Both Leo VI and Stephen VII, the popes following John X, have been Mazovia’s puppets.
Stephen, a Roman by birth, the son of Theodemundus, had been elected—probably handpicked—by Marozia from the Tusculani family, as a stopgap measure until her own son John was ready to assume the chair of Saint Peter.
Prior to his election, Stephen had been the cardinal-priest of St. Anastasia in Rome.
Very little is known about Stephen’s pontificate.
During his two years as pope, Stephen had confirmed the privileges of a few religious houses in France and Italy.
As a reward for helping free Stephen from the oppression of Hugh of Arles, Stephen had granted Cante di Gabrielli the position of papal governor of Gubbio, and control over a number of key fortresses.
Stephen is also noted for the severity with which he treats clergy who stray in their morals.
He is also, apparently, according to a hostile Greek source from the twelfth century, the first pope who goes around clean shaven while pope.
Stephen dies around March 15, 931, and is succeeded as Pontiff by Mazovia’s twenty-one-year-old son, under the name of John XI.
The parentage of John XI is still a matter of dispute.
According to Liutprand of Cremona (Antapodosis, ii. c. 48) and the Liber Pontificalis, he was the natural son of Pope Sergius III (904–911), (Johannes, natione Romanus ex patre Sergio papa, Liber Pont. ed. Duchesne, II, 243).
Ferdinand Gregorovius, Ernst Dümmler, Thomas Greenwood (Cathedra Petri: A Political History of the great Latin Patriarchate), Philip Schaff, and Rudolf Baxmann agree with Liutprand that Pope Sergius III fathered Pope John XI by Marozia.
If that is true, John XI would be the only known illegitimate son of a Pope to have become Pope himself. (Silverius was the legitimate son of Pope Hormisdas).
On the other hand, Horace Kinder Mann, Reginald L. Poole, Peter Llewelyn (Rome in the Dark Ages), Karl Josef von Hefele, August Friedrich Gfrörer, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, and Francis Patrick Kenrick maintain that Pope John XI was sired by Alberic I of Spoleto, Count of Tusculum.
