November 23, 2025 • 60 mins
In The Crease (ITC) is where history, mystery, and the human condition collide. Hosted by J E DOUBLE F, each episode blends storytelling, analysis, and dark humor to explore the strange, the forgotten, and the unsettlingly relevant.
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
H the s threshold.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Opens step through past present future. We are not alone time.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Time t s.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yes, this decrease.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
This is and the crease where history strangest plays still
count against the record. I am je double f known
on the ex verse as a cosmic Bard, and this
is Episode seventy five, The cadavers a Nod. Tonight we
(02:48):
travel to the heart of medieval Rome, to our courtroom
built inside a cathedral, and to a trial that defied
both reason and mortality. The year is eighteen ninety. The
Pope has been dead for nine months. His body has
been dug from its tomb, dressed again in papal robes,
and seated upraid on a throne before a council of bishops.
(03:11):
His successor, Pope Stephen the sixth, stands ready to prosecute
the charges. They're absurd, omissioned, perjury, unlawfully claiming the throne
of Saint Peter. But let's face it, the motive is
clear revenge. Rose politics have always been ruthless, but this
(03:33):
time the corruption runs so deep that even the grave
offered no defense. They call it the cadavers Nood, and
depending on who you ask, it was either divine justice
or the darkest farce in papal history. Over the next
hour will exhume this moment in its unholy theater, how
(03:53):
it began, what it meant, and why u manity keeps
dragging its ghosts back in the court, because in this game,
not even the dead get the rest. Between the periods, Oh,
let's face it. Rome has never been short on corpses.
By the end of the ninth century it was well
practically governing by them. The empire was in dust, the
(04:16):
caesars were memories, but the habit of power, of ruling
with ceremony instead of conscious never truly left the marbles.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It still gleamed, and the senators had simply traded Togus
for investments, and the Pope sat where emperors once did,
convinced the Holy Spirit was just better branding for the
same old, same old, that was the world. Hormosis inherited
a city, half church, half crime. He was born around
(04:46):
eight sixteen, back when Charlemagne's grandchildren were busy carving Europe
and the new family feuds. The church caught it the
Carolina and caro Legian sorry risk. Renaissance history remembers it
as a group project, but he did the reading for
Moses Rose the way only a Roman cleric could. Basically
by surviving, he could talk to anyone Neil convincingly and
(05:08):
see two moves ahead without showing his hand. As Bishop
of Porto, he built alliances with kingdoms that barely agreed
on the shape of God. To the Franks, he was
a diplomat to the Bulgarians and mediator and well to
his rivals, a problem that just simply refused to die.
He was ambitious, yes, but in Rome, ambitious just means
(05:31):
competent enough to threaten someone who was lazier. Ope John
the Eighth took notice. John was a man who never
met a rumor he couldn't weaponize. He accused Formoses of
conspiring with outsiders treason in Latin, which translates roughly to
(05:52):
he's getting too popular. That sentence excommunication. So oh, Formoses
vanished for years, He's drifted through the courts of kings,
that wandering ghost of Roman politics. He survived assassination, tempts, councils,
and the kind of letters that start with dear brother
(06:13):
in Christ and to end with the usual diplomatic blackmail.
And every time another pope died and well let's face it,
they were dropping faster than flies near a candle. For
Moses edged closer and closer to reinstatement. By eight ninety one,
the factions were exhausted. They needed someone who could smile
(06:34):
at every side while promising absolutely nothing. Someone may be
old enough not to last and respected enough not to
embarrass them. That's when they picked the exile, the handsome
one for Moses. The handsome One took the throne with
a sigh. He was sixty something, too tired to enjoy irony.
(06:57):
He accepted the pallium, knowing full well that in Rome
papal six session was coded for temporary employment. Still, though
he tried, he appointed bishops for merit instead of lineage,
a sin, and upon itself, amendaties with the North, and
invited the Carolingian Empire in waiting Arnolf of Caronthia to
(07:19):
march into Italy to stabilize the peninsula.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Admittedly, it did work briefly. For one shining moment, Christendom
looked almost organized. Then Arnolf had a stroke. The Spoletans
regrouped in the balance of power swung back like a
loaded censor. Duke Lambert of Spoletta and his formintal mother Agltrude,
(07:47):
returned to Rome furious. In their eyes, Romosis was a
trader who'd given the imperial crown to the wrong family.
The old Pope was already he died within the year
stroke fever, poison allor exhaustion, depending on when which chronicler
you asked, but in any case he was safely dead,
(08:13):
or so everyone thought. Enter Stephen the six. Yes, it's
probably Stephan, but he doesn't deserve the respect. So Stephan
and Stephen had once served as bishop under Formosis, which
was technically illegal the same acquisition states Iff and would
(08:36):
later use against his old master, But hypocrisy was a
small price to pay for ambition. When they needed a
new pope, Stephen was ideal, volatile, eager, and fully convinced
God spoke exclusively through his temper. He took the throne
in eight ninety six and found Rome a city divided.
(08:58):
Formosa's supporter still create at his tomb, swearing they'd felt
miracles in the air. His bulletins demanded vengeance, claiming that the
late Pope's ordinations were invalid, his reign a blasphemy. Now
Stephen tried sermons first, and when that failed, he tried threats.
When those failed, he decided the problem wasn't spiritual, it
(09:20):
was anatomical. If for most's crimes lived on, perhaps his
body did two someone probably agltrude, possibly the devil. Maybe
a little bit of embracing the power of hand here
suggested the unthinkable. Let's try the dead guy, put the
(09:43):
corpse on trial, condemn it, and undo everything it ever touched. Now,
most popes would have laughed, Stephen didn't laugh. He called
for the shovels. Nine months after burial, the workmen opened
(10:03):
and tuned behind Saint Peter's. The think, of course, rolled
out first, followed by the silence of men realizing they
just been drafted. In the theology. Witnesses that Stephen watched
the whole thing, eyes bright, hand shaking, muttering psalms that
didn't appear in any known Bible. When the coffin lid
(10:28):
creaked open, the body inside was well, how do we
say this serviceable? Dried skin, curled fingers, a jaw that
looked like it might still argue. Some actually joked he
looked better than most of the living cardinals, but nobody
laughed out loud.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
About that.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
So the corpse was ordered cleaned, perfumed, and dressed in
full papal regalia. The undertakers wrapped cords beneath the ropes
to hold it upright, and then the invitations were sent.
Rome was about to witness history or heresy, or once
(11:11):
again a little bit of both. The posters really didn't specify.
On the morning of the trial dawned, It was humid
and heavy. Crowds jammed the basilica steps. Vendors were selling
relics that had obviously been freshly carved. Pilgrims elbowed nobles
for space. Somewhere, a street preacher yelled that judgment day
(11:32):
had arrived early and was charging admission. Inside the silicav
or hut glowed with candlelight. Bishops lined the knave in
uneasy silence. At the center stood two thrones, one draped
in red silk for the living pope and one in
gold for the deceased. Between them, allegedly theoretically was justice.
(12:00):
Stephen entered two applause that sounded more like self preservation.
His face was pale, but his smile was Oh it
was way, way, way too wide. He took his seat,
looked at the corpse opposite to him, and for a
moment seemed unsure which side of the table he was on.
Then he raised a trembling hand begin the clerk would
(12:25):
clear his throat formoss. Once, Bishop of Portho stands accused
of violating secret laws by abandoning his sea. And the
crowd would of course murmur at this, and somehow the
corpse remained silent. Now Stephen turned to the deacon assigned
(12:46):
to speak for the defense, a man who already looked
like he regretted his baptism. How do you plead? The
deacon took a moment and swallowed, innocent, your holiness, even
the laugh that made the candles jump. Innocent. He rose,
putting at the body like a prosecutor in a fever dream.
(13:08):
This man polluted the throne a peter, He crowned false emperors,
He diviied the will of God. To this, the deacon
said nothing. The bishops, well, they just stared at the floor,
at the crowd. All the crowd was hooked. They leaned in,
and somewhere deep in the basilica, a draft moved through
(13:30):
the open doors. The corpse swayed forward a fraction of
an inch. There were actual gasp being erupting amongst the crowd.
Stephen Frose mid tirade. Perhaps for one heartbeat, Rome believed
the dead pope was about to answer. The deacon quickly
(13:53):
rushed to steady him. The ropes, of course, creaked a little,
and Steven's grin sniffed back into place. Even in death
he bows before truth, he would say, And once again
the audience laughed nervously and obediently. Now two outsiders, and
probably to more than that, we would like to admit insiders.
(14:15):
This scene had to have looked insane. But to Rome, well,
let's face it. To Rome, this was simply a Tuesday.
