SYMHC Classics: Why would you put a cadaver on trial?

In this 2011 episode, prior hosts Sarah and Deblina cover Pope Stephen VI having his deceased predecessor Formosus exhumed and put on trial in 897. The corpse was found guilty, but this desecration disgusted Romans and made them rebel.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, Everybody. Today's classic is from our October episode
called Why Would You Put a Cadaver on Trial? It
tells the story of Pope Formosis, whose body was put
on trial after his death in the year eight nineties six,
As in his actual cadaver was dug up and put
on the stand with a deacon speaking for him. So

(00:25):
while this episode has the Halloween e elements of a
cadaver and an exhimation which everyone loves, it is also
a look at papal history dating back to more than
a thousand years ago. That's kind of a random side note.
This episode is from former hosts Sarah and Bablina, and
as they're talking at the top of the show, they
say that they don't go looking for exhamations to talk

(00:45):
about in the podcast, They just kind of keep stumbling
over them. That is definitely not the case anymore. I
do go looking for exhamations. There is a Google alert involved.
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

(01:15):
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm deliving chalk Reboarding and we
are continuing with our spooky Halloween October series, and we
figured it would be the perfect time to discuss an exhimation.
And people do suggest exhlimations to us pretty regularly. I
was going to say, isn't it always the perfect time
to discuss an exhimation is if it is stuff you

(01:36):
missed in history class, But we promised that most of
the time we don't go looking for these exlimations. They
just kind of happen. It'll be something completely unrelated to
a potentially disinterred body, and then suddenly there is one,
so it's kind of a surprise. But this one is
not a surprise. Exhimation is really pretty impossible to avoid,

(01:59):
and it's actually drove listeners like Matthew and Naomi and Barry,
as well as our friend and former coworker Molly Edmonds
to suggest this topic to us in the first place,
because it's a strange, strange topic. I mean, to make
the most obvious understatement. Yeah, it really is unusual. And

(02:20):
like most exhamations that we mentioned on the podcast, this
one wasn't done to verify a cause of death or
to relocate the body. It was done to place the
months old corpse on trial. So of course we have
to address the question why would anyone disenter a body
to put it on trial. Why indeed, especially when that

(02:42):
body wasn't just anyone but was a former pope. So
Encyclopedia Britannica always a good place to start if you
want a general picture for the basics. Yeah, they call
this trial one of the most bizarre incidents in papal history,
but you could also call it one of the most
brutal incidents, one of the most disturbing incidents. But dead

(03:05):
pope on trial wasn't just this freakish event at the time.
Before we talk about the trial and the specific popes
and players involved, we have to talk a little bit
about a dark time called the papal pornocracy. Uh, it was,
like I said, a series of kind of dark years
that started just before the end of the Carolingian Imperial

(03:28):
line in eight So we're talking way back. This is
an old podcast. So first, just to give you a
little context, we'll talk about something a little more recent.
After the death of Pope John Paul the second few
years back, people around the world, including non Catholics, learned
a little bit about the papal electoral process called a conclave.
But the Pope hasn't always been elected by a conclave,

(03:51):
and in the ninth and tenth centuries the selection process
had a lot of input from Roman noble families and
German princes. Now these families put forward their own candidates
and had their own factions, and according to papal historian
horse k Man quote, the one aim of each party,
pursued by every resource of violence and intrigue, was to
get control of the chair of St. Peter. Its occupant

(04:14):
must be one of theirs at all costs. So it
kind of figures that there would be quite a bit
of trouble plus a pretty high turnover. And that's also
a bit of an understatement. A third of the popes
elected between eight seventy two and ten twelve died under
suspicious circumstances, and between eight and nine oh four, the
most violent unstable period, there were nine popes. Yeah, that's

(04:38):
a remarkably high turnover, even considering that these are older
fellows most of the time, even when they're actually not
always old. But our story takes place in eight so
really right in the thick of this highly controversial, unsettled time.
And we're gonna start with the pope who started off

(04:58):
this high turnover decade Pope for Mosis, who is also
are exhumed man on trial unfortunately for him. And I
thought it was interesting because it's not just his um
the terrible things that happened to him in death, but
the ups and downs of his pre death religious career
kind of epitomized the hazards of the time of being

(05:20):
pope or or being um somebody who was a contender
to be pope. So he had been born in Rome
in about eight sixteen and he was made a cardinal
bishop in eight sixty four by Pope St. Nicholas the First.
We're going to really rattle off a lot of successors
of his in this brief life story. You may want
to take notes. Pope Adrian the Second had sent the

