Lentorama 2010: Two Millennia of Pointy Hats

Day 19: Formosus (891-896)

Hard to skip a guy who was exhumed and tried posthumously - possibly twice.

The postmortem judgment(s?) came from an incident where an earlier pope, John VIII, charged Formosus with a variety of crimes after Formosus fled the papal court in 872. Refusing to return to Rome to face the charges, Formosus was excommunicated, only to be reinstated by the next pope who, had he not done this, could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

The reign of Pope Formosus brought as much political intrigue as his life before, mostly involving the crowns of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Formosus died in 89, and the following year a new pope decided to exhume Formosus and put him on trial for the charges levied by John VIII in what came to be known as the Cadaver Synod.

The body was dressed in papal robes and seated, and after deliberations it was (not surprisingly) found that Formosus was not a valid pope. Pretty much everything he did was repealed, and the corpse was stripped of its robes, had the three fingers Formosus used to bless people removed, and thrown in the Tiber. A monk would later retrieve the body, which was later reburied at St. Peter's. It's believed that a later pope, Sergius III, put Formosus on trial again, found him guilty again, and beheaded the corpse for good measure. There are several people who argue this didn't happen, but it's easy to believe of Sergius, as we'll see later.