Pope St. John I

Pope from 523, John was sent by the Arian king Theodoric to Constantinople to plead the cause of Italian Arians. The mission succeeded too well — the Catholic emperor received the pope with extraordinary honor. On his return Theodoric, suspicious, threw John into prison at Ravenna, where he died of mistreatment.

John was already elderly and frail when he undertook the journey — the first reigning pope to visit Constantinople. The emperor Justin I knelt before him, and the pope crowned the emperor at a special liturgy, a gesture that enraged Theodoric and sealed John's fate.

He died in Theodoric's dungeon in May 526, weakened by starvation and harsh treatment. His body was brought back to Rome and buried in St. Peter's, where he was immediately venerated as a martyr — a pope who suffered not for doctrinal controversy but simply because a tyrant could not tolerate a bishop whom the world honored more than a king.