Every acquisition was a chest move. Every bishop of Peace,
behind his spectacle lay the same old feud. This smull
Titans against the karenlin Jetons. Excuse me, North versus South,
(14:37):
Memory versus revision. This trial wasn't about guilt. It was
about the leading history, much like I hope someone does
after I pass. If Formoss had never been pope, then
every man he ordained lost his rank. Every decree would
become dissolved, Every rival fraction vanished on parchment, they were
(15:00):
restored by eraser. The hours would pass, the candles would
melt in the puddles, and the air turned syrup thick.
The clerk read charge after charge, perjury, ambition, unlawful possession
of the papacy. Stephen shouted responses at the corpse, each
(15:22):
one louder than the last, and of course the deacons
replies shrank to barely audible whispers. When the verdict finally came,
of course, no one was shocked by it. Guilty on
every count, Stephen pronounced the sentence like a priest performing
(15:44):
an exorcism. The attendants stripped the corpses of the corpse
of its robes, tore off the papal ring, and sliced
away the two blessing fingers of the right hand. Those
digits had once marked the sign of the crossover Kings
and peasants alke. Now now they were proof of blasphemy. Finally,
(16:05):
the body was dragged from the throne, down the marble steps,
out into the street, and tossed into the Tiber. Rome watched, Rome, applauded,
Rome went home uneasy. For three days. The river kept
the secret. Then fishermen found the body downstream, bloated, pale,
(16:27):
and if you believed rumor, smiling, they swore its hand
rose in benediction. As the current spun its way. Stephen,
of course caught it lies. The city called it a sign.
Within months of the laughter turned whispers to spread that
the Pope had lost his soul to madness, even as
(16:48):
bishops began to step back during Mass, as if fear
were contagious. But for now here, in the echo of
the grotesque court room, Stephen believed he'd won. He had
silenced the dead, e raised his enemy, and proven that
even the Grave had to obey him. Now. The irony,
(17:10):
of course, is that the grave keeps excellent records, because
in Rome, the only thing more dangerous than losing power
is thinking you've kept it. They did, of course, call
(17:33):
it a council, but Rome knew better a council listens.
This one was putting on a performance. Morning slid into
the lateran the silica on a tide of heat and rumor.
Bishops filled in with faces arranged for piety and plausible deniability,
(17:55):
and let's face it, across the knaves, Stephen the six
clench the armrest like a man hanging from a cliff,
telling himself it's a balcony. The spilett In faction hovered
around him, Lambert of Spoleto's men, the allies of al Jutrdan,
all the titles that pass from iron when we real
(18:16):
steel is scarce. This wasn't about doctrine. It was about
the leading a chapter. In pretending the page's never tour.
A clerk began Latin, clipped and careful, the legal voice
of a terrified man. Charge one translation of a bishop
(18:41):
for Moss, once Bishop of Porto had abandoned his sea.
There is a canon law against that. Yes, there's also Rome,
where cannon law bends like willow, and politics require oak.
Of course, we had the theater of it all, because
every trial needs to defend it. Who can answer? And
(19:02):
whenever Steve Stephen gestured, the deacon, who was young and pale,
regretting ever being born at this point, had to step
beside the corpse, for he had been appointed defense or
voice of the voiceless. And every time Stephen barked a
(19:23):
question at the throne, the deacon was required to answer
for the dead. It would have been an absolute farce
if it weren't sacrilege. Stephen with thunder, does the accused
admit to violating the cannons and taking the throne of
(19:44):
Peter unlawfully, to which the deacons had to sit there
and responds. He pleads innocence. Sometimes you'd hear a murmur,
maybe a cough, someone's sandals scraping marble, And throughout it
(20:06):
all Stephen would rise. He would pace, but his anger
had a rhythm cross pivot point accused. He would even
jab a finger toward the corpse. He crowned a false emperor.
Aren't off? He stood with the other side against the
(20:30):
rightful Roman princes. He perjured himself before God. He polluted
this chair with this personal ambition. Now, let's face it, pollute.
It is a useful word. It turns disagreements into something
most people understand, hygiene. The whole time, though the bishops
(20:55):
did not look at one another, let's face it, many
had been ordained by foremost says if this trial stuck,
their own collars would come unbuttoned in public. The deacon
recite at a page of scripture and a plea for
mercy the whole time, his voice trembling as did his hands.
(21:19):
He spoke for a man who could not thank him,
and would not probably have chosen him. He spoke for
the idea that the dead deserve silence, if not respect.
Charge two was the one that fell like a hammer, perjury,
(21:45):
not about fact about allegiance. Allegiance in this century was
a weather report dressed in virtue. When the carrilicion sky darkened,
this bulletins called it sin to have carried an umbrella.
Charge three, unlawfully seizing the papacy. Here, of course, the
(22:10):
room would have tightened if Romoses had never truly been pope.
Every act fanacious that he ever did once again, bishops
he ordained, would all of a sudden become unordained, priest
he anointed unannointed, They would become all of his decrees dissolved,
(22:34):
allegiances unsigned, a factional nullification packaged as holiness. And there
was one question asked that matter to him, Stephen, not
to heaven. Did you trespass on the throne of Saint
peter By and by doing so poison room? Of course,
(22:55):
the deacon had to answer the only way the deacon
could innocent. But somewhere between the second and third clusters
of charges, the crowd's mood began to shift. What began
as morbid curiosity that filled the knave at dawn had
curdled into something else, maybe a little bit of shame,
(23:18):
or maybe the nauseus nauseousness of the spectacle. A woman
in the back began to weep. A man near the
front lean forward, the way people do when they went
to see less. And on the diist bishops studied their
hands like maps that might somehow show them a secret
way out. And through it all Stephen, Stephen just pressed
(23:39):
harder and harder, he demanded an alment. You could almost
hear the calculation ripple through the rose reordained by whom
by Stephen, of course, he would become the hinge of legitimacy,
the single door through which holy orders show. The deacon
(24:04):
tried again. He cited previous councils, He mentioned mercy, He
mispronounced the verse and flushed with humiliation, and a few
men smiled behind their sleeves. You could not help him,
You could barely even watch. And outside outside the city
was baking. Inside it, well, you could probably say it
(24:25):
was boiling. If virtue had a temperature, room exceeded it.
And once again the verdict was never in doubt. It
was all just a matter of staging. Stephen brought his
cadence down like an axe. Guilty on abandonment of his seat,
Guilty on perjury before God, guilty on seizing the papacy,
(24:46):
unlawful guilty, guilty guilty, as if somehow that repetition was
a new sacrament. Then we got to the sentence degradation
from the pontificant strip the robes, tear off the ring,
(25:06):
and the nastiest of them all, the severing of those
blessing fingers, the index and middle finger of the right hand,
the digits that had drawn the cross over foreheads and bread,
and the brows of kings, make the symbol a wound,
and make that wound a warning. Stephen would lift the
(25:32):
severed fingers high like a some sort of mad relic
for an insane instant. The crowd expected a miracle, the
kind though you probably didn't once, but none came. All
that was left was the smell and the science that
great rooms learned to keep. Then we got the dragging
(25:55):
down the steps, through the doors into rome, where children
followed and dogs announced the procession, with the joy, dogs
bringing to everything. The body bumped and it rocked. Men
who would not meet their neighbor's eyes at market watched openly.
Now you can be horrified and still look somehow. Rome
(26:21):
has always known how. And at the timer the attendants hesitated,
the way men do when they've done too much already
and don't want to be the last hand of history.
Someone shoved and that body slid and splashed, with the
(26:43):
river closing it down. But back inside the basilica, Stephen sagged.
You could see the exhaustion cracked through his triumph, the
high of his performance, the crash of complete He looked
older now, even more so, but he also appeared a
(27:06):
little emptier around him. Bishops exhaled, the way men do
at the end of a dangerous day, when survived by
choosing not to speak. But the verdicts echo. Rome is
a city of stone sound lingers, And within days again
(27:28):
fishermen buzzed, that's a pale shape. Had ribbon has risen.
The rumor reached taverns faster than sermons could deny it,
and the more Stephen would call it blasphemy, the more
it ended up sounding like a sign. He tried administration
as antidote in validated orders. He summoned clergy to be
(27:50):
reordained to kneel for the touch that would cleanse their resumes.
And let's face it, some came because fear, oh feer
has a really strong gravity, and others, of course would
stall because principle sometimes has enough weight to resist gravity. Meanwhile,
(28:13):
laments turned the jokes, and jokes would turn to rage.
The words changed subtly, from the Holy Father to that spilettin,
from his holiness to that man. I mean, even look
at today pronouns. Pronouns are political, titles can be weather veins.
(28:35):
You could tell which way the city was turning by
how the Bakers spoke openly. So Stephen did the thing
Stephen had to do, preach harder. He shout out the
kind of sermons that scorched good doctrine. He insisted that
the synod was righteous, that God preferred order to memory,
(28:56):
that the dead or not exempt from justice. But he
mistook volume for being legitimate. But let's face it, he
always had. None of it mattered. Something had shipped in
Rome that no decree could reach ordinary people. People who
owned two tonics and a prayer, had seen the church
(29:17):
drag a corpse in the court and call it holy.