(05:43):
future Pope for Mosis on missions to France, where he
had performed quite well. He was highly regarded. Then under
Pope John the Eighth he had been exiled and excommunicated,
and um there were some pretty outrageous reasons for this,
like despoiling oysters, and it seemed pretty obviously political. Since

(06:03):
Formosis had, like I said, a good reputation, he was
considered ascetic and considered a very peaceful, intelligent man, so
the reasons for this excommunication were probably more that he
was himself a good contender to be pope. But after
time he was pardoned but still not allowed to return.
Then eventually another pope, Pope Marinus the First, allowed him

(06:27):
back to Rome and returned him to his position. And
then under the next two popes st Adrian the third
and Stephen the Fifth sometimes Stephen the sixth, he finally
grew more powerful. So that's quite a busy life story
just leading up to his eight ninety one election where
he himself becomes pope under Stephen, though some big political

(06:59):
things gone down, so we should tell you a little
bit about that too. Charles the Fat, the last Carolingian
in the imperial line, had died in his place. Stephen
had reluctantly crowned Duke Guido of Spoleto out of a
mess of contenders Roman emperor, but by doing so he
was giving tremendous power to an uncomfortably close neighbor of

(07:20):
the papal states. So when for Mosis was elected, he
also had to go along with Stephen and recognized Guido
and his son Lambert as co Roman emperors. But just
because for most of this recognized Guido and Lambert as
co Roman Empress, didn't mean he was on behind them.
In fact, he asked his own preferred candidate, this guy,

(07:41):
King Arnulf of the East Franks, to come and invade
Italy and take care of Guido, get rid of him,
and get rid of his whole faction. And it almost worked.
Arnulf launched a campaign to Italy and in eight for
Moses did crown him emperor in Rome, so it seemed
like almost success. But before Arnolf could actually battle Lambert

(08:04):
out in Spoleto, Guido had by this point died. The
German contender was struck by paralysis, and that's what you'll
see it described as in Missource. I guess this is
the eight hundreds, so we don't get too many more
details than that. But anyway, Arnulf was out of the running.
He had to quit, and not too long after that
for Mosis died, So it kind of seems like the

(08:27):
end of this immediate story, but that was not the
case at all. The story of Formosis actually picked up
just a couple of weeks later after the brief pontificate
of Boniface the sixth, when a new pope was again
elected Stephen the sixth there sometimes the seventh. Unlike for Mosas,
Stephen was a supporter of the splatant party Lambert and

(08:48):
his mother, the Duchess Agultrude, but he didn't just support
them in traditional dignified ways. He agreed to conduct a
trial to punish his predecessor who had betrayed them. Less
than a year after for Mosis had died, Stephen had
him disinterred, dressed in papal vestiments, and enthroned. Stephen acted

(09:09):
as a prosecutor here in this trial, charging for Mosis
with the charges levied against him during his excommunication, but
focusing on three main things perjury, coveting the papacy, and
violating church cannons, specifically transferring from the sea of Porto
to that of Rome. So, a poor eighteen year old

(09:30):
deacon was forced by Stephen to act as for Moses's defense,
you know, answer for him, squeaking out some kind of
defense whenever he could interrupt Steven's tirade against the deceased pope,
and he was really too scared to get out much
more than Mumbles. So unsurprisingly, Stephen found for most is

(09:50):
guilty and ruled that all of his acts would be
null and all of his ordinations void. And this really
had a double calculated herk in addition to obviously shaming
for moses memory, which was the primary reason to do it,
for Moses had appointed Stephen himself as a bishop, and

(10:10):
by having that appointment annulled, Stephen got off the hook
for some irregularities in his own transfer from one seed
to that of Rome. So it was pretty pretty tricky
on his part to to clean up his his own
record a little bit. But it wasn't just about assuring
Steven's legitimacy though, or cutting out for Moses's proteges who

(10:34):
he had um consecrated. It was about just completely disrespecting
the deceased pope's body. And I mean the following is
really pretty disturbing. What they what they did to the guy.
And I think this is why um this story has
stuck around so so prominently in history. YEA. For example,
the papal vestiments were ripped from the corpse and it

(10:57):
was redressed in layman's clothes. The finger is used for
consecrations were cut off and Ougle Trude got to keep them,
and the body was then dragged through the streets buried
in a pauper's grave before being dug up again and
dumped into the Tiber. But thankfully, there's such a thing
as going too far, and even in this violent partisan

