Very (VERY) little is known about our 120th pope. Anastasius III was the son of a Roman nobleman named Lucian, and one of the only acts we know about include him intervening to help moderate Germany’s ecclesiastical disputes. Reigning a little over two years, Anastasius III died in November 913 and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. 

Anastasius III may have been a pawn of Theophylact and Theodora, the Roman senator and his wife. The pair and their family were in near-total control over Roman pontiffs for the first half of the 10th Century, a period that’s since become known as the Saeculum Obscurum, or the “Dark Ages” of the papacy.