That is not something you can easily put back. The
backlash began the way all revolts do here quietly, and
then all at once. A priest who kept his head
down somehow would find a spine. A noble who clapped
(29:39):
politely stopped descending coin. A bishop who swallowed his terror
felt it rise as anger, and noticed his colleagues did too.
Fear is lonely anger. It's social Stephen, to his credit,
sensed it. But he decided to double down, which may
(30:03):
be a useful poker strategy, and you know, probably not
a good spiritual one. He had built his throne on deletion.
He could not imagine. Addition, he did not know how
to make allies, only replacements. The corpse ironically didn't know how.
(30:24):
In death formoses collected the living. The legend of the
river handgrew two new fingers every telling. He fool whispered
of lights over the water, a fish refusing to bite
where the body had drifted of the tiber itself, spitting
the pope back with a noise like laughter. Rome was
(30:44):
a golf in anger and poetry. By autumn, this pilatin
grip felt less like iron and a little more like
wet ropes. Lambert postured, the rumor is solvent with a
very low boiling point. The more Stephen insisted he was righteous,
(31:06):
the more his coalition melted around the edges. And yet
on parchment, the synod stood, The acts were sealed, the
annaumous ink the fingers, despite all the rumors were gone.
A verdict is a stubborn thing, even when everyone hates it.
(31:35):
And there's a lesson. And here the verdict didn't persuade Rome,
it cornered it. And when you corner a city that
has survived emperors, goths, not the good kind, plagues, and
its own liturgies, it doesn't repent. It remembers.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Not do.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Lift the body, dress the room.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
F and the broken.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
In the candles close, shave the lorne boos over the house, Lay.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
The verdict down, Speak the ancient shop.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
The boys left the town, the old.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Bone, make the silence up.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Susy brings satins a style.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
STI, but.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Hould the cord in food.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Let the vice roy.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Cast the shallows, drag the truth from away the greaves,
and find.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The saying to run.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Live the corpse to here place the curse your mouth.
Force the bde in through.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
The picture of.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
And welcome back.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Room.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Room has a way of answering cruelty with efficiency, and
by the spring of eighteen ninety seven that answer had
Stephen the Six's name all all over it. Oh, of course,
for a few weeks the city pretended nothing, nothing at
(36:23):
all happened. The market still opened, bells would still ring,
and bishops still rehearsed the same say prayers. But under
it all, something restless was breathing again. The crowd that
once cheered the living pope for condemning the dead began
whispering about omens once again. Fishermen claimed they saw the
(36:48):
pale figure in the tiber. Stephen said, no, it's not
a miracle, it is just superstition. You unwashed heathens. Yet,
somehow the body of Romoses had become a new relic
that the Church couldn't canonize and couldn't ignore. Candles started
(37:14):
to appear along the river bank. Women touched the water
and crossed themselves. Rome being Rome started selling the river
water in bottles. For Stephen, this was intolerable. He had
written the ending, he buried it, and the city was
(37:37):
improvising a sequel no one authorized. So he did what
every doomed ruler does when the crowd begins a doubt,
he got louder. He preached daily, voice cracking against the stone.
He shouted that the devil had raised a false miracle,
and that the dead pope was a vessel of deception,
(37:59):
and that the only obedience could save the church from collapse. Now,
the bishops, they listened the way men listened the thunder, impressed,
but in truth, waiting for it to pass. Now it's
hard to command faith from a paulpit that still smells like,
you know, maybe for my hide a little bit. And
(38:22):
even some of Stephen's allies began to look uneasy. His
allies were realizing that Champion had gone from usefulness to radioactive.
They slipped out of room with the soldiers and their excuses.
The papal palace suddenly sounded a lot larger and emptier,
(38:44):
and a little more prone to echoes. And without some
of his allies protection, stephens authority began to shrink to
the size of his paranoia. He issued decreed. Nobody followed.
He demanded the clergy reordained themselves the touch of emoses
from their hands. A fuel of course, did obey, But
(39:07):
by the summer even the street vendors now had an opinion.
They would sell relics of for Moses that were almost
certainly candlewax, and they sold them fast. The river had
become a pilgrimage route. Now, people said the water glow tonight.
(39:29):
Rome believed it because Rome needed it too, because, let's
face it, belief is cheaper than stability. Inside the latter
and Stephen pace the marble halls like a prisoner. Now
in his own legend, he muttered sermons to the walls,
reversing and revising lines, convincing himself the applause that, oh God,
(39:50):
the applause would return if he just found that right
note that right verse. But the city was already reciting
A and the curse of formosis. Now, let's face it.
Revolution in Rome rarely rarely begins with swords. It begins
(40:10):
with gossip that refuses to die. Priest began whispering that
Stephen had gone mad. A bishop claimed he heard the
pope arguing with invisible witnesses at night. The story spread
the way mold does, quietly and perfectly, and the thunderstorm
finished the work. Lightning struck the basilica during one of
(40:33):
Stephen's sermons, splitting a pillar near the altar. No one
thankfully was hurt. But let's face it, that hardly mattered.
At this point. A spectator swore the flash outlined a
figure in the smoke, two fingers raising a blessing. The
audience fled before Stephen could shout it down. After that,
(40:56):
even the loyals amongst his followers called him the screaming Hope.
Of course, not to his face. No, no, no one,
no one wanted to be the next corpse to have
to stand on trial. Stephen began sleeping in armor. He
posted guards at his bedroom door and ordered his meals
(41:17):
tasted for poison. But the real danger was already inside
the walls. Rome had lost a capacity to fear him,
and eventually the breaking point happened as spark came from
the clergy. A group of priests met in secret at
(41:37):
the Basilica of Saint Peter to hold masks for the
soul or promoss a simple service, candles and whispers. Someone
informed the palace. Stephen sent soldiers to break it up.
They arrived to find not twenty priests but two hundred citizens,
singing palm psalms louder than the rain. When the guard
(41:58):
raised their weapons, they crowd raised stones by nightfall, the
city was roaring, Torches flared against the palace gates. Chance
rolled through the streets, Justice for the dead, Justice for
the dead, and Rome's patience burned away like parchment. Inside,
(42:19):
Stephen would pray louder and louder, but no one answered.
Next morning, the mob reached the gates. Chroniclers disagree on details,
but not direction. They found him cornered near the papal apartments,
clutching a crucifix, as if to remind God whose side
he was supposed to be on. They dragged him outside, barefoot,
(42:41):
hair tangled, eyes wild, He stumbled over the same stones
that had scraped the corpse of Formosis months before. A
poet later wrote that the crowd didn't march him through
Rome as much as drag the papacy back through its
own sins and kind of hard to argue with poetry
when it's accurate. They threw Stephen into a dungeon below
(43:05):
the latter, and no trial this time, no witness, is
just the echo of his own verdict bouncing off the walls.
Some say he raved for days. Others say he sat
in silence, convinced he'd been the righteous one and that
the world outside had gone and seen either way, it
didn't last long. Late, and late that August guards found
(43:29):
him strangled with a strip of his own robe. Whether
by order or despair, no one bothered really to even
bother to clarify. In Rome, cause of death is usually
a matter of convenience. They buried him quietly in the
(43:53):
cemetery of Saint Peter, with no bells, no procession. The
city just decided to exhale and went to bed. Three
nights later, someone still unknown would dig him up and
dump him into the tiber. You could call it a
(44:13):
bit of symmetry. Poetic Rome caught a balance when the
water carried Stephen away. The Church tried to carry on.
The Spultans distanced themselves, claiming they always thought the trial
was excessive. The new Pope reminiscent lasted all of three months,
(44:34):
long enough to convene a council that declared the cadaver
sonod null and void, and to write the phrase evident
insanity besides Stephen's name. Then Romanus was quietly replaced by
another and another after that, each promising to end the chaos,
and each contributing a little more each time. For a decade,
(44:56):
the papacy resembled a tavern door constantly opening closed and
no one knowing the person's name. One pope reinstated for
Moses's acts, the next would reverse them again. Paperwork ping
ponged across Christians, and every diocese diocese spent more time
erasing signature than any race issuing them, and even the
(45:20):
faithful off track of who was saved and who was
unsaved any given week. It wasn't It wasn't theology anymore.
It was bookkeeping, with incense burning through it all. Hermosis
remained in the ground, or technically somewhere near the ground.
(45:40):
The Church eventually retrieved his body from the river, re
entombed it, and swore, on pain of excommunication, that no
one would ever disturb it again, which you know, given precedent,
was probably less promised than Challenge Seven's death didn't cleanse
(46:01):
the papacy, it may have clarified it a little bit.
