Predecessors of Benedict XVI
Benedict I 575-579
St Benedict II 684-685
Benedict III 855-858
Benedict IV 900-903
Benedict V1 964-966
Benedict VI 973-974
Benedict VII 974-983
Benedict VIII 1012-1024
Benedict IX 1032-1044
Benedict IX (2nd time) 1045
Benedict IX (3rd time) 1047-1048
Benedict X 1058-1059
Bl. Benedict XI 1303-1304
Benedict XII 1334-1342
Benedict XIII 1394-1423
Benedict XIII 1724-1730
Benedict XIV 1740-1758
Benedict XV 1914-1922
Benedict XVI 2005-
BENEDICT I
He was born in Rome and died on July 30, 579 in Rome. He was the reigning pope from 574/575 to 579. Little is known about his life. He was elected to succeed John III, probably just after the latter's death (July 574), but was not consecrated until June 575, so that the see of Rome was vacant for almost 11 months. He consecrated 21 bishops during his pontificate and granted the Massa Veneris, an estate near Minturnae (near modern Minturo, Italy), to Abbot Stephen of St. Mark's. He ruled the church during a period made calamitous by invasion and by famine. While working to solve these problems, he died during a siege of Rome by the Lombards.
In 568–569 a different Germanic tribe, the Lombards, invaded Italy under their king Alboin (c. 560–572). They came from Pannonia (modern Hungary), which had itself been a Roman province. Exactly how Romanized they were is a matter of dispute, but they certainly did not have the political coherence of the Ostrogoths, and they never conquered the whole of Italy. Alboin took the north but was soon murdered, probably with Byzantine connivance. His successor, Cleph (572–574), was murdered as well, and then for a decade (574–584) the Lombards broke up into local duchies, with no king at all. in 605, Italy was divided into several pieces, with boundaries that were in some cases to survive for centuries. The largest of these pieces was the Lombard kingdom of northern Italy and Tuscany. By the 620s its capital was at Pavia, which remained the capital of the north until the 11th century; other major centres were Verona, Milan, Turin, Lucca, and Cividale, the capital of the duchy of Friuli.
The Lombard kingdom, 584–774
King Authari ensured the survival of the Lombards, threatened as they were by both the Byzantines and the Franks. The last Frankish invasion was in 590 and probably resulted in the establishment of some sort of Frankish supremacy; the Lombards payed tribute, at least for a time, and sent detachments to fight in the Frankish army as late as the 620s. Agilulf reorganized the kingdom and suppressed several dukes with pretensions to autonomy. He also concluded a treaty with the Byzantines in 605 that established permanent borders with the exarchate, which scarcely changed over the next century (the only major exception being the Lombard conquest of the Ligurian coast in the early 640s). Agilulf also seems to have reorganized the central government, with the help of Roman administrators, and indeed he imitated or reestablished some late Roman and Byzantine court rituals; he did not, however, exact the land tax and must have lived for the most part off his substantial royal estates. Agilulf seems to have been a pagan in his personal religion, though he may have been an Arian Christian; there were certainly many Arians among the Lombards, including most of the kings between 568 and 652. His wife and son were, however, Catholic, and Catholics were common among the Lombards as a whole from at least the 590s as well. Germans had often been Arians in the 5th and 6th centuries (the Ostrogoths were, for example); but the Lombards seem to have been less committed to Arianism than were the Goths or the Vandals, and they abandoned it without documented struggle in the mid-7th century. Although the Lombards do not in any case seem to have been religious fanatics, it may well have been Agilulf, once more, who laid the basis for a peaceful conversion of his people to Catholicism, owing to his careful cultivation of links to Catholic figures such as Pope Gregory I (despite his wars with Rome), or the Irish missionary Columban, who founded the monastery of Bobbio near Pavia in 613.

For the political history of the Lombards, scholars rely primarily on one source, Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards, written in the 790s. For the reigns of Agilulf and his predecessors, Paul's information is in part contemporary, for it is based on a lost historical work by Secundus of Non, one of the Romans at Agilulf's court. Secundus' work, however, seems to have ended after 616, and Paul's knowledge—and thus posterity's—becomes much more fragmentary. Paul says little, for example, about Rothari (636–652), except that he was militarily successful (it was he who conquered Liguria) and, most importantly, that he was the first king to set out Lombard custom, in his Edict of 643, a substantial law-code that survives independently. It is evident, however, that the basic institutions of the kingdom were by then fairly stable. Between 616 and 712 the succession was dominated by the Bavarian dynasty, the family of Agilulf's wife, Theodelinda; kings who were not members of this family, such as Rothari and Grimoald of Benevento (662–671), married into it. Grimoald was the only southern duke to aim at the throne of Pavia; like Rothari, he fought the Byzantines and made laws. Male-line Bavarian kings such as Perctarit (661–662, 672–688) and his son Cunipert (680–700) preferred peace and seem to have developed the ceremonial role of the royal court. This contrast may have represented a real political difference, but, if so, it was only a difference of emphasis. The cornerstones of the Lombard political tradition, Agilulf's Romanized court and Rothari's Lombard law, came to be accepted by every king.


