In January 897 AD, the Roman Catholic Church witnessed one of the most bizarre and gruesome spectacles in ecclesiastical history: the Synodus Horrenda, commonly known as the Cadaver Synod. Pope Stephen VI, driven by political hatred and factional rivalries, ordered the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, to be exhumed nine months after his death. The rotting corpse was clad in sacred papal vestments, propped up on a throne in the Basilica of St.
John Lateran, and subjected to a formal trial. A young deacon was assigned to stand beside the decomposing Pope and speak on his behalf, answering charges of perjury, violating canon law, and illegally serving as bishop of Rome while holding another see. Unsurprisingly, the deceased Pope was found guilty on all counts.
Pope Stephen VI delivered a macabre sentence: all of Formosus's papal acts and ordinations were retroactively annulled. The sacred vestments were stripped from his body, and the three fingers of his right hand used to give papal blessings were chopped off. The corpse was then dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown into the Tiber River.
The outrageous trial shocked the citizens of Rome, sparking a massive public revolt that quickly led to Pope Stephen VI being overthrown and strangled in prison later that year. Formosus's body was eventually recovered by a monk from the river and restored to St. Peter's Basilica.