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The Vindictive Pope Who Dug Up and Tried a Rival’s Corpse

Khalid Elhassan November 29, 2024 13 min

Cadaver - The corpse of Pope Formosus, as defendant in the Cadaver Synod — The corpse of Pope Formosus, as defendant in the Cadaver Synod. Sick History

5. A Pope Stuck Between Kings

A twelfth century depiction of Guy III of Spoleto. National Library of France

In 892, Guy and the Spoletans forced Pope Formosus to crown Guy’s underage son Lambert as co-emperor. While at it, the Spoletans also forced him to make their relative, Stephen, the future pope and persecutor of Formosus’s corpse, a bishop. Formosus resented such ham-handedness, so he persuaded Arnulf to invade Italy and liberate it from the Spoletans. Arnulf complied, and in 894, he invaded and occupied northern Italy. Guy died later that year, leaving his son Lambert in the care of his mother. Mother and child proved no match for Arnulf, who defeated their forces, and seized Rome in 895. Formosus promptly ditched the Spoletans, and crowned Arnulf Holy Roman Emperor in Saint Peter’s basilica. The new emperor then set out to mop up the Spoletans, only to suffer a stroke, which paralyzed him and forced him to end the campaign. Formosus himself died a few months later, in 896.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.