Power in Rome was no longer about sanctity. It was
about narrative. Whoever controlled the story controlled the throne the
Cadaversanod had shown the truth could be murdered, dug up, retried,
and still walk out of the river cleaner than the
man who condemned it. The bishops would learn a cautious
(46:25):
new creed, never bury an enemy where he can float back.
For the ordinary Romans, who'd watch the farce unfold, the
lesson was simpler. They began measuring holiness not by crowns
or rings, but by absence, how quiet a man stayed
once buried. The louder the legacy, the less they would
(46:46):
end up trusting it. No centuries later. Chroniclers would laugh,
historians would sigh, and the theologians would invent metaphors to
keep their stomach steady. But for the people who lived
at the cadaversanod wasn't a matter. For it all, it
was the smell of death in the knave, the echo
of sermons shout out of a corpse, and the certainty
that even the holiest office can go feral if no
(47:09):
one dares to whisper stop. And that's what Rome finally did,
not with doctrine, not with the cree, just with the
oldest authority known on earth, a crowd that simply had enough.
By the close of eight ninety seven, the marble floors
of the Basilica were scrubbed, the ropes discarded, the chairs replaced.
(47:33):
The city, of course went back to pretending it had
learned anything it hadn't. Of course it really never does.
But for a moment, Rome felt lighter, as if some
terrible gravity had finally been lifted. Two popes gone, one
river cleansed, and a truth floating quietly beneath that surface.
(47:54):
The church could survive scandal and even sacrilege. What it
could not survive was laughter. And Rome had learned how
to laugh again, because in the end, the only real
absolution history ever grants is irony, and irony in Rome
(48:17):
is eternal. So what does the corpse on trial say
about truth, faith and rule. Well, after every storm there's
a bit of silence, the kind Rome knows too well,
the kind that feels earned, not peaceful. Yes, the basilica
(48:40):
had been scrubbed, the torches were replaced, the marble polished
back to respectable, But beneath it, the story still mode
and moved the ground of water. The cadaver synod was over,
but the echo of it wasn't. And once again history
has this beautiful habit about living.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
All.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Stephen six was gone, for Moses was gone, the witnesses scattered,
But yet somehow the trial kept breathing. It became shorthand
in Europe for power gone mad, and it raised a
question Rome never truly answered, why do we keep putting
the dead on trial? Now? It isn't just Rome's curiosity here,
(49:30):
it's humanity's compulsion. We bury, then dig, then bury again,
convinced that one more verdict will make the past behave
every era finds its own corpse to interrogate. Centuries later,
England would try it again. Oliver Cromwell, that of natural causes,
was exhumed by the restored monarchy, hanged in chains and decapitated.
(49:56):
His head sat on a spike above Westminster Hall for
twenty years, an education in how long spite can stay
upright in France, of course, seeing England do this, followed
suit in its own way, burning revolutionary bones, condemning what
had already decayed. The Council Constance dug up John Wycliff
(50:16):
fifty years after his death and scattered his ashes into
the river. Justice. They would call it closure, they claimed,
but really what it really looked like was insecurity with
you know, a flash of ceremony. And every century seems
to repeat the gesture. Dictator's toppled statues pulled down, name
scrubs from buildings. Each time, the living performed moral housekeeping,
(50:41):
pretending the condemnation cleans their conscience. The cadaver Snod just
stripped that metaphor away. Stephen the Six believed that erasing
his predecessor would steady and write the Church at that moment.
(51:03):
You try to bury memory, you end up making it immortal.
Walk the halls of Saint Peter's and you can probably
still feel it. Somewhere beneath that marble lies what remains
of him, no mark or no inscription, just quiet reminder
that every institution has a breaking point where faith meets
politics and ultimately forgets which is which. But history history
(51:30):
remembers that smell long after it forgets the sermon. It
remembers how fear dresses up as doctrine. It remembers the
sounds of certainly collapsing under its own echo. Through it all,
the Cadaversnod was not about belief. It was about control.
He even wanted to rewrite holiness. The Church would eventually
(51:54):
call the episode quote an unfortunate excess unquote. That's Vaticans
speak for, can you please quit asking us about that?
But the record survived, and so did the pattern. Popes, kings,
and parliaments all discovered the same thing. Once you discover
history is able to be edited, you will never stop
(52:17):
the editing. The next ruler always finds another ghost, the
cross examined, because let's face it, the dead really can't contradict.
They make the perfect victim here. They're silent, compliant, and
incapable reminding you how much you sound like them. Power
(52:38):
loves that, and that's probably why this story still matters,
because this isn't about medieval Rome. It's about how authority
defends itself when it's afraid. It builds a courtroom around
the coffin and calls it the right thing to do.
It confuses ritual with absolution. It turns fear into litigary
(53:00):
until the audience eventually stops clapping. The cadaversonad teaches the
same lesson every age forgets. Truth doesn't need protection, it
just needs patience. Power needs protection, and therefore it invents
(53:24):
the theater. And when that curtain drops, we pretend that
performance was progress. It never even the church tried to
bury the evidence. Counsels met, annulled, reinstated, and all again.
It's theological tugg of war over man long past, giving
a crap. In the end, the paperwork didn't matter. The
(53:46):
metaphor already had tenure. For most. It somehow remained the
pope who survived his own trial, and Stephen remained the
man who didn't. And there is a kind of dark
comfort in that symmetry. Rome Rate's morality plays the way
other cities right tax codes compulsively with revisions. But underneath
(54:13):
all the ceremony lies a truth as plain as dust.
You can't bless revenge, you can robe it. Chan it footnoted,
but it still ultimately smells the same. Centuries later, reformers
would quote us and Not as proof that the Church
could lose its mind without losing its soul. Skeptics called
it evidence that God well may have outsourced quality control.
(54:37):
Either way, it's become part of the DNA, a scar
so old it became a feature. But for all of
its absurdity, the trial left one lasting mercy. It taught
us to recognize madness. It showed us how easily peighty
kurdles when it confuses purification with punishment, and warn that
(55:00):
if you spend long enough defending heaven from ghosts, you
will eventually start haunting yourself. Stand at the Tiber today
and watch the water move. It's the same current that
carried for moss away, the same river that would eventually
welcome Stephen a little while later, the same reflection that
swallowed both pretenders and absolved. It's patience, the beauty of
(55:26):
that river. It's seen empires, it has seen crusades, it
has seen councils, It has seen more than its fair
share of tourists. It simply knows better than to take sides.
What it tells you, if you listen closely, is simple.
Every verdict washes downstream eventually, and maybe that's the moral
(55:53):
hiding in the debris. Yes, spaith can forgive the power.
Rarely does that. The bones of our enemies always outlasting applause.
The truth, however, water log always tends to float. The
cadaversonod wasn't the first time humanity mistook noise corciousness, and
(56:16):
it won't be the last, but it may remain the
purest example how far belief will bend to avoid admitting fear.
You can see its reflection in every book that has
ever been banned. Real band, not Today's band, Every statue
that's been torn down, every history rewritten to fit the
(56:38):
mood of the time. We just simply call it accountability.
Now room called it justice. The ghost probably call it boredom.
Still the echo does linger, a throne, a corpse, and
man screaming in the silence. The details change, but the
silhouette never does. Every generation eventually stands in that basilica again,
(57:04):
this time wearing different clothes but with the same questions,
because the real trial was never Foremoses versus Stephen, it
was the memory versus control, and memory being a stubborn,
stubborn beast one once again, not with swords, not with sermons,
(57:28):
but with time and patience. By the time the church
finally stopped arguing, both popes had been reburied more times
than any sane God would permit. Their feud dissolved into
parchment and proverb Rome went back to pretending it had
learned restraint, but deep down it knew the truth. Absolution
is temporary, paperwork is eternal. The sad truth of it all, though,
(57:55):
is we still put the dead on trial. We just
simply call it commentary.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
We still raise ghosts to prove we're better than them.
We still stand in judgment over people who cannot answer back.
And somehow we call this progress once again. Every century,
the costumes change, the instinct doesn't through it all. The
(58:22):
one thing that kadaver Snod left us, the past does
not stay buried. It just simply waits, and when you
summon it for judgment, it will always eventually judge you back.
(58:46):
In the end, the trial of dead Pope gave Rome
what it always craved, an ending that felt like justice
and sounded like the loudest applause of any Shakespearean play.
The goodaver Snod was many, many centuries ago, and yet
you can still hear its echo in every argument about
(59:07):
legacy and every attempt to clean the past with the
soap of outrage. And once again we're still putting ghosts
on the stands, still convincing ourselves that condemnation is a cure.
But it never ever is. The river moved on, the
(59:28):
marble stayed, and Rome learned, at least for a season,
that faith may forgive, but the power never forgets. And
next time we're going to trade the basilica for the blizzard.
We're gonna climb into the frozen silence of two Arctic
(59:50):
mysteries that that Left Pass incident and the Greeley expedition.
