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Pope Formosus (891-896) While Formosus’ pontifical reign is noted more for its brevity than its breadth, it’s the absolute insanity that defined his afterlife that makes him one of the world’s craziest popes. A year following his death, the rather batty Pope Stephen VI ordered Formosus’ desiccated body to be exhumed and put on trial. Known as the Cadaver Synod, Formosus’ corpse was dressed in papal vestments and convicted accordingly.In the ruling, it was declared that Formosus was unworthy of the pontificate, and all acts and measures made under his papacy were declared null and void. Such was the case...

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...