JOHN VI.

701-705.

 

Emperor of the East. Tiberius III (Apsimar), 608-701.

King of the Lombards. Aripert II, 700-712.

Exarchs of Ravenna. John Platyn, 687-702. Theophylact, 702-709.

 

After a vacancy of one month and twenty-three days, John, a Greek, was consecrated Bishop of Rome (October 30, 701).

Probably sometime during the year 702 there came from Sicily to Rome the new exarch Theophylact, Chamberlain and Patrician. Why he came to Rome we do not know. Many modern authors are prepared to tell us. But the cause assigned is of their own making, and consequently in accordance with their prejudices. Theophylact may have been simply passing through on his way to Ravenna. However, whatever may have been his reason in coming to Rome, supposing he had any particular reason at all, his advent was viewed with suspicion by the friends of the Pope, that is by all Italy, by all at least not subject to the Lombards. Accordingly, on hearing of the exarch’s visit the troops of the whole of Italy marched tumultuously to Rome, encamped outside the city, and made their ill-will to the exarch particularly evident. The Pope, alarmed for Theophylact’s safety, ordered the city gates to be shut, sent priests to the camp, and through their exertions quelled the sedition. Though the rioters spared the exarch, they took vengeance on some of his would-be creatures, and inflicted grievous punishment on certain informers who had taken advantage of the exarch’s presence to impeach certain worthy citizens, that they might have an opportunity of fingering wealth that was not their own. Amid the obscurity that surrounds this incident, one thing stands out clear, and it is the loyalty of the popes to the rule of the emperors, a loyalty that one act of tyranny after another against themselves has not shaken, at least in them. But the action of the local militia towards the Life Guard officer Zacharias and towards the exarch Theophylact shows that submission on the part of their Italian subjects to the Eastern emperors’ rule — a rule impotent and tyrannical at least in Italy — was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. This eighth century will see the end of it over by far the greater part of the territory that in the preceding century rendered a more or less full obedience to the exarch of Ravenna.

For some cause or other, the Lombards begin again during this pontificate to give trouble to the Duchy of Rome, and hence to the popes. Whether the Lombards were now more than ever convinced of the weakness of the exarch, or whether their own power was by this time more consolidated, they were at this period engaged in extending their frontiers in all directions at the expense of those of the exarch. Gisulf I, Duke of Benevento (686-706), increased his sway by getting possession of the towns of Sora, Arpinum and Arx from the Duchy of Rome, thus advancing the border of his own duchy to the river Liris; and bursting into the Campagna, perhaps in the year 702, advanced as far as a place which the Liber Pontificalis calls ‘Horrea’, and which Dr. Hodgkin thinks to be the great granary of Puteoli, and there pitched his camp. He advanced, plundering, burning, and carrying off captives; and, pathetically adds the papal biographer, “there was no one who could resist him”. But, as usual, there was one able and willing to come to the succor of the poor Italians—the Pope of Rome. John VI sent to the camp of Gisulf several priests furnished with large sums of money, and they redeemed all the captives he had taken, and induced the warlike duke to return to his own country. Such arts as these are the only ones known to history by which more and more temporal power was acquired by the Popes, or rather forced into their hands.

His exertions in behalf of St. Wilfrid have already been set down. To Brithwald,  “whom by the authority of the Prince of the Apostles we have confirmed as Archbishop (of Canterbury)”, John VI sent the pallium.

Except that he held the usual ordinations of priests, deacons and bishops for various places, and made certain additions or improvements to a few of the churches, we know no more of John VI but that he was buried at St. Peter’s on January 11, 705.

JOHN VII. AD 705-707