pope from 898 to 900.

Consecrated in January 898, John was opposed by the rival candidate Sergius (later Pope Sergius III), whom he excommunicated. John immediately held councils at Rome and Ravenna to rehabilitate Pope Formosus, whose corpse had been exhumed (897) by Pope Stephen VI (VII) for a posthumous trial that declared his election as pope invalid. John's councils condemned Stephen's synod and destroyed its acts, restored the clergy deposed by Stephen and his faction, and confirmed the Constitutio Romana of the Frankish emperor Lothar I, thereby making compulsory the presence of an imperial emissary at papal consecrations.