THE CADAVER SYNOD: STRANGEST TRIAL IN HISTORY

One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence."

For the past several centuries the papacy has enjoyed enormous respect in every quarter of the globe, partly because most 19th and 20th century popes have stood for and publicly defended basic principles of liberty, justice and humanity in a tumultuous world often beset by war and revolution, and partly because with a few exceptions these popes have been extraordinarily admirable human beings. Pope John XXIII, for example, who reigned from 1958 to 1963, is one of the most beloved men of all time, and the present pope, John Paul II, whose pontificate began in 1978, is not only the most admired man in the world, but also one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.

In earlier times, however, things were sometimes quite different. Eleven hundred years ago the papacy was going through an era which, John Farrow tells us in his Pageant of the Popes (1942), "shroud[ed] the papacy with gloom and shame." The period from around the middle of the 9th century to around the middle of the 10th century is often referred to as the iron age of the papacy. This period, according to Richard P. McBrien's Lives of the Popes (1997), "was marred by papal corruption (including the buying and selling of church offices, nepotism, lavish lifestyles, concubinage, brutality, even murder) and the domination of the papacy by German kings and by powerful Roman families."

During that iron age, Eamon Duffy writes in Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (1997), "[t]he Chair of St. Peter became the prize of tyrants and brigands and a throne fouled by fierce tides of crime and licentiousness ... [and] the papacy became the possession of great Roman families, a ticket to local dominance for which men were prepared to rape, murder, and steal." "Candidates the most worthless and unfit were forcibly intruded ... into the Chair of St. Peter," Mann adds. "All real power [in Rome] was at this time in the hands of the great families who, through their connection with the local militia, had become practically a feudal aristocracy. These families were all jealous of one another, and were perpetually fighting for supremacy. The one aim of each party, pursued by every resource of violence and intrigue, was to get control of the Chair of St. Peter. Its occupant must be one of theirs at all costs."

During the iron age of the papacy pope succeeded pope with bewildering rapidity. In the 94 years from 872 through 965 there were 24 popes; and during the nine years between 896 and 904 there were no less than nine popes. (By contrast, there was a total of only nine popes in the entire 20th century, and one of them, John Paul I, reigned only 33 days.)

In the iron age of the papacy, according to Matthew Bunson's The Pope Encyclopedia (1995), the powerful families that dominated Rome not only arranged to have their supporters elected pope, but also "had pontiffs ... deposed, and killed to advance their political ambitions ... or as vengeance for some action taken by the pope that offended them or inconvenienced some plan or plot." As a consequence, of those 24 popes who held office from 872 to 965, seven--nearly one-third--died violently or under suspicious circumstances. Five popes were assassinated in office, or deposed and then murdered. John VIII, the first pope to be assassinated, was poisoned by his entourage; when the poison did not act quickly enough, his skull was crushed by blows from a hammer. Both Stephen VII and Leo V were deposed, imprisoned, and strangled. John X was deposed, imprisoned, and suffocated by being smothered with a pillow. Stephen IX was imprisoned, horribly mutilated by having his eyes, nose, lips, tongue and hands removed, and died of his injuries. Two other popes died in circumstances strongly indicative of foul play: Hadrian III was rumored to have been poisoned, and John XII, the sources tell us, either died of a stroke suffered while in bed with a married woman or was beaten to death by the woman's outraged husband.

The iron age of the papacy produced a number of unfortunate "firsts" for the papacy. As noted above, the first papal assassination took place when John VIII was murdered; this was on Dec. 16, 882. In 896 Boniface VI became the first (and only) person to be elected pope after having previously been twice degraded from holy orders for immorality. In 904 Sergius III became the first (and only) pope to order the murder of another pope; pursuant to his order, Leo V, who previously had been deposed, was strangled in prison. In 931 John XI became the first (and only) illegitimate son of a pope to be elected pope; his father was Sergius III. In 955 John XII became the first (and only) teenager to be elected pope; he was 18 at the time.

It is only against the backdrop of this dark century in the history of the papacy that it is possible to make sense of the Cadaver Synod. If, as McBrien asserts, the iron age of the papacy was the "lowest" period in the history of the papacy, then without question the Cadaver Synod was not only the lowest point in that iron age, but also, as Bunson maintains, "the lowest point in the history of the papacy."

