Lentorama 2025: Perfunctory Popes

Day 39: Damasus II

You may remember the story of Clement II, who was made pope in order to squash three competing claims to the office and give Holy Roman Emperor Henry III a pope who could crown him as emperor. Which would have settled things nicely, except that Clement died less than a year later.

The Roman nobles sent an envoy to Henry to ask who should replace Clement, and just happened to have someone in mind. Rather than take their suggested candidate, Henry then asked the bishop of Liege who he thought should be pope. The bishop suggested one of the three deposed popes, Gregory VI, but by that point Henry was irritated at the length of time it was taking to come up with a pope and decided on the bishop of Brixen. 

Which would have been fine, except that one of the other deposed popes, Benedict IX, reclaimed the throne with the backing of the powerful counts of Tusculum. Henry instructed the Margrave of Tuscany to escort the new pope to Rome, which was ironic in that the margrave didn't like Henry, and was instrumental in getting Benedict back on the throne. The margrave refused to help the new pope, who then went back to Henry, who sent him back to the margrave with a letter basically telling the margrave to depose Benedict and install Damasus, or Henry would come down and make him do so.

This changed the margrave's tune, and he marched on Rome to depose Benedict and get Damasus on the throne. Damasus barely had time to get the seat warm before he died, 23 days after his coronation. Rumor had it that Benedict had Damasus poisoned, but there's some theorizing that Damasus actually died from malaria.