Sergius was elected pope, ending the last disputed period of sede vacante during the Byzantine Papacy.

Pope Sergius I was the bishop of Rome from 15 December 687 to his death on 8 September 701, and is revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. He was elected at a time when two rivals, Paschal and Theodore, were locked in a dispute about which of them should become pope. His papacy was dominated by his response to the Quinisext Council, the canons of which he steadfastly refused to accept. Thereupon Emperor Justinian II ordered Sergius' arrest, but the Roman people and the Italian militia of the exarch of Ravenna refused to allow the exarch to bring Sergius to Constantinople.

In the Catholic Church, sede vacante is the state during which a diocese or archdiocese is without a prelate installed in office, with the prelate's office being the cathedral. The term is used frequently in reference to a papal interregnum occurring upon the pope's death or resignation.

The Byzantine Papacy was a period of Byzantine domination of the Roman Papacy from 537 to 752, when popes required the approval of the Byzantine Emperor for their episcopal consecration, and many popes were chosen from the apocrisiarii or the inhabitants of Byzantine-ruled Greece, Syria, or Sicily. Justinian I reconquered the Italian peninsula in the Gothic War (535–554) and appointed the next three popes, a practice that would be continued by his successors and later be delegated to the Exarchate of Ravenna.