October 17, 2011 • 19 mins
In 897, Pope Stephen VI had his deceased predecessor Formosus exhumed and put on trial. The corpse was found guilty, but this desecration disgusted Romans and made them rebel. Tune in to learn more about the period known as the Papal Pornocracy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de Believing Chalk Reboarding, and
we are continuing with our Spooky Halloween October series and
(00:21):
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 missed in history class, But we promised that most
of the time we don't go looking for these exclamations.
They just kind of happen. It will be something completely
(00:43):
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. The exhimation is really pretty
impossible to avoid, and it's actually what drove listeners like
Matthew and Naomi and Barry, as well as our friend
(01:04):
and former coworker Molly Edmunds 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 like most exhamations that we mentioned
on the podcast, this one wasn't done to verify a
(01:24):
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 body wasn't just anyone but was a
former pope. So Encyclopedia Britannica always a good place to
(01:48):
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 pope on trial wasn't just this freakish event
at the time. Before we talk about the trial and
(02:10):
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 line in eight eight. So we're talking way
(02:30):
back this 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,
and in the ninth and tenth centuries the selection process
(02:52):
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. It's occupant
(03:13):
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 ninety six and nine oh four,
the most violent unstable period, there were nine popes. So yeah,
(03:36):
that's 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
n so really right in the thick of this highly controversial,
unsettled time, and we're gonna start with the pope who
started off this high turnover decade, Pope for Moses, who
(04:01):
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 predeath religious career
kind of epitomized the hazards of the time of being
pope or or being um somebody who was a contender
(04:22):
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 note. Pope Adrian the Second had sent Um,
the future Pope Formosis on missions to France, where he
(04:45):
had performed quite well. He was highly regarded then under
Pope John the Ape, he had been exiled and excommunicated,
and um there were some pretty outrageous reasons for this,
like despoiling cloisters, and it's seemed pretty obviously political since
for Mosas had, like I said, a good reputation. He
was considered ascetic and considered a very peaceful, intelligent man,
(05:09):
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 Marinis the first, allowed him
back to Rome and returned him to his position, And
then under the next two popes, st Adrian the Third
(05:32):
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
things had gone down, so we should tell you a
little bit about that too. Charles the fat, the last
(05:54):
Carolingian in the Imperial line, had died in his place.
Stephen had reluctantly round 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 the papal states. So when for Mosis was elected,
he also had to go along with Stephen and recognized
(06:16):
Guido and his son Lambert as co Roman emperors. But
just because for Moses recognized Guido and Lambert as co
Roman empress didn't mean he was one behind them. In fact,
he asked his own preferred candidate, this guy, King Arnulf
of the East Franks, to come and invade Italy and
take care of Guido, get rid of him, and get
(06:38):
rid of his whole faction. And it almost worked. Arnulf
launched a campaign to Italy and an eight for Moses
did crown him emperor in Rome, so it seemed like
almost success. But before Arnolf could actually battle Lambert out
in Spoleto, Guido had by this point died. The German
contender was struck by paralysis, and that's what you'll see
(07:02):
it described as in miss First. 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
Formosis died, so it kind of seems like the end
of this immediate story, but that was not the case
at all. The story of Formosis actually picked up just
(07:24):
a couple of weeks later after the brief pontificate of
Boniface the sixth, when a new pope was again elected,
Stephen the sixth, there's sometimes the seventh. Unlike Formosis, Stephen
was a supporter of the splatant party Lambert and his mother,
the Duchess Aggultrude, But he didn't just support them in
traditional dignified ways. He agreed to conduct a trial to
(07:46):
punish his predecessor who had betrayed them. So less than
a year after Formosis had died, Stephen had him disinterred,
dressed in papal vestiments, and enthroned. Stephen acted as a
secutor here in this trial, charging for Mosis with the
charges levied against him during his excommunication, but focusing on
(08:07):
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 deacon was forced by
Stephen to act as for Mostes's defense. You know, answer
for him squeaking out some kind of defense whenever he
(08:28):
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 guilty and ruled
that all of his acts would be null and all
of his ordinations void. And this really had a double
(08:49):
calculated perk in addition to obviously shaming for most of Memory,
which was the primary reason to do it. For most
has had appointed Stephen himself as a ship and by
having that appointment annulled, Stephen got off the hook for
some irregularities in his own transfer from one CE to
(09:09):
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 Moss proteges who he
had um consecrated. It was about just completely disrespecting the
(09:30):
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, ye know. For example,
the papal vestimates were ripped from the corpse and it
was redressed in layman's clothes. The fingers used for consecrations
(09:51):
were cut off and Uncle 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
time in Rome, folks were not happy with Stephen and
(10:12):
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
to add to matters for for the Romans who were
(10:32):
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 that the clergy ordained by for most to send
(10:54):
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. Yeah,
so Stephen was 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,
(11:17):
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, regarding the cadaver synod and nulling Stephen's ruling
and restoring for mosiss acts in consecrations. He also had
the body brought back exhoomed once again to St. Peter's
(11:39):
and reburied. And it's old too. So after the brief
pontificate of Theodore the Second, next came John the Nine, who,
to really 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
(12:04):
dead people. Probably a good policy for anyone, but um
not or at least if we'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 syno uh. The last pope in this decade
of rapid fire succession and intrigue, Pope Sergius the Third,
(12:29):
had supported Stephen from the beginning. He had even taken
part in the cadaver sin of the trial himself. And
like Stephen, Pope Sergius the third also had an allegiance
or alliance with the spoleetant faction and Um he had
had a pope and an antipope strangled to pave the
way for himself, and Um allied himself further with the
(12:51):
most powerful family in Rome, Senator Theophile act in his
Byzantine princess wife Theodora, and just kind of a side
out 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
(13:14):
as proof of his loyalty to the House of Spiletto.