The Cadaver Synod occurred sometime in January 897 in the Church of St. John Lateran, the pope's official church in his capacity as Bishop of Rome. The defendant on trial was Formosus, an elderly pope who after a reign of five years had died April 4, 896 and been buried in St. Peter's Basilica. (According to P. G. Maxwell-Stuart's Chronicle of the Popes (1997), the name Formosus means "good-looking" in Latin.) The trial of Formosus was ordered by the reigning pontiff, Stephen VII, who had been prodded into issuing the order by a powerful Roman family dynasty and other anti-Formosus political factions, and who apparently also was personally motivated by what The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986) calls a "near-hysterical hatred [of Formosus]." Although Formosus had been, according to McBrien, "a man of exceptional intelligence, ability, and even sanctity, he [had] made some bitter political enemies ... including one of his successors, Stephen VII."

No trial transcript of the Cadaver Synod exists. Nonetheless, it is reasonably clear what happened. Sitting on a throne, Stephen VII personally presided over the proceeding. Also present as co-judges were a number of Roman clergy who were there under compulsion and out of fear. The trial began when the disinterred corpse of Formosus was carried into the courtroom. On Stephen VII's orders the putrescent corpse, which had been lying in its tomb for seven months, had been dressed in full pontifical vestments. The dead body was then propped up in a chair behind which stood a teenage deacon, quaking with fear, whose unenviable responsibility was to defend Formosus by speaking in his behalf. The presiding judge, Stephen VII, then read the three charges. Formosus was accused of (1) perjury, (2) coveting the papacy, and (3) violating church canons when he was elected pope.

The trial was completely dominated by Stephen VII, who overawed the assemblage with his frenzied tirades. While the frightened clergy silently watched in horror, Stephen VII screamed and raved, hurling insults at and mocking the rotting corpse. Occasionally, when the furious torrent of execrations and maledictions would die down momentarily, the deacon would stammer out a few words weakly denying the charges. When the grotesque farce concluded, Formosus was convicted on all counts by the court. The sentence imposed by Stephen VII was that all Formosus's acts and ordinations as pope be invalidated, that the three fingers of Formosus's right hand used to give papal blessings be hacked off, and that the body be stripped of its papal vestments, clad in the cheap garments of a lay person, and buried in a common grave. The sentence was rigorously executed. (The body was shortly exhumed and thrown into the Tiber, but a monk pulled it out of the river.)

Stephen VII's fanatical hatred of Formosus, his eerie decision to convene the Cadaver Synod in the first place, his even eerier decision to have Formosus' corpse brought into court, his maniacal conduct during the grisly proceeding, and his barbaric sentence that the corpse be abused and humiliated make it difficult to disagree with the historians who say that Stephen VII was stark, raving mad.

The Cadaver Synod was the cause of Stephen VII's prompt and precipitous downfall. The appalling trial and the savage mistreatment of Formosus's corpse provoked so much anger and outrage in Rome that within a few months there was a palace revolution and Stephen VII was deposed, stripped of his gorgeous pope's clothing and required to dress as a monk, imprisoned, and, some time in August 897, strangled.

Three months later another pope, Theodore II, whose pontificate lasted only 20 days, all in the month of November 897, held a synod which annulled the Cadaver Synod and fully rehabilitated Formosus. Theodore II also ordered that the body of Formosus be reverentially reburied. Therefore, according to Joseph S. Brusher's Popes Through the Ages (1980), the corpse was "brought back to [St. Peter's Basilica] in solemn procession. Once more clothed in the pontifical vestments, the body was placed before the Confession [the part of the high altar in which sacred relics were placed] of St. Peter's. There, in the presence of Pope Theodore II, a Mass was said for the soul of Formosus, and his poor battered body was restored to its own tomb."

The next pope, John IX, whose pontificate lasted from 898 to 900, also nullified the Cadaver Synod. At two synods convened by John IX, one in Rome, the other in Ravenna, the pronouncements of Theodore II's synod were confirmed, and any future trial of a dead person was prohibited.

Incredibly, however, this was not the end of disputes about the legality of the Cadaver Synod.

Sergius III, who was pope from 904 to 911, reversed the decisions of the synods of Theodore II and John IX by convening a synod which quashed their invalidations of the Cadaver Synod and reaffirmed Formosus's conviction and sentence. Sergius III even went so far as to place an epitaph on the tomb of Stephen VII which lauded that evident madman and heaped scorn on Formosus. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, Sergius III was a "violent hater of Formosus" and had been elected pope by an "anti-Formosan faction." In fact, Sergius III, while a bishop, had actually taken part in the Cadaver Synod where he was one of the clergy coerced into serving as co-judges with Stephen VII. Sergius III, it will be recalled, was also the only pope to order the murder of another pope, and also the only pope to father an illegitimate son who became a pope. It is no wonder, therefore, that historians such as Farrow describe the pontificate of the murderer Sergius III as "dismal and disgraceful."

