Pope John VIII

John VIII took the papal throne on 14 December 872 and immediately faced a problem neither prayer nor diplomacy seemed able to solve: Muslim forces advancing through southern Italy with Rome in their path. When appeals to the Franks and Byzantines went nowhere, he fortified the city himself. He spent political capital elsewhere too, backing the missionary Methodius of Thessalonica against Carolingian and Bavarian opposition and authorizing a Slavonic Bible translation that would shape Eastern European Christianity for centuries. He also formally recognized the Duchy of Croatia and patched the Photian schism that had split Rome and Constantinople. On 16 December 882, someone inside his own court ended it with a club and poison. The papacy never recovered its footing.