The Lombard political succession, like that of the Visigoths in Spain, was dominated by coups, and between 700 and 712 these became particularly savage, resulting in the end of the Bavarian dynasty. Liutprand (712–744) reestablished peace; he is generally regarded as the most successful Lombard king. He issued a series of laws, as a conscious and well-organized updating of Rothari's Edict, which introduced a fair amount of Roman law into the Lombard system. He also waged war on the exarchate and the southern duchies alike. The duchies of Spoleto and Benevento had, as noted, maintained their independence and their separate political traditions. Liutprand conquered the southern duchies in the 730s, setting up his own dukes in both; by his death, Spoleto (though not Benevento) was stably in Pavia's orbit. He also took about half the land controlled by the exarch and occupied Ravenna itself, temporarily, in 743. His attitude to Rome is less clear; he took some papal territory but never threatened the city itself. During Liutprand's reign the Lombard king, for the first time since 568, was militarily dominant in the peninsula. He seems, however, to have still regarded the exarch and the pope as having some right to an independent existence.

Aistulf (749–756) followed Liutprand's policies to their logical conclusion: he conquered Ravenna in 751, ending the exarchate; he ruled in Spoleto without a duke in 751–756; and in752 he began to move on Rome, demanding tribute from the pope. But times had changed for the Lombards. In the 740s the popes had become close to the rising Carolingian dynasty in Francia, and in 751 its head, Pepin III, was recognized as king of the Franks by Pope Zacharias (741–752). Faced with Aistulf's attacks, Zacharias' successor, Stephen II (752–757), went to the Franks and sought their military support. In 754, and again in 756, Pepin invaded Italy and defeated Aistulf; he took Ravenna from the Lombard king and gave it directly to the pope, notwithstanding protests both from Byzantium and from the inhabitants of Ravenna itself. This pattern was to persist. Aistulf's successor, Desiderius (757–774), allied himself by marriage with the Franks and kept control of the southern duchies. But when he too threatened Rome in 772–773, the Frankish king, Charlemagne, invaded and this time conquered the Lombard kingdom outright (773–774). Italy became absorbed into the Carolingian lands right down to the border of Benevento, which remained independent.
Popes and exarchs, 590–800
The Byzantine lands in Italy were, of course, in theory only provinces of the empire of Constantinople and to that extent do not have much of an independent political history. Although Ravenna often found itself on the opposite side politically from Constantinople, few exarchs made a permanent impression. The most consistent local political tradition was probably that of the archbishops of Ravenna, who were rich and powerful and, like their counterparts in Rome, had a considerable role in the civil administration.

It was in this context that the popes gradually increased their secular authority. The exarchs did relatively little to defend Rome, which was largely cut off from Ravenna by the Lombard states; the papal city thus had to develop its own political traditions. In the late 6th century, responsibility for feeding the population of Rome and, by the 590s, for defending it from the Lombards (both of Pavia and Spoleto) slowly shifted from the fast-disintegrating Roman Senate to the popes, who themselves still tended to come from senatorial families. Gregory I the Great (590–604), was the most important of these, and, thanks to his own extensive theological writings and collection of letters, his papacy is by far the best documented. In the course of the 7th century, his successors slowly detached themselves from the power of the exarchs, and by about 700 they could successfully defy any attempt from Ravenna to remove them. This also meant that they had gained autonomy from the more distant authority of the Byzantine emperor, with whom they were also often in religious disagreement. Pope Martin I could in 653 still be arrested for such disagreement (he died in exile in the East in 655), but not his successors. This autonomy became particularly important in the 730s, when the emperors were iconoclasts (i.e., opposed to religious images, or icons) and the popes were firmly opposed to iconoclasm. The emperor Leo III (717–741) confiscated papal rights in southern Italy and Sicily from Rome for its defiance, but he could not remove the pope. From then on, however, the Byzantine army no longer helped the popes, who were increasingly reliant on their lands in the Campagna around Rome for food and military support. It was in this context that the popes began to look to the Franks for help when they needed it against the Lombards. But the popes were also, in the face of nothing but hostility from Byzantium, beginning to think for the first time in terms of their own practical independence. This came to fruition when the popes gained control over Ravenna itself after 756; by 774, when Charlemagne conquered northern and central Italy, Pope Adrian I (772–795) had extensive territorial designs in the peninsula. These came to nothing, and indeed Adrian and Pope Leo III (795–816) found Charlemagne a far more intrusive patron than the Byzantines had ever been. But the popes kept control of the Roman Campagna, and the Rome-Ravenna link remained intact as well; the Papal States, as reconstituted by the late medieval popes, reproduced almost exactly the boundaries of the former exarchate.
Ethnic identity and government Lombard Italy
The Ostrogothic kingdom used so many Roman governmental institutions that it can most easily be analyzed as if it were part of the late Roman imperial system. Lombard rule marked much more of a break, without doubt. But exactly how much the Lombard states owed to the Roman past and how much to Germanic traditions is still an ongoing debate. The basic notion of the kingdom as a political system was a Germanic concept in large part, for the legitimacy of the king rested on his direct relationship with the free Lombard people in arms—the exercitales, or arimanni, who formed the basis of the Lombard army. This concept did not leave much room for Romans, who indeed largely disappear from the evidence, even when documents increase again in the 8th century; it is likely that any Romans who wished to remain politically important in the Lombard kingdom had to become “Lombardized.” It is even in dispute, for that matter, how many such Romans there were; Paul the Deacon, for instance, claimed that the Roman aristocracy were largely killed in the first generation of the Lombard invasion. But this was certainly an exaggeration, because the Lombards adopted too many customs from the Romans for the latter to have been reduced entirely to subjection. Some Roman aristocratic families must have survived among the Lombards, as is suggested, for example, by the name of a royal protégé and founder of a monastery in Pavia in 714, Senator, son of Albinus.

