One of the strangest episodes in the turbulent history of the Church in the ninth century was a meeting and ecclesiastical trial has come to be known as the Cadaver Synod. During a period of great political upheaval in Italy, from the year 872 – 965 there were 24 Popes. With so much chaos and such frequent shifting of power structures, very few documentary sources about that time survive. But here\u2019s what we do know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 864, Formosus\u00a0 became the Bishop of Porto during the pontificate of Pope Nicholas the first. 11 years later, shortly after Charles the Bald’s imperial coronation, Formosus\u00a0 fled Rome out of fear of Pope John VIII, for reasons unknown. Shortly thereafter, John VIII accused Formosus\u00a0 of conspiring to usurp the papacy, and deserting his diocese in Porto. \u00a0 When John VIII died in 882\u00a0 Bishop Formosus\u00a0 seemed to be out of the woods. In fact, he himself was elected pope in 891, and\u00a0after a papacy embroiled in the politics of the Holy Roman empire, died in a 896.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One year later Pope Stephen VI ordered the body of his predecessor Pope Fomosus\u00a0 exhumed and brought to the papal court for judgment. According to one account, Stephen VI asked\u00a0 the previous pope’s remains, \u201cwhen you were Bishop of Porto, why did you usurp the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition?\u201d \u00a0 He then ordered the body interred in a graveyard for foreigners, later to be dug up again and thrown into the Tiber River. \u00a0 This macabre and vindictive spectacle turned public opinion against Stephen, and a public uprising led to his being deposed and thrown into prison, where he was murdered. One year later Pope Theodore IId annulled the decrees of the Cadaver Synod,\u00a0 and prohibited any future trials of the dead person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s synod of Bishops are much more sober deliberative meetings, and we can give thanks that the church is no longer embroiled in the tangled politics of empires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the strangest episodes in the turbulent history of the Church in the ninth century was a meeting and ecclesiastical trial has come to be known as the Cadaver Synod. During a period of great political upheaval in Italy, from the year 872 – 965 there were 24 Popes. With so much chaos and such frequent shifting of power structures, very few documentary sources … Continue reading Cadaver Synod<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts-of-faith","tag-facts-of-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-89","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}