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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

15. History’s Most Vindictive Pope?

Cadaver - Pope Stephen VI — Pope Stephen VI. Time Magazine

Many popes, in the Dark Ages and later, knew how to hold a grudge. There is no shortage of pontiffs who plotted and schemed against their predecessors, or even went so far as to outright murder them. Nor does history have a shortage of popes who were quite vindictive towards the very memory of their predecessors. However, no pope in the nearly two millennia long history of the pontificate ever came close to the levels of vindictiveness exhibited by pope Stephen VI (died 897). He was the only pope who was so vindictive that he had a predecessor’s corpse exhumed and put on trial, so he could finally tell him to his (dead) face just what he thought of him.

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.