897

By place

Europe

• Spring - King Lambert II travels to Rome with his mother, Queen Ageltrude and brother Guy IV, Lombard duke of Spoleto, to meet Pope Stephen VI to receive reconfirmation of his imperial title. Guy is murdered on the Tiber by agents of Alberic I, a Frankish nobleman with political interests. He seizes Spoleto and sets himself up as duke.

  Britain

• English warships intercept six Viking longships in the mouth of an unknown estuary on the south coast in Dorset. The Danes are blockaded, and three ships attempt to break through the English lines. Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew board the enemy's vessels and kill everyone on board. Some ships manage to escape, two of the other three boats are driven against the Sussex coast. The shipwrecked sailors are brought before King Alfred the Great at Winchester and hanged. Just one Viking ship returns to East Anglia.

  Arabian Empire

• Caliph Al-Mu'tadid recovers control of the Cilician Thughur and of northern Syria, during the turmoil in the Tulunid government.
• Al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya, an Arab religious and political leader, becomes the first Zaidiyyah imam to rule over portions of Yemen.

  Japan

• Emperor Uda abdicates the throne after a ten year reign. He is succeeded by his 12-year-old son Daigo, as the 60th emperor of Japan.

  By topic

Religion

• January - The Cadaver Synod: Lambert II orders Stephen VI to exhume the nine-month-old cadaver of former pope Formosus, to redress him in papal robes, and have him put on trial while seated in a chair at St. Peter's. Formosus is 'convicted' of several crimes, his fingers of consecration are cut off, and the body is stripped of his vestments.
• August - Stephen VI is removed from office, imprisoned and strangled in his cell. He is succeeded by Romanus as the 114th pope of the Catholic Church.
• December - Romanus is deposed and succeeded by Theodore II as the 115th pope of Rome, but dies twenty days later.