7. The Macabre Trial of a Corpse
Pope Formosus was dead, but that did not stop the Spoletan Pope Stephen VI from giving him a piece of his mind. He ordered the rotting corpse of Formosus exhumed, and had it hauled to the papal throne. There, in one of the papacy’s weirdest episodes, the remains were subjected to an ecclesiastical trial before the Roman clergy, that came to be known as the “Cadaver Synod”. With Formosus’ reeking corpse propped on the throne, Stephen VI conducted the prosecution, while a teenage deacon, placed behind the dead pope, conducted the defense. Stephen’s list of charges against Formosus was long, and included perjury; serving as bishop while actually a layman; transmigration of sees in violation of canon law; and of generally having been unworthy of the pontificate.
The proceedings were just as ghoulishly farcical and macabre as one might imagine. The unhinged Stephen would scream the accusations against Formosus’ cadaver, then the deacon hiding behind the dead pope, imitating Formosus’ voice, would deny the charges. To no one’s surprise, Formosus’s corpse, being a corpse, lost the case, and was found guilty. An ancient Roman penalty, damnatio memoriae, meaning “condemnation of the memory” and typically decreed by the Senate against those who brought dishonor upon the state, was applied. Stephen VI then had the papal vestments stripped from Formosus’ corpse, to be replaced with rags. Next, he ordered the amputation of three fingers from Formosus’ right hand, which he had used in consecrations. Then he had the body dumped in a pauper’s grave.