We're gonna ask why some trails ends, not in answers,
but in questions that do not seem to thaw. I
am j E double F. And this has been in
the crease
H the s threshold.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Opens step through past present future. We are not alone time.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Time t s.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yes, this decrease.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
This is and the crease where history strangest plays still
count against the record. I am je double f known
on the ex verse as a cosmic Bard, and this
is Episode seventy five, The cadavers a Nod. Tonight we
(02:48):
travel to the heart of medieval Rome, to our courtroom
built inside a cathedral, and to a trial that defied
both reason and mortality. The year is eighteen ninety. The
Pope has been dead for nine months. His body has
been dug from its tomb, dressed again in papal robes,
and seated upraid on a throne before a council of bishops.
(03:11):
His successor, Pope Stephen the sixth, stands ready to prosecute
the charges. They're absurd, omissioned, perjury, unlawfully claiming the throne
of Saint Peter. But let's face it, the motive is
clear revenge. Rose politics have always been ruthless, but this
(03:33):
time the corruption runs so deep that even the grave
offered no defense. They call it the cadavers Nood, and
depending on who you ask, it was either divine justice
or the darkest farce in papal history. Over the next
hour will exhume this moment in its unholy theater, how
(03:53):
it began, what it meant, and why u manity keeps
dragging its ghosts back in the court, because in this game,
not even the dead get the rest. Between the periods, Oh,
let's face it. Rome has never been short on corpses.
By the end of the ninth century it was well
practically governing by them. The empire was in dust, the
(04:16):
caesars were memories, but the habit of power, of ruling
with ceremony instead of conscious never truly left the marbles.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It still gleamed, and the senators had simply traded Togus
for investments, and the Pope sat where emperors once did,
convinced the Holy Spirit was just better branding for the
same old, same old, that was the world. Hormosis inherited
a city, half church, half crime. He was born around
(04:46):
eight sixteen, back when Charlemagne's grandchildren were busy carving Europe
and the new family feuds. The church caught it the
Carolina and caro Legian sorry risk. Renaissance history remembers it
as a group project, but he did the reading for
Moses Rose the way only a Roman cleric could. Basically
by surviving, he could talk to anyone Neil convincingly and
(05:08):
see two moves ahead without showing his hand. As Bishop
of Porto, he built alliances with kingdoms that barely agreed
on the shape of God. To the Franks, he was
a diplomat to the Bulgarians and mediator and well to
his rivals, a problem that just simply refused to die.
He was ambitious, yes, but in Rome, ambitious just means
(05:31):
competent enough to threaten someone who was lazier. Ope John
the Eighth took notice. John was a man who never
met a rumor he couldn't weaponize. He accused Formoses of
conspiring with outsiders treason in Latin, which translates roughly to
(05:52):
he's getting too popular. That sentence excommunication. So oh, Formoses
vanished for years, He's drifted through the courts of kings,
that wandering ghost of Roman politics. He survived assassination, tempts, councils,
and the kind of letters that start with dear brother
(06:13):
in Christ and to end with the usual diplomatic blackmail.
And every time another pope died and well let's face it,
they were dropping faster than flies near a candle. For
Moses edged closer and closer to reinstatement. By eight ninety one,
the factions were exhausted. They needed someone who could smile
(06:34):
at every side while promising absolutely nothing. Someone may be
old enough not to last and respected enough not to
embarrass them. That's when they picked the exile, the handsome
one for Moses. The handsome One took the throne with
a sigh. He was sixty something, too tired to enjoy irony.
(06:57):
He accepted the pallium, knowing full well that in Rome
papal six session was coded for temporary employment. Still, though
he tried, he appointed bishops for merit instead of lineage,
a sin, and upon itself, amendaties with the North, and
invited the Carolingian Empire in waiting Arnolf of Caronthia to
(07:19):
march into Italy to stabilize the peninsula.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Admittedly, it did work briefly. For one shining moment, Christendom
looked almost organized. Then Arnolf had a stroke. The Spoletans
regrouped in the balance of power swung back like a
loaded censor. Duke Lambert of Spoletta and his formintal mother Agltrude,
(07:47):
returned to Rome furious. In their eyes, Romosis was a
trader who'd given the imperial crown to the wrong family.
The old Pope was already he died within the year
stroke fever, poison allor exhaustion, depending on when which chronicler
you asked, but in any case he was safely dead,
(08:13):
or so everyone thought. Enter Stephen the six. Yes, it's
probably Stephan, but he doesn't deserve the respect. So Stephan
and Stephen had once served as bishop under Formosis, which
was technically illegal the same acquisition states Iff and would
(08:36):
later use against his old master, But hypocrisy was a
small price to pay for ambition. When they needed a
new pope, Stephen was ideal, volatile, eager, and fully convinced
God spoke exclusively through his temper. He took the throne
in eight ninety six and found Rome a city divided.
(08:58):
Formosa's supporter still create at his tomb, swearing they'd felt
miracles in the air. His bulletins demanded vengeance, claiming that the
late Pope's ordinations were invalid, his reign a blasphemy. Now
Stephen tried sermons first, and when that failed, he tried threats.
When those failed, he decided the problem wasn't spiritual, it
(09:20):
was anatomical. If for most's crimes lived on, perhaps his
body did two someone probably agltrude, possibly the devil. Maybe
a little bit of embracing the power of hand here
suggested the unthinkable. Let's try the dead guy, put the
(09:43):
corpse on trial, condemn it, and undo everything it ever touched. Now,
most popes would have laughed, Stephen didn't laugh. He called
for the shovels. Nine months after burial, the workmen opened
(10:03):
and tuned behind Saint Peter's. The think, of course, rolled
out first, followed by the silence of men realizing they
just been drafted. In the theology. Witnesses that Stephen watched
the whole thing, eyes bright, hand shaking, muttering psalms that
didn't appear in any known Bible. When the coffin lid
(10:28):
creaked open, the body inside was well, how do we
say this serviceable? Dried skin, curled fingers, a jaw that
looked like it might still argue. Some actually joked he
looked better than most of the living cardinals, but nobody
laughed out loud.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
About that.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
So the corpse was ordered cleaned, perfumed, and dressed in
full papal regalia. The undertakers wrapped cords beneath the ropes
to hold it upright, and then the invitations were sent.
Rome was about to witness history or heresy, or once
(11:11):
again a little bit of both. The posters really didn't specify.
On the morning of the trial dawned, It was humid
and heavy. Crowds jammed the basilica steps. Vendors were selling
relics that had obviously been freshly carved. Pilgrims elbowed nobles
for space. Somewhere, a street preacher yelled that judgment day
(11:32):
had arrived early and was charging admission. Inside the silicav
or hut glowed with candlelight. Bishops lined the knave in
uneasy silence. At the center stood two thrones, one draped
in red silk for the living pope and one in
gold for the deceased. Between them, allegedly theoretically was justice.
(12:00):
Stephen entered two applause that sounded more like self preservation.
His face was pale, but his smile was Oh it
was way, way, way too wide. He took his seat,
looked at the corpse opposite to him, and for a
moment seemed unsure which side of the table he was on.
Then he raised a trembling hand begin the clerk would
(12:25):
clear his throat formoss. Once, Bishop of Portho stands accused
of violating secret laws by abandoning his sea. And the
crowd would of course murmur at this, and somehow the
corpse remained silent. Now Stephen turned to the deacon assigned
(12:46):
to speak for the defense, a man who already looked
like he regretted his baptism. How do you plead? The
deacon took a moment and swallowed, innocent, your holiness, even
the laugh that made the candles jump. Innocent. He rose,
putting at the body like a prosecutor in a fever dream.
(13:08):
This man polluted the throne a peter, He crowned false emperors,
He diviied the will of God. To this, the deacon
said nothing. The bishops, well, they just stared at the floor,
at the crowd. All the crowd was hooked. They leaned in,
and somewhere deep in the basilica, a draft moved through
(13:30):
the open doors. The corpse swayed forward a fraction of
an inch. There were actual gasp being erupting amongst the crowd.
Stephen Frose mid tirade. Perhaps for one heartbeat, Rome believed
the dead pope was about to answer. The deacon quickly
(13:53):
rushed to steady him. The ropes, of course, creaked a little,
and Steven's grin sniffed back into place. Even in death
he bows before truth, he would say, And once again
the audience laughed nervously and obediently. Now two outsiders, and
probably to more than that, we would like to admit insiders.
(14:15):
This scene had to have looked insane. But to Rome, well,
let's face it. To Rome, this was simply a Tuesday.
Every acquisition was a chest move. Every bishop of Peace,
behind his spectacle lay the same old feud. This smull
Titans against the karenlin Jetons. Excuse me, North versus South,
(14:37):
Memory versus revision. This trial wasn't about guilt. It was
about the leading history, much like I hope someone does
after I pass. If Formoss had never been pope, then
every man he ordained lost his rank. Every decree would
become dissolved, Every rival fraction vanished on parchment, they were
(15:00):
restored by eraser. The hours would pass, the candles would
melt in the puddles, and the air turned syrup thick.
