On average, a pope can expect to reign less than ten years. In the high middle ages it was not unusual for a pontificate to last under three years.

Obviously, news about a pope’s death or election could not spread as quickly as it does today. I’ve heard the slow spread of information given as one of the reasons that only someone living in what is now Italy could realistically hope to become a pope, as people living further away might not even hear of a late pope’s death before the conclave had already selected the new pope.

With pontificates just a few years long, would the average person in Europe even know who the pope was at any given time? Say, a random peasant living in what is now Hungary? Or a priest running a tiny church in middle-of-nowhere, France? Or a random person on the streets of London?