(11:18):
time in Rome, folks were not happy with Stephen and
this disgraceful treatment of his predecessor. So it was kind
of a situation of what goes around comes around. For
most of his body was eventually pulled out of the
river by a hermit, where it was reburied, and not
long after that miracles started being attributed to him. And

(11:39):
to add to matters for for the Romans who were
paying attention to the story, the latter in Basilica, which
is the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome,
also known as the Pope, collapsed in an earthquake, which
seemed like a terrible, terrible sign. And so all of this,
plus Stephen really pushing the point too hard his insistence

(12:01):
that the clergy, ordained by forms to send in letters
acknowledging that their appointments were invalid. All of this bubbled
up and finally led to rebellion. The clergy and the
people of Rome rose up against Stephen. So Stephen was

(12:24):
stripped of his papal powers and thrown into prison, and
there the allies of Formosis strangled him in August. The
next Pope, Romanis, lasted only a few months, and the
one following him, Theodore the Second, just a few weeks.
But before Theodore died, he got right to work on
honoring the dead desecrated Formosis. He held his own synod

(12:45):
regarding the cadaver synod and knowing Stephen's ruling and restoring
Formosis acts in consecrations. He also had the body brought
back exhoomed once again to St. Peter's and reburied in
it's old tomb. So after the brief pontificate of Theodore
the Second, next came John the Knight, who, to really

(13:06):
make it clear how uncooled this whole trial of the
dead pope had been again nullified Stephen Senate twice, just
for a good measure, and because it apparently needed spelling
out too. He also prohibited future trials of dead people.
Probably a good policy for anyone, but um not or

(13:26):
at least if you're actually putting the body on trial.
I'll add that caveat. But not everyone was a foremost
a supporter, I know, we're talking about overturning this cadaver senate. Uh.
The last pope in this decade of rapid fire succession
and intrigue, Pope Sergius the Third had supported Stephen from

(13:48):
the beginning. He had even taken part in the cadaver
sen of the trial himself. And like Stephen, Pope Sergius
the Third also had an allegiance or alliance with the
Spoletant fact Action and Um he had had a pope
and an anti pope strangled to pave the way for himself,
and Um allied himself further with the most powerful family

(14:09):
in Rome, Senator Theophile act and his Byzantine princess wife Theodora.
And just kind of a side note here, Sergius even
had a son with their teenage daughter, who became a
very very powerful future Roman matriarch and popemaker herself. But
as back back to our maintail here, as proof of

(14:32):
his loyalty to the House of Spleto, Sergius reaffirmed the
cadaver Senate. And this was really more than just talk.
I mean, I know it sounds like a few years
after the fact, maybe just trying to keep your allies
comfortable but it meant that all of formosis ordinations were
again invalid, so anyone who had received orders under him

(14:56):
needed to go back and do it again. And Sergius
was especially vengeual for any bishops who had been consecrated
by for Moses, who would obviously be the men most
closely connected to the former pope and his enemy. So
all in all, this is a pretty grizzly story, and

(15:16):
during the papal pornocracy it extended a bit beyond Sergius.
To John Peter Fam, former Vatican diplomat and author of
Heirs of the Fisherman Behind the Scenes of Papal Death
and Succession, puts it pretty succinctly when he writes that quote,
Although at least in the minds of believers, the office
that these popes have held in succession is of divine origin,

(15:39):
how these men have been raised to that office is
a very human affair. Yeah. And FAM's book that we
just mentioned, I mean, really does go into the nitty
gritty of it all, you know, um, looking at the
history of popes and and how they died and what
happened after they died, and how uh the new pope
was was chosen, and I think it's interesting to look

(16:01):
at that we're probably more familiar with the twentieth century history,
but to look at these times in the eight hundreds
and nine hundreds and and see what was going on
and what power plays where we're going on, but we
want to leave on a pretty interesting side net something
to think about. There hasn't ever been a pope for

(16:21):
mostes the second poor guy. Though Cardinal Pietro Barboa did
consider the name in fourteen sixty four, he had to
be talked out of it. Apparently his choice instead was
Paul the Second sounds a lot safer, a lot safer,
not calling to mind any dark chapters in history, and um,

(16:43):
anything you might not want to think about during a
celebratory time. So anyway, though, this was a really interesting
thing to research. So I'm glad that Molly let us
know about it. And thanks to Matthew and Naomi and
Barry for all suggesting it as well making letting us
know that it's something you all really wanted to hear about. Two. Yeah,

(17:03):
it seems like you can get taken to tests sometimes
for looking at the pope in such a human light,
but it is really fascinating. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday, since this episode is out of
the archive. If you heard an email address or a
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(17:27):
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(17:51):
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