The clerk read charge after charge, perjury, ambition, unlawful possession
of the papacy. Stephen shouted responses at the corpse, each
(15:22):
one louder than the last, and of course the deacons
replies shrank to barely audible whispers. When the verdict finally came,
of course, no one was shocked by it. Guilty on
every count, Stephen pronounced the sentence like a priest performing
(15:44):
an exorcism. The attendants stripped the corpses of the corpse
of its robes, tore off the papal ring, and sliced
away the two blessing fingers of the right hand. Those
digits had once marked the sign of the crossover Kings
and peasants alke. Now now they were proof of blasphemy. Finally,
(16:05):
the body was dragged from the throne, down the marble steps,
out into the street, and tossed into the Tiber. Rome watched, Rome, applauded,
Rome went home uneasy. For three days. The river kept
the secret. Then fishermen found the body downstream, bloated, pale,
(16:27):
and if you believed rumor, smiling, they swore its hand
rose in benediction. As the current spun its way. Stephen,
of course caught it lies. The city called it a sign.
Within months of the laughter turned whispers to spread that
the Pope had lost his soul to madness, even as
(16:48):
bishops began to step back during Mass, as if fear
were contagious. But for now here, in the echo of
the grotesque court room, Stephen believed he'd won. He had
silenced the dead, e raised his enemy, and proven that
even the Grave had to obey him. Now. The irony,
(17:10):
of course, is that the grave keeps excellent records, because
in Rome, the only thing more dangerous than losing power
is thinking you've kept it. They did, of course, call
(17:33):
it a council, but Rome knew better a council listens.
This one was putting on a performance. Morning slid into
the lateran the silica on a tide of heat and rumor.
Bishops filled in with faces arranged for piety and plausible deniability,
(17:55):
and let's face it, across the knaves, Stephen the six
clench the armrest like a man hanging from a cliff,
telling himself it's a balcony. The spilett In faction hovered
around him, Lambert of Spoleto's men, the allies of al Jutrdan,
all the titles that pass from iron when we real
(18:16):
steel is scarce. This wasn't about doctrine. It was about
the leading a chapter. In pretending the page's never tour.
A clerk began Latin, clipped and careful, the legal voice
of a terrified man. Charge one translation of a bishop
(18:41):
for Moss, once Bishop of Porto had abandoned his sea.
There is a canon law against that. Yes, there's also Rome,
where cannon law bends like willow, and politics require oak.
Of course, we had the theater of it all, because
every trial needs to defend it. Who can answer? And
(19:02):
whenever Steve Stephen gestured, the deacon, who was young and pale,
regretting ever being born at this point, had to step
beside the corpse, for he had been appointed defense or
voice of the voiceless. And every time Stephen barked a
(19:23):
question at the throne, the deacon was required to answer
for the dead. It would have been an absolute farce
if it weren't sacrilege. Stephen with thunder, does the accused
admit to violating the cannons and taking the throne of
(19:44):
Peter unlawfully, to which the deacons had to sit there
and responds. He pleads innocence. Sometimes you'd hear a murmur,
maybe a cough, someone's sandals scraping marble, And throughout it
(20:06):
all Stephen would rise. He would pace, but his anger
had a rhythm cross pivot point accused. He would even
jab a finger toward the corpse. He crowned a false emperor.
Aren't off? He stood with the other side against the
(20:30):
rightful Roman princes. He perjured himself before God. He polluted
this chair with this personal ambition. Now, let's face it, pollute.
It is a useful word. It turns disagreements into something
most people understand, hygiene. The whole time, though the bishops
(20:55):
did not look at one another, let's face it, many
had been ordained by foremost says if this trial stuck,
their own collars would come unbuttoned in public. The deacon
recite at a page of scripture and a plea for
mercy the whole time, his voice trembling as did his hands.
(21:19):
He spoke for a man who could not thank him,
and would not probably have chosen him. He spoke for
the idea that the dead deserve silence, if not respect.
Charge two was the one that fell like a hammer, perjury,
(21:45):
not about fact about allegiance. Allegiance in this century was
a weather report dressed in virtue. When the carrilicion sky darkened,
this bulletins called it sin to have carried an umbrella.
Charge three, unlawfully seizing the papacy. Here, of course, the
(22:10):
room would have tightened if Romoses had never truly been pope.
Every act fanacious that he ever did once again, bishops
he ordained, would all of a sudden become unordained, priest
he anointed unannointed, They would become all of his decrees dissolved,
(22:34):
allegiances unsigned, a factional nullification packaged as holiness. And there
was one question asked that matter to him, Stephen, not
to heaven. Did you trespass on the throne of Saint
peter By and by doing so poison room? Of course,
(22:55):
the deacon had to answer the only way the deacon
could innocent. But somewhere between the second and third clusters
of charges, the crowd's mood began to shift. What began
as morbid curiosity that filled the knave at dawn had
curdled into something else, maybe a little bit of shame,
(23:18):
or maybe the nauseus nauseousness of the spectacle. A woman
in the back began to weep. A man near the
front lean forward, the way people do when they went
to see less. And on the diist bishops studied their
hands like maps that might somehow show them a secret
way out. And through it all Stephen, Stephen just pressed
(23:39):
harder and harder, he demanded an alment. You could almost
hear the calculation ripple through the rose reordained by whom
by Stephen, of course, he would become the hinge of legitimacy,
the single door through which holy orders show. The deacon
(24:04):
tried again. He cited previous councils, He mentioned mercy, He
mispronounced the verse and flushed with humiliation, and a few
men smiled behind their sleeves. You could not help him,
You could barely even watch. And outside outside the city
was baking. Inside it, well, you could probably say it
(24:25):
was boiling. If virtue had a temperature, room exceeded it.
And once again the verdict was never in doubt. It
was all just a matter of staging. Stephen brought his
cadence down like an axe. Guilty on abandonment of his seat,
Guilty on perjury before God, guilty on seizing the papacy,
(24:46):
unlawful guilty, guilty guilty, as if somehow that repetition was
a new sacrament. Then we got to the sentence degradation
from the pontificant strip the robes, tear off the ring,
(25:06):
and the nastiest of them all, the severing of those
blessing fingers, the index and middle finger of the right hand,
the digits that had drawn the cross over foreheads and bread,
and the brows of kings, make the symbol a wound,
and make that wound a warning. Stephen would lift the
(25:32):
severed fingers high like a some sort of mad relic
for an insane instant. The crowd expected a miracle, the
kind though you probably didn't once, but none came. All
that was left was the smell and the science that
great rooms learned to keep. Then we got the dragging
(25:55):
down the steps, through the doors into rome, where children
followed and dogs announced the procession, with the joy, dogs
bringing to everything. The body bumped and it rocked. Men
who would not meet their neighbor's eyes at market watched openly.
Now you can be horrified and still look somehow. Rome
(26:21):
has always known how. And at the timer the attendants hesitated,
the way men do when they've done too much already
and don't want to be the last hand of history.
Someone shoved and that body slid and splashed, with the
(26:43):
river closing it down. But back inside the basilica, Stephen sagged.
You could see the exhaustion cracked through his triumph, the
high of his performance, the crash of complete He looked
older now, even more so, but he also appeared a
(27:06):
little emptier around him. Bishops exhaled, the way men do
at the end of a dangerous day, when survived by
choosing not to speak. But the verdicts echo. Rome is
a city of stone sound lingers, And within days again
(27:28):
fishermen buzzed, that's a pale shape. Had ribbon has risen.
The rumor reached taverns faster than sermons could deny it,
and the more Stephen would call it blasphemy, the more
it ended up sounding like a sign. He tried administration
as antidote in validated orders. He summoned clergy to be
(27:50):
reordained to kneel for the touch that would cleanse their resumes.
And let's face it, some came because fear, oh feer
has a really strong gravity, and others, of course would
stall because principle sometimes has enough weight to resist gravity. Meanwhile,
(28:13):
laments turned the jokes, and jokes would turn to rage.
The words changed subtly, from the Holy Father to that spilettin,
from his holiness to that man. I mean, even look
at today pronouns. Pronouns are political, titles can be weather veins.
(28:35):
You could tell which way the city was turning by
how the Bakers spoke openly. So Stephen did the thing
Stephen had to do, preach harder. He shout out the
kind of sermons that scorched good doctrine. He insisted that
the synod was righteous, that God preferred order to memory,
(28:56):
that the dead or not exempt from justice. But he
mistook volume for being legitimate. But let's face it, he
always had. None of it mattered. Something had shipped in
Rome that no decree could reach ordinary people. People who
owned two tonics and a prayer, had seen the church
(29:17):
drag a corpse in the court and call it holy.