The Lombard settlement seems to have been largely to the north of the Po River, the area with the majority of Lombard place-names and Germanic-style archaeological finds (mostly from cemetery sites). But even there Lombards must have been in a minority, and they must have been even more so farther south. There were probably few concentrations of Germanic settlers entirely immune to Roman cultural influence. The Lombard language seems to have disappeared by the 8th century, leaving few loanwords in the Italian language. The impression conveyed is of a gradual Romanization of the society and culture of the Lombards within the framework of their continuing political dominance. When the Franks invaded, Lombards and Romans moved together still more as a conquered, by now “Italian,” people: the regnum Langobardorum of the Lombard period was called the regnum Italiae from the 9th century onward.

This pattern is reinforced by the evidence of Lombard law. Rothari's Edict and Liutprand's laws look much like the legislation of the Franks and of other Germanic peoples; they deal, for example, with the carefully calculated compensations for various crimes of violence that were designed to replace violent feud or at least to make easier the resolution of feuding. These were certainly ideas foreign to traditional Roman law. When Liutprandin 731 restricted the scope of the judicial duel, for he suspected that it was unjust, he explicitly recognized that it could not be abandoned altogether, for it was part of Lombard custom. Within this Lombard frame, however, the content of law was often in practice heavily Roman. Lombard land law, for example, was almost entirely late Roman, except for the rules for inheritance.

The administrative system of the Lombard state was even more Roman than its laws. This is not very surprising, for Roman models offered far more power to rulers than did any Germanic tradition of government. The Lombards, like other Germanic invaders, took what they could from their new subjects and used Roman administrators where they could find them. Their system, as it is visible in documents from the 8th century, seems to have been more coherent than that of most other Romano-Germanic kingdoms. It was based on a central government in Pavia with numerous permanent administrators (such as the referendarii , who organized the writing of royal charters) and legal experts; there is evidence of legal appeals to judges in Pavia, and some of them were settled by the king himself.

Locally, government was mostly based on cities, which was another Roman tradition. In the kingdom, cities were governed by either a duke or a gastald ; the difference seems to have been principally one of status. In the southern duchies, local rulers were all gastalds. These officials were in charge of the local law-courts, led the city army, and administered the royal lands in the city's territory. (These three duties more or less exhausted the functions of government in the early Middle Ages.) Such responsibilities were typical everywhere in the post-Roman world; in Lombard Italy, however, the local power of dukes and gastalds seems to have maintained a more official character than in, say, Francia, with less movement toward the development of private, or family, power and more royal intervention in local political processes. The Lombard kingdom also differed from Francia in the relatively limited political importance of its bishops and other churchmen; the kings of Pavia used church institutions as an element to bolster their power less than did any other rulers in the West (including the Byzantines in Italy). This may well show that secular institutions were strong enough for kings to rule through them without ecclesiastical help; if so, the reason must have been the survival of a relatively complex social and political life in the cities themselves. Eighth-century documents, particularly for Lucca, show a network of medium-level aristocratic families based in cities, who tended to furnish both counts and bishops for their localities and whose genealogies can sometimes be traced for centuries to come. The stability of city politics was probably the essential foundation for the political coherence of the Lombard kingdom itself. The fact that Italian cities remained dominated by landed aristocrats was to condition much of their future history.

BENEDICT II
He was born in Rome and died on May 8, 685, Rome; feast day May 8. He was the Pope from 684 to 685. He was engaged in church government under popes Ss Agatho and Leo II, whom he was elected (683) to succeed. His consecration (June 26, 684) was delayed until the approval of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV[1] Pogonatus could be obtained, so that the see of Rome was vacant for almost a year. Benedict wanted to eliminate this time gap between the election by the clergy and Roman citizens and corroboration by the Christian emperor, and he persuaded Constantine to decree that future elections would not need imperial consent. Nevertheless, further imperial ratification occurred. Benedict confirmed Agatho's injunctions to restore Archbishop Wilfrid to the see of York. During his pontificate, Benedict restored several Roman churches. died 685

BENEDICT III
He was born in Rome and died on April 17, 858, in Rome. He was the Pope from 855 to 858, who was chosen as successor to Leo IV [2] in July 855. The election was not immediately confirmed by the Holy Roman emperor Louis II the Bavarian, who set up Anastasius the Librarian as antipope. Benedict was imprisoned, but the imperial government's opposition to Benedict was dropped, and he was consecrated Pope. He reprimanded the Frankish bishops, whose inaction he blamed as the source of misery in their empire. Benedict also was responsible for the repair of Roman churches damaged by the Saracens in 846.

