Can you put a pope’s corpse on trial?

We’re all intrigued by political rivalries. But how far can rivals go? This is all about a medieval pope whose body was exhumed, dressed up, and put on trial by his opponents.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, I have a spooky image for you. Imagine a
dead pope dug up from his grave, dressed up and
put on trial for stuff he did in life. It
actually happened. It's the ultimate case of political rivalry. I'm
Patty Steele, dead pope on trial. Next on the backstory.

(00:23):
We're back with the backstory. I know you're saying, give
me a break, Patty, please, no politics. But did you
see Hamilton? I mean, think about it. Close to forty
million people have loved it on stage or have streamed it. Now.
The point is, when you don't feel personally invested in it,
political rivalry can be really entertaining, also deadly serious. For

(00:44):
Hamilton and his nemesis Aaron Burr. It ended with Pistols
at Dawn, the most infamous duel in American history, and
gave Broadway a massive hit. But political rivalries are nothing new.
Now you and I are going to take a trip
back into to the dark Ages, to one of the
most bizarre rivalries in human history, ending in a dead

(01:06):
pope being put on trial. It's the ninth century and
Rome is like a medieval soap opera on steroids. Pope
Formoses had died in the year eight ninety six. But
he was really powerful, and in fairness, he made some
questionable decisions, but he was still revered by followers, and

(01:29):
that really disturbed the new folks in power, including the
new Pope. I'll understand, in those days, this sort of
thing was not just a religious thing. It was about
the pope's pure political power. Up until the fifteen hundreds,
the pope actually had the power to choose the Holy
Roman Emperor, and that's where the whole mess grew hair.

(01:52):
For Moses had named an emperor who wasn't the first
choice of his detractors. So after his death, the new
people in power wanted to undo all of the edicts
he had proclaimed during his reign, including the choice of
the emperor. But that meant they had to totally delegitimize
for Moses. They claimed that while in power, he had

(02:14):
committed some serious crimes. So what to do. I know,
Let's dig him up, put him in pope robes, and
literally put him on trial. Yeah, I'm serious. They exhumed
his body a year after his death, dragged his decomposed
remains to court, dressed him in his vestments, and propped

(02:34):
him up on a throne, complete with all the other
pope type regalia. The trial itself was something out of
a horror movie or maybe the perfect Halloween party set up.
Just imagine a bunch of furious clergy members crowded around
a rotting corpse, shouting accusations at it. They were intent

(02:55):
on erasing his time as pope from the record books.
So what were they accusing him of? Everything from perjury
to violating church canons, becoming the pope illegally, and basically
being unworthy of being a pope in the first place,
so again they could undo everything he'd done on the job.
Here's my favorite part. This was actually referred to as

(03:18):
the cadaver synod or trial. They shouted questions at him
about the accusations. A deacon had been appointed to answer
those questions, most likely not really doing a great job
of representing the dead. Guy onlooker said he had to
be very careful for fear of representing Foremoses too well
and enraging those who ordered the trial. They said, as

(03:39):
the trial took place, handlers of Formoses's body had to
prop it up and kind of move it around in
response to questions, how weird is that? And the craziness continued.
Midway through the trial, an earthquake shook the room. Both
sides declared it as a sign from God in support

(03:59):
of them. Now, at the end of the trial, Formosis
was found guilty of all charges. Big surprise there, right,
But that's not all. They actually overturned his papacy and
they declared his papal acts null and void. Okay, imagine
that happening today. A courtroom where a judge not only
convicts a corpse sitting there in the flesh, well not

(04:22):
in the flesh exactly, but of wrongdoing and then invalidates
all the decisions the individual made when alive. So next
came the punishment phase. Can't execute him because he's already dead.
So after the trial, Formoss's body was tied to weights
and tossed into the Tiber River. That was the traditional

(04:42):
Roman burial for the worst criminals, as well as rulers
who had fallen out of favor. But first they removed
the three fingers on his right hand that he had
used for blessings. All of this to prevent his body
from becoming a holy relic. Now, ancient churches all over
Italy still have relics full body or body parts of saints,

(05:04):
popes and other religious figures. He'll even find fingers in
some of them. But this wasn't the end of his
very busy after life. His body didn't rest peacefully at
the bottom of the river. Despite being weighted down. His
corpse eventually washed up on the riverbank and was retrieved
by a fisherman. Some said it began to perform miracles.

(05:26):
The public went nuts, and the guy who had ordered
the cadaver synod was thrown in jail, where he was
eventually strangled to death. This gets more and more like
a Game of Throne storyline. Right by the end of
the year, the next pope re established for Moses's reputation
and his edicts and ordered him reburied in Saint Peter's

(05:46):
Basilica alongside every other pope. He also banned for all
time any more trials of corpses. Thank god. His fellow
clergyman said, Okay, maybe he's the real deal after all,
and they declared him a martyr. So if you're still
asking if you could put the corpse of a dead
pope on trial, the answer is you could, but not

(06:09):
anymore since the church outlawed cadaver trials eleven hundred years ago.
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

(06:31):
executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplified Media. We're out
with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to
the Backstory, the pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.