Pope Leo VIII ( 915 – 1 March 965) was a Roman prelate who claimed the Holy See from 963 until 964 in opposition to John XII and Benedict V and again from 23 June 964 to his death. Today he is considered by the Catholic Church to have been an antipope during the first period and the legitimate Pope of Rome during the second. An appointee of Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, Leo VIII's pontificate occurred after the period known as the saeculum obscurum. Early life Born in Rome in the region around the Clivus Argentarius, Leo came from an illustrious noble family. He was the son of John who held the office of protonotary. Although a layperson, he was the protoscriniarius (or superintendent of the Roman public schools for scribes) in the papal court during the pontificate of John XII. In 963 he was included in a party that was sent by John to the newly crowned Holy Roman emperor, Otto I, who was besieging the deposed King Berengar II of Italy at the castle of St. Leo in Umbria. His instructions were to reassure the emperor that the pope was determined to correct the abuses of the papal court, as well as protesting about Otto's actions in demanding that cities in the Papal States take an oath of fidelity to the emperor instead of the pope. Struggle for papacy By the time Otto entered Rome to depose Pope John XII, Leo had been appointed protonotary to the Apostolic See. A synod convened by the emperor uncanonically deposed John XII (who had fled to Tibur) and proceeded to elect Leo VIII, who was the emperor's nominee, as pope on 4 December 963. Since Leo was still a layman, he was ordained as ostiarius, lector, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest in the space of a day by Sico, the cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who then proceeded to consecrate him as bishop on 6 December 963. The deposed John, however, still had a large body of sympathisers within Rome; he offered large bribes to the Roman nobility if they would rise up and overthrow Otto and kill Leo, and so, in early January 964, the Roman people staged an uprising that was quickly put down by Otto's troops. Leo, hoping to reach out to the Roman nobility, persuaded Otto to release the hostages he had taken from the leading Roman families