After a disagreement
with the Byzantine emperor, Martin I was arrested, scourged and exiled.
He died in 653 on the Crimean peninsula, of a combination of abuse,
starvation and exposure. In 882 John VIII became the first papal victim
of murder, when some of his staff first poisoned him and then beat him
to death with cudgels. Hadrian III (885), Benedict IV (903), and Ser-
gius IV (1012) were also probably murdered by their enemies. The un-
balanced Steven VI was strangled in 896 during a prison riot, while
Leo V was murdered in jail by an anti-pope in 903 after reigning for
only a month. After a successful reign of fourteen years, John X died in
928 when dissatisfied members of the aristocracy suffocated him with
a cushion. Steven IX, who had been raised to the seat of Peter by mem-
bers of the aristocracy, was arrested in 942 by the same group and so
severely tortured in prison that he died of his injuries. Benedict VI was
strangled in jail in 974 on the instructions of an anti-pope. Boniface
VII was responsible for the imprisonment of John XIV, who died in
jail in 984 of exposure and possibly poisoning.