BENEDICT IV
He was born in Rome and died in July 903 in Rome. He was the Pope from 900 to 903. Benedict reigned during one of the darkest periods of papal history, and little is known of his life or acts. He excommunicated Baldwin II,[3] count of Flanders, for causing the assassination of Fulk,[4] archbishop of Reims, Fr. (June 17, 900); he crowned Louis III the Blind[5] as Holy Roman emperor in February 901.


BENEDICT V
He died on July 4, 966, at Hamburg. He is known by name Benedict The Grammarian, Latin Benedictus Grammaticus Pope, or antipope, and ruled from May 22, 964, to July 4, 966. His election by the Romans on the death of Pope John XII[6] infuriated the Holy Roman emperor Otto I, who had already deposed John and designated Leo VIII[7] as successor. Otto forced his way into Rome and convened a synod that deposed and degraded Benedict, reducing him to deacon. After reinstating Leo, Otto brought Benedict to Hamburg. Either Benedict or Leo may be considered an antipope.
BENEDICT VI
He was born in Rome and died July 974, Rome . He was the Pope from Jan. 19, 973, to July 974. He was a cardinal deacon when elected to succeed John XIII[8] the Good (d. Sept. 6, 972), but his consecration was delayed for the ratification of his protector, the Holy Roman emperor Otto I the Great. Otto's death in 973 put Benedict at the mercy of the powerful Roman Crescentii[9] family, whose role in the history of the papacy was dramatized when Crescentius I led a resurgence of the Roman baronage. The Pope was imprisoned in June 974 and replaced by the deacon Franco, later known as antipope Boniface VII, who purportedly, by order of Crescentius, strangled Benedict. Few documents of his pontificate survived.

BENEDICT VII
He was born in Rome and died on died July 10, 983 in Rome. He was the Pope from 974 to 983. He furthered the cause of monasticism and acted against simony, specifically in an encyclical letter in 981 forbidding the exaction of money for the conferring of any holy order. Formerly bishop of Sutri, Papal States, he was elected through the intervention of Count Sicco, representative of Otto II, Holy Roman emperor. Sicco expelled Antipope Boniface VII, who had been intruded on the papal throne by a Roman group that killed Benedict's predecessor, Benedict VI. Benedict's rule was peaceful. He is judged, however, to have been mistaken when, in an agreement with Otto, he dissolved the bishopric of Merseburg (981). The closing of this outpost among the Slavs is considered to have been a setback in the conversion of central Europe. Benedict and Otto worked harmoniously together and died in the same year.

BENEDICT VIII
He was born in probably County of Tusculum [Italy] and died on died April 9, 1024. His original name was Teofilatto, Latin Theophylactus. He was the Pope from 1012 to 1024, the first of several pontiffs from the powerful Tusculani family. The ascendancy of the Tusculani marked the fall of the rival Crescentii family of Rome, which had come to dominate the papacy in the latter half of the 10th century. Benedict's predecessor, Sergius IV, was the choice of the Crescentii, and Benedict ousted another of their candidates when he became Pope. During Benedict's pontificate his brother Romanus became the civil ruler of Rome and later succeeded him as Pope John XIX. Benedict's rule was acceptable to King Henry II of Germany, whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor in 1014. Benedict appears to have been more of a feudal baron than a Pope: he restored papal authority in the Campagna and in Roman Tuscany by force of arms; he defeated the Saracens' attack on northern Italy (1016–17); and he encouraged the Norman freebooters in their attacks on Byzantine power in the south. Benedict also strove for ecclesiastical reform. A friend of St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny, Fr., Benedict supported the monastic reform movement led there by the Benedictine monks. A council summoned by Benedict at Pavia, Lombardy, in 1022, also attended by Henry, forbade uncelibate clergy and the sale of church offices.

BENEDICT IX
He died in 1055/56 in Grottaferrata, Papal States [Italy]. His original name was Teofilatto, Latin Theophylactus. He was the Pope for three times, from 1032 to 1044, from April to May 1045, and from 1047 to 1048. The last of the popes from the powerful Tusculani family, he was notorious for selling the papacy and then reclaiming the office twice.

