Pope Lando

Lando (also known as Landus) was Pope from either July or November 913 to his death in 914. His short pontificate fell during an obscure period in papal and Roman history, the so-called Saeculum obscurum (904–64). He was the last pope to use a papal name (in his case, his birth name) that had not been used previously until the election of Pope Francis in 2013.

According to the Liber pontificalis, Lando was born in the Sabina, and his father was a wealthy man named Taino from Fornovo. The Liber also claims that his pontificate lasted only four months and twenty-two days. A different list of popes, appended to a continuation of the Liber pontificalis at the Abbey of Farfa, was quoted by Gregory of Catino in his Chronicon Farfense in the twelfth century. It gives Lando a pontificate of six months and twenty-six days. This is closer to the duration recorded by Flodoard of Reims of six months and ten days. The end of his pontificate can be dated to between 5 February 914, when he is mentioned in a document of Ravenna, and late March or early April, when his successor, John X, was elected.