prison and declared himself pope. Both Leo and Christopher were eventually deposed and possibly killed by Sergius III. Almost nothing is known about Leo's brief pontificate beyond this violent end.
Thirty Days
Leo V barely had time to settle into the Lateran before he was dragged out of it. His pontificate belongs to the period sometimes called the pornocracy or the dark age of the papacy, when Roman aristocratic factions treated the papal office as a prize to be seized by force. Leo was a victim of this system, not a shaper of it.