The son of Count Alberic of Tusculum, he was the nephew of two previous popes, Benedict VIII and John XIX. While still a youth, he was thrust into the papacy by the Tusculani in 1032, and he excommunicated ecclesiastical leaders who were hostile to him. His violent and licentious conduct provoked the Romans to insurrection; he fled Rome, and in January 1045 they elected Bishop John of Sabina to succeed him as Sylvester III. But Sylvester was quickly driven out by Benedict's brothers and retired to his old bishopric in the Sabine hills, whereupon Benedict sold the papacy to his godfather, Giovanni Graziano, a Roman priest, who offered Benedict a pension. Graziano, known as an honest and pious man, is believed to have taken this action to save the Holy See from Benedict's scandalous conduct; he became Pope as Gregory VI (May 1045). In the following year, however, both Benedict and Sylvester returned to Rome, each claiming to be Pope instead of Gregory. None of the three was favoured at the Council of Sutri, held by Henry III of Germany in December 1046. Sylvester was declared a false claimant and imprisoned; Benedict was deposed; and Gregory was charged with simony, deprived of the papacy, and replaced by the Saxon bishop Suidger of Bamberg as Clement II. After Clement's death (Oct. 9, 1047) Benedict reappeared in Rome and installed himself on November 8. Finally, on July 17, 1048, Boniface of Tuscany, by order of Henry, drove Benedict from Rome and replaced him with Bishop Poppo of Brixen as Damasus II. Benedict was never seen in Rome again. He is supposed to have lived until 1055 or 1056, traditionally a penitent at the monastery of Grottaferrata.


BENEDICT X

BENEDICT XI
He was born in 1240 in Treviso, March of Trevigiana and died on July 7, 1304, in Perugia, Umbria; he was beatified on April 24, 1736; his feast day is July 7th. His original name was Niccolò Boccasini. He was the Pope from 1303 to 1304. His brief reign was taken up with problems he inherited from the quarrel of his predecessor, Boniface VIII, with King Philip IV the Fair of France and the King's allies (the Colonna family of Rome). He entered the Dominican order in 1254, becoming its general in May 1296. Created cardinal in 1298, he was legate to Hungary in 1302. He was one of two cardinals who stood by Boniface VIII at his palace at Anagni, near Rome, when the Pope, about to excommunicate Philip, was seized (Sept. 7, 1303) by the King's supporters, who sought to depose him from the papacy. The Pope was freed by the local populace but died shortly thereafter. The quarrel had originated over the King’s wish to wrest taxes from the French clergy. The Colonna had become allies of Philip because they viewed the growing power of the Pope's family as a threat to their own. Benedict was unanimously elected Pope (Oct. 22, 1303) and did much to conciliate his predecessor's enemies. While he demanded no retribution for the outrage done to Boniface at Anagni, he refused to pardon both Sciarra Colonna, who led the attack, and Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's chief adviser, who denounced Boniface at Paris in 1303.
BENEDICT XII
His original name was Jacques Fournier. He was born in Saverdun, near Toulouse, France. He died on April 25, 1342, at Avignon, Provence. He was the Pope from 1334 to 1342; he was the third pontiff to reign at Avignon, where he devoted himself to reform of the church and its religious orders. In the political sphere his efforts, influenced by King Philip VI of France, were generally unsuccessful. One of his most significant failures was his inability to curb the conflict between England and France, which began during his pontificate and came to be known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). Entering the Cistercian order at Boulbonne and graduating as doctor of theology at Paris, he first became abbot of the French monastery of Fontfroide (1311), then bishop of the French diocese of Pamiers (1317), and bishop of Mirepoix (1326). He was made cardinal in December 1327. His distinction as a theologian and the zeal with which he opposed heretics recommended him to the cardinals in Avignon, who elected him (Dec. 20, 1334) to succeed John XXII. He worked to settle a controversy that had agitated the close of John's pontificate—the controversy over the question of the Beatific Vision, a vision of God promised to the redeemed. John had preached in several sermons that this vision would be granted only after Judgment Day. Benedict ended the dispute by issuing a bull, Benedictus Deus (1336), in which he formulated the church's teaching that the souls of the just are granted the vision immediately after death. He attempted to reform the religious orders through the imposition of stringent constitutions. These rigorous measures aroused much hostility, and most of his reforming work was undone by successors. He did not return the papacy to Rome, as the Romans, at least, had hoped he would, but he sent money for the repair of its neglected churches and for the aid of its strife-ridden populace. In Avignon he built a costly papal palace and brought in Sienese artists to decorate the local churches.

BENEDICT XIII
He was born on Feb. 2, 1649, at Gravina, Kingdom of Naples. He died on Feb. 21, 1730, in Rome. His original name was Pietro Francesco Vincenzo Maria Orsini. He was the Pope from 1724 to 1730. Entering the Dominican order in 1667, Orsini taught philosophy at Brescia, Venetian Republic, before Pope Clement X made him cardinal in 1672. He was successively archbishop of Manfredonia (1675), of Cesena (1680), and of Benevento (1686). He had taken part in five conclaves for the election of popes before the conclave that chose him on May 29. His attack on the extravagance of the cardinals and on the worldliness of ecclesiastics, most forcefully asserted at a provincial council at Rome (1725), had little effect. His own mode of living was noted for its simplicity. Unfortunately, he left state affairs almost entirely to the unpopular cardinal Niccolò Coscia, whose abuse of his office to amass riches marred Benedict's reign. Papal relations with the Bourbon monarchies of France and Spain, made difficult by the belief in absolutism that prevailed among European kings in the 18th century, were allowed to deteriorate. He continued the opposition of the papacy to Jansenism, a Roman Catholic movement of unorthodox tendencies that had begun in 17th-century France, although he allowed the Dominicans to preach the Augustinian doctrine of grace, which bordered on the Jansenist teaching. A scholar, Benedict wrote many theological works.