Sertius reaffirmed the cadaver synate. 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
formoses ordinations were again invalid. So anyone who had received
(13:37):
orders under him needed to go back and do it again.
And Sergius was especially vengeual for any bishops who had
been consecrated by Formoses, 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,
(13:58):
and during the Papal por knock or see 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
(14:19):
in succession is of divine origin, 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 how they died
and what happened after they died, and how uh the
(14:40):
new pope was was chosen. And I think it's interesting
to look 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 interest staying side.
(15:00):
Net's something to think about. There hasn't ever been a
pope for most is 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
(15:24):
in history, and um, 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 was something you'll
(15:44):
really wanted to hear about. Two. Yeah, it seems like
you can get taken to test sometimes for looking at
the Pope in such a human light. But it is
really fascinating, it is. So I think that is a
good a time as any to bring us to listener
mail while we're talking about listener suggestion. So our first
email is from Jennifer and she wrote in to say,
(16:08):
my family and I are traveling around the world for
a year, two adults and two boys, age ten and eight.
We first listened to your Marco Polo and Great Wall
podcasts on the way to the Great Wall of China.
We listened to your Medici series when we stayed in
Italy and checked out all the most violent parts of Florence.
We listened to your podcast about Mary, Queen of Scott's
(16:28):
when we stayed in Sterling, her childhood home in Scotland.
And now we are listening to your Book of Kells
podcast on the way to Dublin to see it. So,
I don't know this might be one that they would
have wanted to to skip in Rome. I don't know.
But she went on to write, your podcast have made
history come alive for all of us and really added
some deaths to our travels around the world. Um So,
(16:51):
I thought that was just such a neat email. We
do get a lot of um mail from folks who
are traveling and and sort of use the podcast is
a little travel primer if they're headed somewhere, But I
don't think I've ever heard from a family who was
traveling around the world for a year. So I take
us with you, Vegas will come. We can like deliver
(17:12):
live podcasts for your entertainment. Maybe. Um So, thank you
Jennifer for writing in. I hope you guys are having fun.
And then I also have just kind of a funny email.
Well it probably wasn't funny for Ruschelle of Toronto when
she wrote it, but she said, today I had to
go to the dentists and unfortunately get a root canal.
(17:34):
I'm not good with dental procedures, but I'm happy to
say your podcast on the War of the World's and
historical hoaxes got me through. I hate hearing all those
tools worrying and the dentist and hygiena's talking about all
the weird stuff they see. I was so glad when
they said I could listen to my iPod anyway. Thank
you for those engaging and lengthy podcasts that were just
(17:57):
the distraction I needed. So um, this too is a
new sort of email. We do hear from lots of
people who are using the podcast when they're training for
a marathon or they're like working on an Excel spreadsheet
all day or something, But I don't think I've ever
heard from anybody who was listening during a dental procedure. No,
I mean, I really don't know how long a route
(18:19):
canal take. So maybe we should start time in our
podcast to that specials. Yeah, we can start maybe advertising
them as um. So thanks for writing in, Rochelle. We're
glad that we helped you through your dental procedure. And um,
if anybody else wants to write in and maybe share
some other unusual podcasts listening stories with us, keep it
(18:45):
clean though, please, UM you can write us. We are
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
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and you can of course send us um just your
suggestions to you for for future episodes topics and if
you want to learn a little bit more about the
(19:05):
topics we talked about in this podcast, we have an
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Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de Believing Chalk Reboarding, and
we are continuing with our Spooky Halloween October series and
(00:21):
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 missed in history class, But we promised that most
of the time we don't go looking for these exclamations.