Although the decrees of Sergius III's synod marked the last formal pronouncement by the Roman Catholic Church on the lawfulness of the Cadaver Synod (which in Latin, the language of the Church, is officially known as the synod horrenda), today there is a nearly unanimous consensus among scholars and theologians, both within and outside the Church, that the Cadaver Synod was an illegal monstrosity and that Formosus stands entirely vindicated, cleared of all the charges against him. On the other hand, it is hardly surprising that, as McBrien notes, "there has never been a Pope Formosus II, although Cardinal Pietro Barbo had to be dissuaded from taking the name in 1464. He took the name Paul II instead."

Although the Cadaver Synod is frequently mentioned in various history books, it has found its way into only one great piece of literature, English poet Robert Browning's masterpiece The Ring and the Book, a huge poem consisting of 21,116 lines of verse. Browning had a comprehensive understanding of the Cadaver Synod because his own father, Robert Browning, Sr., had, according to The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1998), published by Oxford University, "become an expert in the conflict-filled lives of the popes in the late ninth and early tenth centuries." Having done extensive historical research in the libraries of Paris, the elder Browning "knew all about the cadaver synod of 897, when the corpse of Pope Formosus was brought into open court and abused and sentenced ... by his successor, Stephen VII, resulting in a controversy that ran through several pontificates." While The Ring and the Book was being composed the elder Browning had presented to his poet son the results of this historical research, which filled forty notebooks, and included "a list of many interesting narratives, beginning with 'The remarkable trial of the dead body of Formosus.'"

The story of the Cadaver Synod occupies only 134 lines of The Ring and the Book, yet Browning was still able, with amazing accuracy and astounding conciseness, to recount the events of the trial as well as the basic facts about the deposition and murder of Stephen VII, the endeavors of Theodore II and John IX to rehabilitate Formosus, and the efforts of Sergius III to affirm the judgment of the Cadaver Synod.

It is appropriate, therefore, to conclude the present article on history's most bizarre trial, the Cadaver Synod, by quoting two sparkling lines from The Ring and the Book:

Catholic answers

...

Although three of the ten cardinals who judged Galileo refused to sign the verdict, his works were eventually condemned. Anti-Catholics often assert that his conviction and later rehabilitation somehow disproves the doctrine of papal infallibility, but this is not the case, for the pope never tried to make an infallible ruling concerning Galileo’s views.

The Church has never claimed ordinary tribunals, such as the one that judged Galileo, to be infallible. Church tribunals have disciplinary and juridical authority only; neither they nor their decisions are infallible.

No ecumenical council met concerning Galileo, and the pope was not at the center of the discussions, which were handled by the Holy Office. When the Holy Office finished its work, Urban VIII ratified its verdict, but did not attempt to engage infallibility.

Three conditions must be met for a pope to exercise the charism of infallibility: (1) he must speak in his official capacity as the successor of Peter; (2) he must speak on a matter of faith or morals; and (3) he must solemnly define the doctrine as one that must be held by all the faithful.

In Galileo’s case, the second and third conditions were not present, and possibly not even the first. Catholic theology has never claimed that a mere papal ratification of a tribunal decree is an exercise of infallibility. It is a straw man argument to represent the Catholic Church as having infallibly defined a scientific theory that turned out to be false. The strongest claim that can be made is that the Church of Galileo’s day issued a non-infallible disciplinary ruling concerning a scientist who was advocating a new and still-unproved theory and demanding that the Church change its understanding of Scripture to fit his.

It is a good thing that the Church did not rush to embrace Galileo’s views, because it turned out that his ideas were not entirely correct, either. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move—it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth.

As more recent science has shown, both Galileo and his opponents were partly right and partly wrong. Galileo was right in asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth.

Had the Catholic Church rushed to endorse Galileo’s views—and there were many in the Church who were quite favorable to them—the Church would have embraced what modern science has disproved.

neither instance involved infallibility

Nice dodge, but you're wrong.

In the case of Galileo the Pope said: "The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture."

The Pope also said:

"The proposition that the Earth is not the center of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith."

Was the Pope infallible when he said that?

You wrote:

"But that's not the 'doctrine of infallibility'."

Neither is what you're posting. That was the point.

"So if the Pope woke up tomorrow and said "Doctrine says that the Earth is flat." he would be infallible?"

No. No pope can make an infallible statement about science. Science is not his to make such statements about.

"Tell that to Galileo or Copernicus."

