Cadaver Synod

Yes, you heard right. A corpse on trial.

The posthumous ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus was held in January of 897. His successor, Pope Stephen VI, was a vehement political nemesis and chose to have the former Pope's body exhumed and placed on a throne for trial. The charges against the body included attempting to usurp Pope John VIII, perjury, and exercising the office of bishop as a layman. Formosus was found guilty of all charges, receiving benedictions (invocations for divine help) over two cut off fingers, removal of papal vestments, and all of his acts and ordinances were declared invalid.

Public opinion turned on Stephen after the debacle, resulting in his deposition and arrest. He was strangled in prison in 897. As for the corpse of Formosus, it was buried, only to be dug up once again. Weighted down, the body was cast into the Tiber River. Rumor arose that the body washed up and performed miracles along the Tiber. Proving scuttlebutt untrue, the body was recovered and given proper burial by Pope Theodore II. All convictions were annulled, but reinstated by another Pope later. 

English poet Robert Browning dedicated 134 lines to the Cadaver Synod in his poem, The Ring and the Book, in the chapter called The Pope. Here, in full, are the lines devoted to the trial, and the Pope known as Formosus:

....................

Eight hundred years exact before the year

I was made Pope, men made Formosus Pope,

Say Sigebert and other chroniclers.

Ere I confirm or quash the Trial here

Of Guido Franceschini and his friends,

Read, how there was a ghastly Trial once

Of a dead man by a live man, and both, Popes: 

Thus in the antique penman’s very phrase.

Then Stephen, Pope and seventh of the name,

Cried out, in synod as he sat in state,

While choler quivered on his brow and beard,

Come into court, Formosus, thou lost wretch,

That claimedst to be late the Pope as I!

And at the word, the great door of the church

Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus’ self,

The body of him, dead, even as embalmed

And buried duly in the Vatican 

Eight months before, exhumed thus for the nonce.

They set it, that dead body of a Pope,

Clothed in pontific vesture now again,

Upright on Peter’s chair as if alive.

And Stephen, springing up, cried furiously

Bishop of Porto, wherefore didst presume

To leave that see and take this Roman see,

Exchange the lesser for the greater see,

A thing against the canons of the Church?

Then one (a Deacon who, observing forms, 

Was placed by Stephen to repel the charge,

Be advocate and mouthpiece of the corpse)

Spoke as he dared, set stammeringly forth

With white lips and dry tongue, as but a youth,

For frightful was the corpse-face to behold,

How nowise lacked there precedent for this.

But when, for his last precedent of all,

Emboldened by the Spirit, out he blurts

And, Holy Father, didst not thou thyself

Vacate the lesser for the greater see, 

Half a year since change Arago for Rome?

Ye have the sins defence now, synod mine!

Shrieks Stephen in a beastly froth of rage:

Judge now betwixt him dead and me alive!

Hath he intruded or do I pretend?

Judge, judge breaks wavelike one whole foam of wrath.

Where upon they, being friends and followers,

Ay, thou art Christ’s Vicar, and not he!

A way with what is frightful to behold!

This act was uncanonic and a fault.

Then, swallowed up in rage, Stephen exclaimed

So, guilty! So, remains I punish guilt!

He is unpoped, and all he did I damn:

The Bishop, that ordained him, I degrade:

Depose to laics those he raised to priests:

What they have wrought is mischief nor shall stand,

It is confusion, let it vex no more!

Since I revoke, annul and abrogate

All his decrees in all kinds: they are void!

In token whereof and warning to the world, 

Strip me yon miscreant of those robes usurped,

And clothe him with vile serge befitting such!

Then hale the carrion to the market-place;

Let the town-hangman chop from his right hand

Those same three fingers which he blessed withal;

Next cut the head off, once was crowned forsooth:

And last go fling all, fingers, head and trunk,

In Tiber that my Christian fish may sup!

Either because of which means Fish

And very aptly symbolises Christ, 

Or else because the Pope is Fisherman

And seals with Fishers-signet. Anyway,

So said, so done: himself, to see it done,

Following the corpse, they trailed from street to street

Till into Tiber wave they threw the thing.

The people, crowded on the banks to see,

Were loud or mute, wept or laughed, cursed or jeered,

According as the deed addressed their sense;

A scandal verily: and out spake a Jew

Wot ye your Christ had vexed our Herod thus?

Now when, Formosus being dead a year,

His judge Pope Stephen tasted death in turn,

Made captive by the mob and strangled straight,

Romanus, his successor for a month,

Did make protest Formosus was with God,

Holy, just, true in thought and word and deed.