They just kind of happen. It will be something completely
(00:43):
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. The exhimation is really pretty
impossible to avoid, and it's actually what drove listeners like
Matthew and Naomi and Barry, as well as our friend
(01:04):
and former coworker Molly Edmunds 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 like most exhamations that we mentioned
on the podcast, this one wasn't done to verify a
(01:24):
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 body wasn't just anyone but was a
former pope. So Encyclopedia Britannica always a good place to
(01:48):
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 pope on trial wasn't just this freakish event
at the time. Before we talk about the trial and
(02:10):
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 line in eight eight. So we're talking way
(02:30):
back this 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,
and in the ninth and tenth centuries the selection process
(02:52):
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. It's occupant
(03:13):
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 ninety six and nine oh four,
the most violent unstable period, there were nine popes. So yeah,
(03:36):
that's 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
n so really right in the thick of this highly controversial,
unsettled time, and we're gonna start with the pope who
started off this high turnover decade, Pope for Moses, who
(04:01):
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 predeath religious career
kind of epitomized the hazards of the time of being
pope or or being um somebody who was a contender
(04:22):
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 note. Pope Adrian the Second had sent Um,
the future Pope Formosis on missions to France, where he
(04:45):
had performed quite well. He was highly regarded then under
Pope John the Ape, he had been exiled and excommunicated,
and um there were some pretty outrageous reasons for this,
like despoiling cloisters, and it's seemed pretty obviously political since
for Mosas had, like I said, a good reputation. He
was considered ascetic and considered a very peaceful, intelligent man,
(05:09):
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 Marinis the first, allowed him
back to Rome and returned him to his position, And
then under the next two popes, st Adrian the Third
(05:32):
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
things had gone down, so we should tell you a
little bit about that too. Charles the fat, the last
(05:54):
Carolingian in the Imperial line, had died in his place.
Stephen had reluctantly round 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 the papal states. So when for Mosis was elected,
he also had to go along with Stephen and recognized
(06:16):
Guido and his son Lambert as co Roman emperors. But
just because for Moses recognized Guido and Lambert as co
Roman empress didn't mean he was one behind them. In fact,
he asked his own preferred candidate, this guy, King Arnulf
of the East Franks, to come and invade Italy and
take care of Guido, get rid of him, and get
(06:38):
rid of his whole faction. And it almost worked. Arnulf
launched a campaign to Italy and an eight for Moses
did crown him emperor in Rome, so it seemed like
almost success. But before Arnolf could actually battle Lambert out
in Spoleto, Guido had by this point died. The German
contender was struck by paralysis, and that's what you'll see
(07:02):
it described as in miss First. 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
Formosis died, so it kind of seems like the end
of this immediate story, but that was not the case
at all. The story of Formosis actually picked up just
(07:24):
a couple of weeks later after the brief pontificate of
Boniface the sixth, when a new pope was again elected,
Stephen the sixth, there's sometimes the seventh. Unlike Formosis, Stephen
was a supporter of the splatant party Lambert and his mother,
the Duchess Aggultrude, But he didn't just support them in
traditional dignified ways. He agreed to conduct a trial to
(07:46):
punish his predecessor who had betrayed them. So less than
a year after Formosis had died, Stephen had him disinterred,
dressed in papal vestiments, and enthroned. Stephen acted as a
secutor here in this trial, charging for Mosis with the
charges levied against him during his excommunication, but focusing on
(08:07):
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 deacon was forced by
Stephen to act as for Mostes's defense. You know, answer
for him squeaking out some kind of defense whenever he
(08:28):
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 guilty and ruled
that all of his acts would be null and all
of his ordinations void. And this really had a double
(08:49):
calculated perk in addition to obviously shaming for most of Memory,
which was the primary reason to do it. For most
has had appointed Stephen himself as a ship and by
having that appointment annulled, Stephen got off the hook for
some irregularities in his own transfer from one CE to
(09:09):
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 Moss proteges who he
had um consecrated. It was about just completely disrespecting the
(09:30):
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, ye know. For example,
the papal vestimates were ripped from the corpse and it
was redressed in layman's clothes. The fingers used for consecrations
(09:51):
were cut off and Uncle 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
time in Rome, folks were not happy with Stephen and
(10:12):
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
to add to matters for for the Romans who were
(10:32):
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 that the clergy ordained by for most to send
(10:54):
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. Yeah,
so Stephen was 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,
(11:17):
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, regarding the cadaver synod and nulling Stephen's ruling
and restoring for mosiss acts in consecrations. He also had
the body brought back exhoomed once again to St. Peter's
(11:39):
and reburied. And it's old too. So after the brief
pontificate of Theodore the Second, next came John the Nine, who,
to really 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
(12:04):
dead people. Probably a good policy for anyone, but um
not or at least if we'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 syno uh. The last pope in this decade
of rapid fire succession and intrigue, Pope Sergius the Third,
(12:29):
had supported Stephen from the beginning. He had even taken
part in the cadaver sin of the trial himself. And
like Stephen, Pope Sergius the third also had an allegiance
or alliance with the spoleetant faction and Um he had
had a pope and an antipope strangled to pave the
way for himself, and Um allied himself further with the
(12:51):
most powerful family in Rome, Senator Theophile act in his
Byzantine princess wife Theodora, and just kind of a side
out 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
(13:14):
as proof of his loyalty to the House of Spiletto.
