John VI was one of the long line of Greek-born popes (687–752) who governed the Latin Church during the Byzantine domination of central Italy. Born around 655 in Ephesus, he was elected within months of Sergius I's death and consecrated on October 30, 701.
His pontificate was dominated by two crises: the attempted arrest of his predecessor's policy by the Byzantine exarch Theophylact (whom the militia of Rome again defended the pope against, parallel to Sergius's confrontation with Zacharias), and the invasion of the Roman duchy by the Lombard duke Gisulf I of Benevento.
Faced with the Lombard advance to within sight of Rome, John VI emptied the papal treasury to ransom Christian captives Gisulf had taken — a precedent for the medieval papal ransom-of-captives tradition that would become an institutional Catholic practice culminating in the 13th-century Mercedarian and Trinitarian orders.
He restored Bishop Wilfrid of York to his see at the appeal made in person by Wilfrid himself, who had travelled to Rome a second time to seek papal redress — a foundational moment for the principle of papal jurisdictional appeal in the Anglo-Saxon Catholic Church. John VI died on January 11, 705, and was buried in St. Peter's.