What happened
Formosus was pope from 891 until he died in April 896. His time in office was caught up in a power struggle between the Dukes of Spoleto, who controlled much of Italy, and Arnulf, king of the East Franks. Formosus took Arnulf’s side and crowned him emperor in 896.
Formosus’s enemies outlasted him. In January 897, Pope Stephen VI, who took office a few months after Formosus died, had the old pope’s body dug up. It had been in the ground for about nine months.
The corpse was dressed in papal robes, propped up on a throne in the Lateran basilica and put on trial. A deacon stood beside it to answer the charges for the dead man. The charges included breaking church law and perjury.
The verdict was guilty. Formosus’s election as pope was declared invalid and all his acts were cancelled. The three fingers of his right hand that he had used for blessings were cut off. The body was buried in a graveyard for foreigners, then dug up again and thrown into the Tiber River.
The spectacle turned Rome against Stephen. An uprising threw him in prison, where he was strangled that summer. In December 897, Pope Theodore II reburied Formosus in St. Peter’s Basilica. In 898, Pope John IX had the trial’s records destroyed and banned putting a corpse on trial ever again.
The twist
The corpse lost the case. Within months, the pope who prosecuted it was dead too.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Formosus
- National Geographic, In 897, the corpse of a pope was exhumed—to be put on trial. Alberto Reche Ontillera, 2019
- The Catholic Encyclopedia, Pope Formosus. 1909, via New Advent
- Wikipedia, Cadaver Synod. For the later ban on trying corpses