Sertius reaffirmed the cadaver synate. 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
formoses ordinations were again invalid. So anyone who had received
(13:37):
orders under him needed to go back and do it again.
And Sergius was especially vengeual for any bishops who had
been consecrated by Formoses, 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,
(13:58):
and during the Papal por knock or see 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
(14:19):
in succession is of divine origin, 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 how they died
and what happened after they died, and how uh the
(14:40):
new pope was was chosen. And I think it's interesting
to look 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 interest staying side.
(15:00):
Net's something to think about. There hasn't ever been a
pope for most is 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
(15:24):
in history, and um, 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 was something you'll
(15:44):
really wanted to hear about. Two. Yeah, it seems like
you can get taken to test sometimes for looking at
the Pope in such a human light. But it is
really fascinating, it is. So I think that is a
good a time as any to bring us to listener
mail while we're talking about listener suggestion. So our first
email is from Jennifer and she wrote in to say,
(16:08):
my family and I are traveling around the world for
a year, two adults and two boys, age ten and eight.
We first listened to your Marco Polo and Great Wall
podcasts on the way to the Great Wall of China.
We listened to your Medici series when we stayed in
Italy and checked out all the most violent parts of Florence.
We listened to your podcast about Mary, Queen of Scott's
(16:28):
when we stayed in Sterling, her childhood home in Scotland.
And now we are listening to your Book of Kells
podcast on the way to Dublin to see it. So,
I don't know this might be one that they would
have wanted to to skip in Rome. I don't know.
But she went on to write, your podcast have made
history come alive for all of us and really added
some deaths to our travels around the world. Um So,
(16:51):
I thought that was just such a neat email. We
do get a lot of um mail from folks who
are traveling and and sort of use the podcast is
a little travel primer if they're headed somewhere, But I
don't think I've ever heard from a family who was
traveling around the world for a year. So I take
us with you, Vegas will come. We can like deliver
(17:12):
live podcasts for your entertainment. Maybe. Um So, thank you
Jennifer for writing in. I hope you guys are having fun.
And then I also have just kind of a funny email.
Well it probably wasn't funny for Ruschelle of Toronto when
she wrote it, but she said, today I had to
go to the dentists and unfortunately get a root canal.
(17:34):
I'm not good with dental procedures, but I'm happy to
say your podcast on the War of the World's and
historical hoaxes got me through. I hate hearing all those
tools worrying and the dentist and hygiena's talking about all
the weird stuff they see. I was so glad when
they said I could listen to my iPod anyway. Thank
you for those engaging and lengthy podcasts that were just
(17:57):
the distraction I needed. So um, this too is a
new sort of email. We do hear from lots of
people who are using the podcast when they're training for
a marathon or they're like working on an Excel spreadsheet
all day or something, But I don't think I've ever
heard from anybody who was listening during a dental procedure. No,
I mean, I really don't know how long a route
(18:19):
canal take. So maybe we should start time in our
podcast to that specials. Yeah, we can start maybe advertising
them as um. So thanks for writing in, Rochelle. We're
glad that we helped you through your dental procedure. And um,
if anybody else wants to write in and maybe share
some other unusual podcasts listening stories with us, keep it
(18:45):
clean though, please, UM you can write us. We are
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter at mist in history, and we're on Facebook,
and you can of course send us um just your
suggestions to you for for future episodes topics and if
you want to learn a little bit more about the
(19:05):
topics we talked about in this podcast, we have an
article called how the Papacy Works and you can find
it by searching for it on our homepage, which is
at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
(19:25):
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