That is not something you can easily put back. The
backlash began the way all revolts do here quietly, and
then all at once. A priest who kept his head
down somehow would find a spine. A noble who clapped
(29:39):
politely stopped descending coin. A bishop who swallowed his terror
felt it rise as anger, and noticed his colleagues did too.
Fear is lonely anger. It's social Stephen, to his credit,
sensed it. But he decided to double down, which may
(30:03):
be a useful poker strategy, and you know, probably not
a good spiritual one. He had built his throne on deletion.
He could not imagine. Addition, he did not know how
to make allies, only replacements. The corpse ironically didn't know how.
(30:24):
In death formoses collected the living. The legend of the
river handgrew two new fingers every telling. He fool whispered
of lights over the water, a fish refusing to bite
where the body had drifted of the tiber itself, spitting
the pope back with a noise like laughter. Rome was
(30:44):
a golf in anger and poetry. By autumn, this pilatin
grip felt less like iron and a little more like
wet ropes. Lambert postured, the rumor is solvent with a
very low boiling point. The more Stephen insisted he was righteous,
(31:06):
the more his coalition melted around the edges. And yet
on parchment, the synod stood, The acts were sealed, the
annaumous ink the fingers, despite all the rumors were gone.
A verdict is a stubborn thing, even when everyone hates it.
(31:35):
And there's a lesson. And here the verdict didn't persuade Rome,
it cornered it. And when you corner a city that
has survived emperors, goths, not the good kind, plagues, and
its own liturgies, it doesn't repent. It remembers.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Not do.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Lift the body, dress the room.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
F and the broken.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
In the candles close, shave the lorne boos over the house, Lay.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
The verdict down, Speak the ancient shop.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
The boys left the town, the old.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Bone, make the silence up.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Susy brings satins a style.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
STI, but.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Hould the cord in food.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Let the vice roy.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Cast the shallows, drag the truth from away the greaves,
and find.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The saying to run.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Live the corpse to here place the curse your mouth.
Force the bde in through.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
The picture of.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
And welcome back.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Room.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Room has a way of answering cruelty with efficiency, and
by the spring of eighteen ninety seven that answer had
Stephen the Six's name all all over it. Oh, of course,
for a few weeks the city pretended nothing, nothing at
(36:23):
all happened. The market still opened, bells would still ring,
and bishops still rehearsed the same say prayers. But under
it all, something restless was breathing again. The crowd that
once cheered the living pope for condemning the dead began
whispering about omens once again. Fishermen claimed they saw the
(36:48):
pale figure in the tiber. Stephen said, no, it's not
a miracle, it is just superstition. You unwashed heathens. Yet,
somehow the body of Romoses had become a new relic
that the Church couldn't canonize and couldn't ignore. Candles started
(37:14):
to appear along the river bank. Women touched the water
and crossed themselves. Rome being Rome started selling the river
water in bottles. For Stephen, this was intolerable. He had
written the ending, he buried it, and the city was
(37:37):
improvising a sequel no one authorized. So he did what
every doomed ruler does when the crowd begins a doubt,
he got louder. He preached daily, voice cracking against the stone.
He shouted that the devil had raised a false miracle,
and that the dead pope was a vessel of deception,
(37:59):
and that the only obedience could save the church from collapse. Now,
the bishops, they listened the way men listened the thunder, impressed,
but in truth, waiting for it to pass. Now it's
hard to command faith from a paulpit that still smells like,
you know, maybe for my hide a little bit. And
(38:22):
even some of Stephen's allies began to look uneasy. His
allies were realizing that Champion had gone from usefulness to radioactive.
They slipped out of room with the soldiers and their excuses.
The papal palace suddenly sounded a lot larger and emptier,
(38:44):
and a little more prone to echoes. And without some
of his allies protection, stephens authority began to shrink to
the size of his paranoia. He issued decreed. Nobody followed.
He demanded the clergy reordained themselves the touch of emoses
from their hands. A fuel of course, did obey, But
(39:07):
by the summer even the street vendors now had an opinion.
They would sell relics of for Moses that were almost
certainly candlewax, and they sold them fast. The river had
become a pilgrimage route. Now, people said the water glow tonight.
(39:29):
Rome believed it because Rome needed it too, because, let's
face it, belief is cheaper than stability. Inside the latter
and Stephen pace the marble halls like a prisoner. Now
in his own legend, he muttered sermons to the walls,
reversing and revising lines, convincing himself the applause that, oh God,
(39:50):
the applause would return if he just found that right
note that right verse. But the city was already reciting
A and the curse of formosis. Now, let's face it.
Revolution in Rome rarely rarely begins with swords. It begins
(40:10):
with gossip that refuses to die. Priest began whispering that
Stephen had gone mad. A bishop claimed he heard the
pope arguing with invisible witnesses at night. The story spread
the way mold does, quietly and perfectly, and the thunderstorm
finished the work. Lightning struck the basilica during one of
(40:33):
Stephen's sermons, splitting a pillar near the altar. No one
thankfully was hurt. But let's face it, that hardly mattered.
At this point. A spectator swore the flash outlined a
figure in the smoke, two fingers raising a blessing. The
audience fled before Stephen could shout it down. After that,
(40:56):
even the loyals amongst his followers called him the screaming Hope.
Of course, not to his face. No, no, no one,
no one wanted to be the next corpse to have
to stand on trial. Stephen began sleeping in armor. He
posted guards at his bedroom door and ordered his meals
(41:17):
tasted for poison. But the real danger was already inside
the walls. Rome had lost a capacity to fear him,
and eventually the breaking point happened as spark came from
the clergy. A group of priests met in secret at
(41:37):
the Basilica of Saint Peter to hold masks for the
soul or promoss a simple service, candles and whispers. Someone
informed the palace. Stephen sent soldiers to break it up.
They arrived to find not twenty priests but two hundred citizens,
singing palm psalms louder than the rain. When the guard
(41:58):
raised their weapons, they crowd raised stones by nightfall, the
city was roaring, Torches flared against the palace gates. Chance
rolled through the streets, Justice for the dead, Justice for
the dead, and Rome's patience burned away like parchment. Inside,
(42:19):
Stephen would pray louder and louder, but no one answered.
Next morning, the mob reached the gates. Chroniclers disagree on details,
but not direction. They found him cornered near the papal apartments,
clutching a crucifix, as if to remind God whose side
he was supposed to be on. They dragged him outside, barefoot,
(42:41):
hair tangled, eyes wild, He stumbled over the same stones
that had scraped the corpse of Formosis months before. A
poet later wrote that the crowd didn't march him through
Rome as much as drag the papacy back through its
own sins and kind of hard to argue with poetry
when it's accurate. They threw Stephen into a dungeon below
(43:05):
the latter, and no trial this time, no witness, is
just the echo of his own verdict bouncing off the walls.
Some say he raved for days. Others say he sat
in silence, convinced he'd been the righteous one and that
the world outside had gone and seen either way, it
didn't last long. Late, and late that August guards found
(43:29):
him strangled with a strip of his own robe. Whether
by order or despair, no one bothered really to even
bother to clarify. In Rome, cause of death is usually
a matter of convenience. They buried him quietly in the
(43:53):
cemetery of Saint Peter, with no bells, no procession. The
city just decided to exhale and went to bed. Three
nights later, someone still unknown would dig him up and
dump him into the tiber. You could call it a
(44:13):
bit of symmetry. Poetic Rome caught a balance when the
water carried Stephen away. The Church tried to carry on.
The Spultans distanced themselves, claiming they always thought the trial
was excessive. The new Pope reminiscent lasted all of three months,
(44:34):
long enough to convene a council that declared the cadaver
sonod null and void, and to write the phrase evident
insanity besides Stephen's name. Then Romanus was quietly replaced by
another and another after that, each promising to end the chaos,
and each contributing a little more each time. For a decade,
(44:56):
the papacy resembled a tavern door constantly opening closed and
no one knowing the person's name. One pope reinstated for
Moses's acts, the next would reverse them again. Paperwork ping
ponged across Christians, and every diocese diocese spent more time
erasing signature than any race issuing them, and even the
(45:20):
faithful off track of who was saved and who was
unsaved any given week. It wasn't It wasn't theology anymore.
It was bookkeeping, with incense burning through it all. Hermosis
remained in the ground, or technically somewhere near the ground.
(45:40):
The Church eventually retrieved his body from the river, re
entombed it, and swore, on pain of excommunication, that no
one would ever disturb it again, which you know, given precedent,
was probably less promised than Challenge Seven's death didn't cleanse
(46:01):
the papacy, it may have clarified it a little bit.
Power in Rome was no longer about sanctity. It was
about narrative. Whoever controlled the story controlled the throne the
Cadaversanod had shown the truth could be murdered, dug up, retried,
and still walk out of the river cleaner than the
man who condemned it. The bishops would learn a cautious
(46:25):
new creed, never bury an enemy where he can float back.