Why? Neither one was ever the subject of a papal infallible statement. Copernicus even dedicated his book to a pope. Galileo counted at least one pope among his friends. Galileo's problem was that he strayed into theology rather than sticking to science. Learn your history, please.

If you're going to attack papal infallibility, wouldn't help fo you to know what it is and what it isn't?

And I posted the Popes own words in response. He condemend Galileo on a matter of Faith.

He also condemned him on a matter of Doctrine.

He was also acting in his official capacity as the Pope. It seems that all three of those conditions were met, and that the Pope failed each and every one of them.

So it looks like this whole 'infallibility' thing means whatever the Catholic Church wants it to mean at any given moment in time.

From what you've posted it seems you're saying that the Pope washed his hands of Galileos condemnation in much the way Pilate washed his hands of another condemnation.

No pope can make an infallible statement about science.

It seems one did. Once again, from the Papal Condemnation of Galileo:

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

So what you're saying is that the Pope either thought he was infallible and was wrong, or was knowingly acting outside of his authority.

Which is it?

BTW, BAC, you forgot to note that it was the protestants Luther and Melanchthon who condemned the Catholic Canonist Copernicus..

Nicholas Copernicus, who first advanced the contrary doctrine that the sun and not the earth is the centre of our system, round which our planet revolves, rotating on its own axis. His great work, "De Revolutionibus orblure coelestium", was published at the earnest solicitation of two distinguished churchmen, Cardinal Schömberg and Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Culm. It was dedicated by permission to Pope Paul III in order, as Copernicus explained, that it might be thus protected from the attacks which it was sure to encounter on the part of the "mathematicians" (i.e. philosophers) for its apparent contradiction of the evidence of our senses, and even of common sense. He added that he made no account of objections which might be brought by ignorant wiseacres on Scriptural grounds. Indeed, for nearly three quarters of a century no such difficulties were raised on the Catholic side...

*Also, bac, you forgot to note that Calvin taught that science was evil and forbade his followers from studying it

Good point, son.

False attacks on Galileo are meant to indict the Catholic Church as an enemy of science when it was, in fact, the Catholic Church which preserved and advanced science. In fact, the error-filled work this thread is based upon was done at a University.

Right,son

Who invented the University? The Catholic Church

Yup. Good point.

BTW, note the INELUCTABLE patern reproduced here. The topic of the thread has dissolved and something else has taken its place.

Right you are, man. It happens ALL the time

You are trying to pass off as the words of the Pope

It was a Papal condemnation. The Pope, according to the Inquisition file, "directed the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine to summon before him the said Galileo and admonish him to abandon the said opinion; and, in the case of his refusal to obey, the Commissary of the Holy Office is to enjoin him...to abstain altogether from teaching or defending this opinion and even from discussing it."

As your source, please use a reputable CATHOLIC one.

You mean you want me to use one which claims the Pope is always infallible.

issuing from sites devoted to attacking Jesus

Who said anything about Jesus? We are discussing this silly notion of a man being infallible on any subject, not the Divinity of Christ.

Hey, Bac

What?

Melanchton was much worse than what you just posted.

Yeah. I know. I was being "nice"

OK, but don't you think it important to point out to the lurkers that OL' Mel, while he rejected science was as addicted to astrology as Nancy Reagan?

LOL True. Get a load of this...

One of the most curious features of Melanchthon's character . . . was his morbid tendency to superstition. For example, at the time of the Diet of Augsburg he wrote that several prodigious portents seemed to favour the success of Lutheranism: the bursting of the Tiber's banks, the prolonged labour of a mule, the birth of a two-headed calf were all signs which suggested Rome's ruin. By contrast, when his daughter fell ill, Melanchthon was filled with terror by the unfavourable aspect of Mars. The superstitious man never did anything without consulting astrologers.

*Huh...but, that can't be. I am always being told it was the Catholics who were the enemies of science. Well, certainly Luther's condemnation of Copernicus and Ol Mel's lunacy was an aberration...

Not so fast, Rosary-fingers...Get a load of this....

Calvin's Academy of Geneva, was based upon the protestant "insight" about "diabolica scientia,"

Science was evil? According to the protestant genius, Calvin, it was. Science advanced by Protestantism? Not so much

Hey..

What?

Don't forget Kepler, the German Astronomer.

Thanks. I almost forgot. He was prevented by protestant theologians from publishing his work.

Yep. And the weird thing is Kepler hadn't even been BORN when Pope Clement was having pleasing and positive audiences with the Catholic Canonist Copernicus about his theories...So, will these facts change anything?

LOL Son, we are talking ideology. Facts can't pierce anything as impenetrable as ideology.

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