Ah, more injecting the separation of church and state into the 16th century, I see. Henry VIII was quite Catholic at the time, a Catholic king in a Catholic nation, the titular head of the Catholic Church in England.
Let's revisit this exhumation and posthumous trial thing, though. It's always bothered me, this seeming fixation on corpses, parting the "good" ones out and desecrating those who found themselves on the outs due to some temporary fit of pique despite being quite dead. What is or was the rationale? Does it have something to do with hoping to prevent their resurrection? I honestly can't say.
One of the more interesting articles I've ever read on the topic was first published on October 31, 2001, written by Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.
The pertinent cite that arouses so much curiosity in me is as follows:
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."
My question is, how does the church rationalize this treatment of a Pope, or anyone for that matter? What was hoped to be gained by digging up his grave and making a mockery of his remains in some strange star chamber sham of a trial? Is Stephen VII, a stark raving nutter if there ever was one, now regarded as an "ant-Pope," or is Formosus? How could anyone even tell at the time? How can you in your wildest dreams possibly blame devout Christians for wanting to separate themselves from such a madhouse?
Ah, you would claim that, but as we know, Henry VIII took over the Church and its property in 1533-1534 and was then excommunicated. England ceased being a Catholic nation at this point, and Henry definitely was not Catholic. He assumed the title Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lord of Ireland and of the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head in 1535. Tudor had begun the break in 1530, after years of being rebuffed for his petition of divorce and annulment. Tyndale wrote a scathing publication in 1530 against the king's petitioning. It was at this point that Henry started to go after Tyndale. But Tyndale was seized in 1535, years after Tudor's break with Rome and was executed by the Belgian secular authorities at the behest of Tudor.
Not Catholic; actually Tyndale was upholding Catholic doctrine against the king in this instance.
Does the Catholic church not have more serious issues with which to concern itself that arguing over a dead body?
Good grief, the more I hear, the more glad I am to have left that organization behind.
Madhouse indeed.