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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

4. The Vindictive Stephen VI

Cadaver - The 'Cadaver Synod', in which the corpse of Pope Formosus was exhumed and put on trial — The ‘Cadaver Synod’, in which the corpse of Pope Formosus was exhumed and put on trial. Wikimedia

Pope Formosus was succeeded by Boniface VI, who lasted only fifteen days as Holy Father, before he died of gout. He was followed by the Spoletan Stephen VI, who was livid at Formosus for what he perceived as an unforgivable offense against, and betrayal of, his family. Formosus was dead, but that would not stop the Stephen VI from giving him a piece of his mind. The Spoletan pope 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 the reeking corpse of Formosus propped on the throne, Stephen VI conducted the prosecution, while a teenage deacon, hiding behind the dead pope, conducted the defense.

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.