POPE JOHN XIV
137TH Pope (983-984)

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Date of birth unknown; d. 984. After the death of Benedict VII, Bishop Peter Campanora of Pavia, earlier imperial chancellor of Italy, was elected pope with the consent of Emperor Otto II, and was crowned at the end of November onr beginning of December, 983, when he took the name of John. On 7 December of the same year the young emperor, Otto II, died at Rome, prepared for death by the pope, and was buried in the vestibule of St. Peter's. When the anti-pope Boniface VII, created in 974 by the Roman adherents of Crescentius, received at Constantinople news of the emperor's death, he returned to Rome (April, 984), and with the aid of his followers made Pope John a prisoner, threw him into the dungeons of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and mounted the papal throne. After four months the unhappy John XIV died in prison on 20 August, 984, either from starvation and misery or murdered by order of Boniface.

Liber Pontificalis, ed. DUCHESNE, II, 259; JAFFÉ, Regesta Rom. Pont., I, 484 sq.; LANGEN, Gesch. der römischen Kirche, III, 3;68 sqq.; UHLIRZ, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches unter Otto II und Otto III, I (Leipzig, 1902).

J.P. KIRSCH