BENEDICT XIV
His original name was Prospero Lambertini. He was born on March 31, 1675, in Bologna, Papal States. He died on May 3, 1758, in Rome. He was the Pope from 1740 to 1758; his intelligence and moderation won praise even among deprecators of the Roman Church at a time when it was beset by criticism from the philosophers of the Enlightenment and its prerogatives were being challenged by absolutist monarchs. Typical of his pontificate were his promotion of scientific learning and his admonition to those in charge of drawing up the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) to act with restraint. Of a noble family, he received a doctorate in theology and law from the University of Rome. In 1728 he was created a cardinal, and in 1731 he was made archbishop of Bologna by Pope Clement XII, whom on Aug. 17, 1740, he was elected to succeed. In the Papal States he reduced the burden of taxation, encouraged agriculture, and supported a policy of free trade. He was conciliatory in his relations with the secular powers, making vast concessions to the kings of Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, and Naples in matters of patronage, the right of nomination to vacant sees, and secular jurisdiction over ecclesiastical changes. In his bulls Ex quo singulari (1742) and Omnium sollicitudinum (1744), he prohibited certain traditional practices that the Jesuits had allowed converts to retain in China and India. This ban set back the winning of converts in Asia and was partially reversed in 1939, when the church allowed acts of ancestor veneration, provided they were without religious significance. In 1756 he condemned the practice of refusing last rites to French ecclesiastics who still opposed the bull Unigenitus , directed against certain propositions of Jansenism, a Roman Catholic movement of unorthodox tendencies that had begun in 17th-century France. Benedict was an active scholar all his life, founding several learned societies and laying the groundwork for the present Vatican Museum. A lively wit, he corresponded with many of the great men of his age, including Voltaire, who dedicated his tragedy Mahomet to him.


BENEDICT XV
He was born on Nov. 21, 1854, in Pegli, Kingdom of Sardinia and died on Jan. 22, 1922, in Rome . his original name was Giacomo Della Chiesa. He was the Pope from 1914 to 1922. After graduating from the University of Genoa, he studied for the priesthood in the Collegio Capranica in Rome and entered the papal diplomatic service, later spending four years in Spain before being employed in the department of the secretary of state (1887). Pope Pius X made him archbishop of Bologna, (1907), and cardinal (1914). He was elected Pope a month after the outbreak of World War I, and the greater part of his papacy was occupied with war problems. Trying to follow a policy of strict neutrality, Benedict abstained from condemning any action of the belligerents. He concentrated the church's efforts initially toward the alleviation of unnecessary suffering. Later he made positive efforts toward reestablishing peace, though hampered by the pro-Austrian sentiments of the majority of cardinals. When the United States entered the war and took up the Allies' attitude that peace could not be restored to Europe until Germany had been defeated, his principal attempt to mediate (1917) failed. By 1919 the papacy lacked the prestige it had enjoyed under Pope Leo XIII, and Benedict was excluded from the peace negotiations. His last years were concerned with readjusting the machinery of papal administration made necessary by the territorial changes that followed the war and with directives on missionary work. During this period official relations were resumed with France, and a British representative was accredited to the Vatican for the first time since the 17th century.

BENEDICT XIII
He was born in c. 1328, Illueca, Kingdom of Aragon and died 1423, Peñíscola, in Valencia. His original name was Pedro de Luna antipope from 1394 to 1423. He reigned in Avignon, Provence, in opposition to the reigning popes in Rome, during the Western Schism (1378–1417), when the Roman Catholic Church was split by national rivalries claiming the papal throne. Of noble birth, he was Professor of Canon Law at Montpellier University in southern France before he was made cardinal in 1375. The Schism began in 1378 with the election of Robert of Geneva as Clement VII in opposition to Pope Urban VI. Benedict gave his allegiance to Clement and, upon Clement's death, was elected to succeed him by the cardinals supporting Avignon, with the understanding that he would abdicate voluntarily if that would help to end the division in the church. This he later refused to do, however, when asked to resign by the French princes who had been among his supporters. Eighteen of his 23 cardinals deserted him, and the papal palace in Avignon was besieged by the French (1398).
In 1403 Benedict escaped from the palace to Provence, rallied his cardinals, and—largely through the support of Louis, duc d'Orléans—won back the obedience of France. He began negotiations to reach a compromise with the reigning Pope Gregory XII (1407), but they came to nothing, and in 1408 the French declared themselves neutral in the dispute. In June 1409 the Council of Pisa, summoned by the rival colleges of cardinals to end the rift, pronounced both popes deposed and elected Alexander V in their stead.
Benedict, still possessing the allegiance of some states, refused to submit to the Council of Pisa, but he subsequently had to take refuge in his castle at Peñíscola in 1415. On July 26, 1417, when the Council of Constance pronounced Benedict deposed, he lost all governmental recognition except that of Armagnac (in France) and of Scotland. But Benedict, who had maintained his claims against three Roman popes (Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and GregoryXII) and two antipopes whose claims derived from the Council of Pisa (Alexander V and John XXIII), refused to yield to Pope Martin V, who was elected in November 1417 to achieve unity. Benedict maintained to the end of his life that he was the rightful Pope and created four new cardinals as late as November 1422.

