Pope Leo VII

Leo VII became bishop of Rome on 3 January 936, assuming nominal rule over the Papal States during an era when the papacy had fallen under the brutal control of local aristocratic factions. His tenure lasted three and a half years in a period historians would later call the Saeculum Obscurum—the Dark Age of the papacy—when popes were made and unmade by Roman strongmen and the spiritual authority of the office had collapsed into raw political struggle. He died on 13 July 939, one more name in a succession that moved too quickly for most to notice.