The Cadaver Synod (also called the Cadaver Trial or, in Latin, the Synodus Horrenda) is the name commonly given to the posthumous ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus, held in Rome in January of 897. During the proceedings, the decomposing body of Formosus, who had been dead for nine months, was dressed in his papal vestments and seated on a throne while his successor, Pope Stephen VI, read the charges against him and conducted the trial. The Cadaver Synod is remembered as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the medieval Roman Catholic papacy.

The synod

Formosus, who had been appointed bishop of Porto, Italy in 864, had acceded to the papacy in 891. At the Cadaver Synod, he was accused of violating church law by serving as Bishop of Rome while he was still the bishop of a different diocese. No official record of the proceedings survives, but it is generally agreed that Pope Stephen VI, together with a panel of judges appointed from among the Roman clergy,

Historical context

The true motivation for the Cadaver Synod was political. Pope Formosus was initially forced to crown Lambert, one of the sons of the Duke of Spoleto, as co-ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. But Formosus's loyalty was not to the ruling family of Spoleto, but rather to the East Frankish illegitimate descendants of Charlemagne. Formosus invited the Franks to invade Italy, which they did in 896. The pope then crowned Arnulf of Carinthia as Holy Roman Emperor. The Frankish army quickly retreated and Formosus was succeeded by Pope Boniface VI, who died after only two weeks as pontiff. When Stephen, a partisan of the Spoletans, became pope, Lambert induced him to convene the Cadaver Synod as a way of undermining Arnulf's claim to the throne.

An ironic but probably deliberate

Aftermath

The macabre spectacle turned public opinion in Rome against Stephen. Rumors circulated that Formosus's body, after washing up on the banks of the Tiber, had begun to perform miracles. A public uprising led to Stephen being deposed and imprisoned. While in prison, in July or August of 897, he died after being strangled. Pope Theodore II, who served for 20 days in November, 897, annulled the verdict of the Cadaver Synod. Formosus's body was returned to Saint Peter's Basilica, where it was clothed again in the pontifical vestments, and interred in its own tomb. Later, Pope John IX declared unlawful any future trial of a dead person.

Pope Sergius III, another Spoletan partisan who reigned from 904 to 911, overturned the rulings of Theodore II and John IX, reaffirming Formosus's conviction, and had a laudatory epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Stephen VI. The decisions of Sergius, a murderer and a highly corrupt man, were never officially reversed, but simply disregarded.

In literature

Robert Browning's lengthy poem, The Ring and the Book, devotes 134 lines to the Cadaver Synod, in the chapter called The Pope; a few of which appear below:

Then Stephen, Pope and seventh of the name,

Cried out, in synod as he sat in state,

While choler quivered on his brow and beard,

‘Come into court, Formosus, thou lost wretch,

‘That claimedst to be late the Pope as I!’

And at the word, the great door of the church

Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus’ self,

The body of him, dead, even as embalmed

And buried duly in the Vatican

Eight months before, exhumed thus for the nonce.

They set it, that dead body of a Pope,

Clothed in pontific vesture now again,

Upright on Peter’s chair as if alive.

And Stephen, springing up, cried furiously

‘Bishop of Porto, wherefore didst presume

‘To leave that see and take this Roman see,

‘Exchange the lesser for the greater see,

‘—A thing against the canons of the Church?’

See also

• Holy Roman Empire
• See Stephen (ephemeral pope) for an explanation of the numbering of Popes Stephen. Synoda mrtvých

Leichensynode Concile cadavérique Sinodo del cadavere Kadaversynode Synod trupi Synoda s mŕtvolou