BENEDICT XVI
He was born as Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria Germany.
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI (1927- ), pope (2005- ). Born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, Germany, he grew up in southern Bavaria, where his father was a policeman. At the age of 14 he was enrolled as a member of the compulsory Hitler Youth organization, and two years later was drafted into the German army, where he served in the anti-aircraft artillery corps during the late stages of World War II. He deserted in 1944 and spent a brief period in a prisoner of war camp, before returning to education, first at a seminary in the town of Freising, and later at the University of Munich, where he studied theology and philosophy. Ordained a priest in 1951, Ratzinger completed his dissertation and went on to teach theology at the universities of Bonn and Münster during the 1960s.
At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Ratzinger served as a theological consultant for Cardinal Joseph Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. He was appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen in 1966, where he taught alongside Swiss theologian Hans Küng, before returning to Bavaria as vice-president of the University of Regensburg in 1969. Ratzinger became archbishop of Munich and Freising in March 1977 and three months later was created a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. In 1981 he moved to the Vatican to take up the position of head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the administrative body that oversees the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Elected vice-dean of the College of Cardinals in 1998, he was subsequently elevated to dean in 2002, becoming one of the most senior cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church. Following the death of Pope John Paul II, Ratzinger was elected pope on April 24, 2005, choosing the regnal name Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI's opinions reflect those of his predecessor—he resists any challenges to the traditional Roman Catholic views on priestly marriage, abortion, homosexual practice, contraception, and the ordination of women priests.

end notes:

[1] Byzantine emperor from 668 to 685. He was the eldest son of Constans II. Constantine withstood a four-year Arab siege of Constantinople (674–678), greatly enhancing Byzantine prestige and indeed marking a turning point in European history. In the Balkans, however, he could not prevent the Bulgars from crossing the Danube River and establishing their kingdom in the district where their name still survives. He had to recognize their kingdom and pay them annual tribute. Constantine summoned the sixth ecumenical Council of Constantinople (680–681), which condemned monothelitism and recognized the orthodox christological doctrine as laid down by the Council of Chalcedon (451).

