Background
The exact date of birth of Pope John I is unknown. According to the sources, he was born in Tuscany.
The exact date of birth of Pope John I is unknown. According to the sources, he was born in Tuscany.
There is little information about the life of John I. In 523 he was elected Bishop of Rome. The Mediterranean world was, by this time, divided into the Eastern and Western Empires, each having a separate emperor.
Christianity was also divided (though not in a geographic sense) by the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ. King Theodoric, the German chieftain who was in effect the Western emperor, was himself an Arian, though he was initially tolerant of the Catholics in his kingdom. Soon after John was elected pope, Justin, the Eastern emperor, began repressing the Arians in the East. Theodoric was upset by this, and he forced John and other religious leaders from the West to visit Justin in Constantinople (capital of the Eastern empire) for the purpose of lessening the restrictions placed upon the Arians. (Because religious questions had political implications, it was not uncommon for kings to involve themselves in religion, and for bishops to find themselves involved in politics. )
Little is known about the outcome of the negotiations Pope John conducted with Emperor Justin, but because the two leaders got along well together, a paranoid Theodoric assumed they were plotting against him. When John returned to Italy in 526, Theodoric had him arrested. Pope John died soon after he was imprisoned, perhaps as a result of the treatment he received, thus earning a martyr’s crown.
His body was transported to Rome and buried in the Basilica of St. Peter.