For the ordinary Romans, who'd watch the farce unfold, the
lesson was simpler. They began measuring holiness not by crowns
or rings, but by absence, how quiet a man stayed
once buried. The louder the legacy, the less they would
(46:46):
end up trusting it. No centuries later. Chroniclers would laugh,
historians would sigh, and the theologians would invent metaphors to
keep their stomach steady. But for the people who lived
at the cadaversanod wasn't a matter. For it all, it
was the smell of death in the knave, the echo
of sermons shout out of a corpse, and the certainty
that even the holiest office can go feral if no
(47:09):
one dares to whisper stop. And that's what Rome finally did,
not with doctrine, not with the cree, just with the
oldest authority known on earth, a crowd that simply had enough.
By the close of eight ninety seven, the marble floors
of the Basilica were scrubbed, the ropes discarded, the chairs replaced.
(47:33):
The city, of course went back to pretending it had
learned anything it hadn't. Of course it really never does.
But for a moment, Rome felt lighter, as if some
terrible gravity had finally been lifted. Two popes gone, one
river cleansed, and a truth floating quietly beneath that surface.
(47:54):
The church could survive scandal and even sacrilege. What it
could not survive was laughter. And Rome had learned how
to laugh again, because in the end, the only real
absolution history ever grants is irony, and irony in Rome
(48:17):
is eternal. So what does the corpse on trial say
about truth, faith and rule. Well, after every storm there's
a bit of silence, the kind Rome knows too well,
the kind that feels earned, not peaceful. Yes, the basilica
(48:40):
had been scrubbed, the torches were replaced, the marble polished
back to respectable, But beneath it, the story still mode
and moved the ground of water. The cadaver synod was over,
but the echo of it wasn't. And once again history
has this beautiful habit about living.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
All.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Stephen six was gone, for Moses was gone, the witnesses scattered,
But yet somehow the trial kept breathing. It became shorthand
in Europe for power gone mad, and it raised a
question Rome never truly answered, why do we keep putting
the dead on trial? Now? It isn't just Rome's curiosity here,
(49:30):
it's humanity's compulsion. We bury, then dig, then bury again,
convinced that one more verdict will make the past behave
every era finds its own corpse to interrogate. Centuries later,
England would try it again. Oliver Cromwell, that of natural causes,
was exhumed by the restored monarchy, hanged in chains and decapitated.
(49:56):
His head sat on a spike above Westminster Hall for
twenty years, an education in how long spite can stay
upright in France, of course, seeing England do this, followed
suit in its own way, burning revolutionary bones, condemning what
had already decayed. The Council Constance dug up John Wycliff
(50:16):
fifty years after his death and scattered his ashes into
the river. Justice. They would call it closure, they claimed,
but really what it really looked like was insecurity with
you know, a flash of ceremony. And every century seems
to repeat the gesture. Dictator's toppled statues pulled down, name
scrubs from buildings. Each time, the living performed moral housekeeping,
(50:41):
pretending the condemnation cleans their conscience. The cadaver Snod just
stripped that metaphor away. Stephen the Six believed that erasing
his predecessor would steady and write the Church at that moment.
(51:03):
You try to bury memory, you end up making it immortal.
Walk the halls of Saint Peter's and you can probably
still feel it. Somewhere beneath that marble lies what remains
of him, no mark or no inscription, just quiet reminder
that every institution has a breaking point where faith meets
politics and ultimately forgets which is which. But history history
(51:30):
remembers that smell long after it forgets the sermon. It
remembers how fear dresses up as doctrine. It remembers the
sounds of certainly collapsing under its own echo. Through it all,
the Cadaversnod was not about belief. It was about control.
He even wanted to rewrite holiness. The Church would eventually
(51:54):
call the episode quote an unfortunate excess unquote. That's Vaticans
speak for, can you please quit asking us about that?
But the record survived, and so did the pattern. Popes, kings,
and parliaments all discovered the same thing. Once you discover
history is able to be edited, you will never stop
(52:17):
the editing. The next ruler always finds another ghost, the
cross examined, because let's face it, the dead really can't contradict.
They make the perfect victim here. They're silent, compliant, and
incapable reminding you how much you sound like them. Power
(52:38):
loves that, and that's probably why this story still matters,
because this isn't about medieval Rome. It's about how authority
defends itself when it's afraid. It builds a courtroom around
the coffin and calls it the right thing to do.
It confuses ritual with absolution. It turns fear into litigary
(53:00):
until the audience eventually stops clapping. The cadaversonad teaches the
same lesson every age forgets. Truth doesn't need protection, it
just needs patience. Power needs protection, and therefore it invents
(53:24):
the theater. And when that curtain drops, we pretend that
performance was progress. It never even the church tried to
bury the evidence. Counsels met, annulled, reinstated, and all again.
It's theological tugg of war over man long past, giving
a crap. In the end, the paperwork didn't matter. The
(53:46):
metaphor already had tenure. For most. It somehow remained the
pope who survived his own trial, and Stephen remained the
man who didn't. And there is a kind of dark
comfort in that symmetry. Rome Rate's morality plays the way
other cities right tax codes compulsively with revisions. But underneath
(54:13):
all the ceremony lies a truth as plain as dust.
You can't bless revenge, you can robe it. Chan it footnoted,
but it still ultimately smells the same. Centuries later, reformers
would quote us and Not as proof that the Church
could lose its mind without losing its soul. Skeptics called
it evidence that God well may have outsourced quality control.
(54:37):
Either way, it's become part of the DNA, a scar
so old it became a feature. But for all of
its absurdity, the trial left one lasting mercy. It taught
us to recognize madness. It showed us how easily peighty
kurdles when it confuses purification with punishment, and warn that
(55:00):
if you spend long enough defending heaven from ghosts, you
will eventually start haunting yourself. Stand at the Tiber today
and watch the water move. It's the same current that
carried for moss away, the same river that would eventually
welcome Stephen a little while later, the same reflection that
swallowed both pretenders and absolved. It's patience, the beauty of
(55:26):
that river. It's seen empires, it has seen crusades, it
has seen councils, It has seen more than its fair
share of tourists. It simply knows better than to take sides.
What it tells you, if you listen closely, is simple.
Every verdict washes downstream eventually, and maybe that's the moral
(55:53):
hiding in the debris. Yes, spaith can forgive the power.
Rarely does that. The bones of our enemies always outlasting applause.
The truth, however, water log always tends to float. The
cadaversonod wasn't the first time humanity mistook noise corciousness, and
(56:16):
it won't be the last, but it may remain the
purest example how far belief will bend to avoid admitting fear.
You can see its reflection in every book that has
ever been banned. Real band, not Today's band, Every statue
that's been torn down, every history rewritten to fit the
(56:38):
mood of the time. We just simply call it accountability.
Now room called it justice. The ghost probably call it boredom.
Still the echo does linger, a throne, a corpse, and
man screaming in the silence. The details change, but the
silhouette never does. Every generation eventually stands in that basilica again,
(57:04):
this time wearing different clothes but with the same questions,
because the real trial was never Foremoses versus Stephen, it
was the memory versus control, and memory being a stubborn,
stubborn beast one once again, not with swords, not with sermons,
(57:28):
but with time and patience. By the time the church
finally stopped arguing, both popes had been reburied more times
than any sane God would permit. Their feud dissolved into
parchment and proverb Rome went back to pretending it had
learned restraint, but deep down it knew the truth. Absolution
is temporary, paperwork is eternal. The sad truth of it all, though,
(57:55):
is we still put the dead on trial. We just
simply call it commentary.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
Now.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
We still raise ghosts to prove we're better than them.
We still stand in judgment over people who cannot answer back.
And somehow we call this progress once again. Every century,
the costumes change, the instinct doesn't through it all. The
(58:22):
one thing that kadaver Snod left us, the past does
not stay buried. It just simply waits, and when you
summon it for judgment, it will always eventually judge you back.
(58:46):
In the end, the trial of dead Pope gave Rome
what it always craved, an ending that felt like justice
and sounded like the loudest applause of any Shakespearean play.
The goodaver Snod was many, many centuries ago, and yet
you can still hear its echo in every argument about
(59:07):
legacy and every attempt to clean the past with the
soap of outrage. And once again we're still putting ghosts
on the stands, still convincing ourselves that condemnation is a cure.
But it never ever is. The river moved on, the
(59:28):
marble stayed, and Rome learned, at least for a season,
that faith may forgive, but the power never forgets. And
next time we're going to trade the basilica for the blizzard.
We're gonna climb into the frozen silence of two Arctic
(59:50):
mysteries that that Left Pass incident and the Greeley expedition.
We're gonna ask why some trails ends, not in answers,
but in questions that do not seem to thaw. I
am j E double F. And this has been in
the crease
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