[2] born , Rome died July 17, 855, Rome; feast day July 17 pope from 847 to 855. A Benedictine monk, Leo served in the Curia under Pope Gregory IV and was later made cardinal priest by Pope Sergius II, whom he was elected to succeed. Leo rebuilt Rome after it had been sacked by the Saracens (Arab enemies) in 846 and fortified the city to protect it against future attacks. In 849 he arranged an alliance among several Greek cities in Italy, and their combined forces defeated an invading Saracen fleet offOstia, Italy. In 854 Leo fortified Civitavecchia, Italy, a popular Saracen target. Thereafter, the town was named Leopoli in his honour. At a Roman synod in April 850, he crowned as co-emperor the Frankish emperor Lothair I's son Louis II. In church affairs, Leo took a firm hand against abuses by important ecclesiastics. He censured the powerful archbishop Hincmar of Reims for excommunicating an imperial vassal without papal approval, andhe excommunicated Cardinal Anastasius of San Marcello (later the antipope Anastasius Bibliothecarius), in 853, to enforce ecclesiastical obedience to Rome.
[3] Baldwin The Bald, French Baudouin Le Chauve, Dutch Boudewijn DeKale second ruler of Flanders, who, from his stronghold at Bruges, maintained, as his father Baldwin Ibefore him, a vigorous defense of his lands against the incursionsof the Norsemen. On his mother's side a descendant of Charlemagne, he strengthened the dynastic importance of his family by marrying Aelfthryth, daughter of Alfred the Great, of Wessex, Eng.
[4] died June 17, 900 French Foulques, or Foulque, Archevêque De Reims leader of the opposition to the non-Carolingian king Eudes (of theWest Franks, or France). Failing to establish his kinsman, Guy II of Spoleto, as king of the West Franks in 888, Fulk turned unavailingly to Arnulf, king of the East Franks, and then to the young Charles, son of the Carolingian Louis II the Stammerer; he crowned Charles at Reims in 893. His view was that only one of Carolingian blood could rightfully become king. Although Charles had to yield to Eudes, he becameking (as Charles III) on the latter's death in 898, and Fulk became his chancellor. Fulk's efforts to keep church property out of the hands of the nobles provoked his assassination in 900 at the instigation of Count Baldwin II of Flanders.
[5] born c. 880, /882, Autun?, Fr. died September 928, Arles, Fr. byname Louis The Blind, French Louis L'aveugle king of Provence and, from 901 to 905, Frankish emperor whose short-lived tenure marked the failure to restore the Carolingian dynasty to power in Italy. Louis was a son of Boso, king of Provence, and Irmingard, daughter of the Frankish emperor Louis II, the last of the elder male line of the Carolingian dynasty. The emperor Charles III the Fat took Louis under his protection on Boso's death in 887, and, although Charles was deposed that same year, Louis was recognized as king of Provence in 890. In 900 Louis was called to Italy by a group of nobles who were opposed to the rule of the Italian king Berengar of Friuli; in October, Louis was elected king of the Lombards at Pavia and, a few months later, in February 901, received the imperial crown from Pope Benedict IV at Rome.In 902, however, Berengar captured Louis, who was forced to leave the country. Louis attempted to reconquer Italy in 904. He secured the submission of Lombardy but in July 905 was captured at Verona by Berengar, who blinded him and sent him back to Provence, where he remained until his death.
[6] His original name was Ottaviano, English Octavian. He was born 937?, in Rome and died May 14, 964 . He was the Pope from 955 to 964. He was the only son of Duke Alberic II of Spoleto, then ruler of Rome, who ordered Octavian's election (Dec. 16, 955) as pope when he was only about 18 years of age. The young pope changed his name to John, and he crowned the German king Otto I the Great and his wife Adelaide as Holy Roman emperor and empress on Feb. 2, 962. But he rebelled when Otto issued his controversial Privilegium Ottonianum (“Ottonian Privilege”), which ordered John to take an oath of obedience to the Emperor. On Nov. 6, 963, Otto called a council at St. Peter's, Rome, which on Dec. 4, 963, deposed John for instigating an armed conspiracy against Otto and for dishonourable conduct. The council replaced John with Pope Leo VIII. In February 964, after Otto left, Leo was deposed by a synod conducted by John. Soon after, John died suddenly in the arms of his mistress.
[7] He was born in Rome and died March 1?, 965 . He was the pope, or antipope, from 963 to 965. A Roman synod in December 963 deposed and expelled Pope John XII for dishonorable conduct and for instigating an armed conspiracy against the Holy Roman emperor Otto I the Great. Otto, who had marched into Rome with his army and had called the synod, subsequently influenced the election of Leo, then only a layman. When Otto departed, John and his partisans returned to Rome, where in February 964 John conducted a synod that deposed Leo, who then fled to Otto. John died suddenly in the following May. Ignoring Otto's candidate, Leo, the Romans elected Benedict V. The furious Otto again came to Rome, reinstated Leo by force in June 964, and deported Benedict. Some scholars regard Leo as an antipope until after Otto compelled his acceptance. Others consider either Leo or Benedict as antipopes.

[8] He was born in Rome and died Sept. 6, 972, in Rome . he was the pope from 965 to 972. He was bishop of Narni, Papal States, when chosen pope on Oct. 1, 965, by Emperor Otto I. Although John was apious and learned man, the Roman nobles opposed Otto's choice and kidnapped John (December 965). In 966 Otto saved him and took savage vengeance on his enemies. John crowned Otto's 12-year-old son Otto II as emperor (Christmas 967). Immediately before the Byzantine princess Theophano married Otto II (972), John crowned her as empress. John's alliance with the imperial family made his pontificate peaceful.

[9] Family that played an important part in the history of Rome and the papacy from the middle of the 10th to the beginning of the 11th century. Its extensive possessions were situated mainly in the Sabina. The Crescentii a Caballo Marmoreo and the Crescentii de Theodora may both have been descended from one Crescentius recorded in 901. Crescentius (Crescenzio) I de Theodora (d. 984?) led a revolt in 974 against Pope Benedict VI, who was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo and then assassinated. Crescentius' choice as successor, the antipope Boniface VII, was immediately expelled by the new “imperial” pope, Benedict VII, under whose pontificate (974–983) the Crescentii seem to have suffered a political setback. After the Holy Roman emperor Otto II's death, their fortunes revived, and John (Giovanni) I, probably Crescentius' son, assumed the title of patricius of Rome and appears to have controlled the election of the new pope, John XV, in 985. In 996 Crescentius, probably John's brother, led a rising against Pope Gregory V, but the pope's cousin the emperor Otto III reinstated him in 998. After being besieged by Otto in the Castel Sant'Angelo, Crescentius was executed on April 29, 998. His son John II was the last of the family to wield political power in Rome:after Otto's death (1002), he became patricius and henceforth practically governed the city; he died in 1012. After that, the Stefaniani branch, descended from Stefania, sisterof Crescentius I de Theodora, declined; the Ottaviani, descended from John II's brother-in-law Octavianus, retained the rectorate ofthe Sabina until the beginning of the 12th century.
Source: Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
compiled by Thavithu Xavier Gnanaraj, Chennai 23