This concerns a truly chilling event in papal history near the end of the 9th century, which for the most part is well past the period this Web site is most interested in. However, as a student of medieval history, it’s something I don’t think I can fail to address. Aside from era of “the Pornocracy” or the Saeculum Obscurum, this is by far the most scandalous episode of the papacy.
What must be understood from the start is that the papacy, during this time, was critically weak and had been fundamentally compromised by its political, military and diplomatic environments. The reasons for that are several.
The opening section of this essay is more or less copied from the opening section of my article on the Pornocracy. The same general forces acted on the papacy during the leadup to the Cadaver Synod as would later contribute to the era of the Pornocracy. So the same prelude applies.
As with everything else, there’s a backstory here, one which happens to be important in order to understand how this era unfolded. At its beginning, the papacy — like any and all other ecclesiastical offices — were subjects of the states they resided in. At its origin, it had been subject to the Roman Empire, and later its western half when it divided under Emperor Diocletian in the late 3rd century.
About two centuries later, the Ostrogoths under their King Theodoric conquered the region, meaning the papacy became subject to their kingdom. The Byzantine emperor Justinian I and his generals (first Belisarius, then Narses) destroyed the Ostrogoths’ kingdom in the middle of the 6th century; thus, the papacy became subjects of the Byzantines (aka the eastern Roman Empire).
It wasn’t long before the Germanic tribe known as Lombards invaded northern Italy and began eating slowly away at Byzantine holdings there. In the middle of the 8th century the Byzantines’ outpost in Italy, based in Ravenna on the Adriatic coast but reaching across the peninsula down to the area of Naples, collapsed. Rome and the papacy was left wide open for Lombard conquest.
Pope Zachary at that point ventured to France and crowned Pepin “the Short” (up to then, “mayor of the palace” or the king’s executive officer) King of the Franks, displacing the last Merovingian monarch. An alliance with the Franks was natural, since they’d been rivals of the Lombards for control of Italy (but the Franks’ military ventures there, prior to this, had been abortive).
That alliance proved momentous, just a few years later, when Pepin invaded Italy, extinguished the Lombard threat, and set then-Pope Stephen II up as sovereign over what had been the Byzantines’ Ravenna exarchate (which as noted had included Rome).
Pepin sold this move as a “gift” to the Popes by a devout Christian, but it was a shrewd geopolitical bet. With the Lombards defeated, he might certainly have set himself up as ruler of the region, effectively extending the Frankish kingdom down into the middle of Italy. But by handing sovereignty of it over to the Popes, he relieved himself of the obligation to maintain a significant and consistent military presence in Italy. Yet, he could count on the Popes’ allegiance (for lack of a better term) since his regime was the only one who could assist them.
The Popes’ alliance with the Franks remained consistent for quite some time. Frankish king Charlemagne, Pepin’s son, put down the remnants of the Lombards by 774 and set himself up as their King. On Christmas Day in 800 CE, Pope Leo III put the frosting on the cake of the papal/Frankish alliance when he crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans.
While setting up the papacy as sovereign in northern and central Italy had been a clever maneuver for the Franks, it placed the Popes in a precarious position. Every regime that had controlled the region prior to them had at least some military capability; in the case of the Roman and Byzantine regimes, standing armies with the ability to bring in allied forces, if needed; in the case of the Ostrogoths, a small standing corps with the ability to raise a true army within just a few weeks.
The Popes, on the other hand, had no such capability. Any military power they had, depended on the local Italian nobility, some of whom (like the Ostrogoths) had a small corps of their own with ability to raise levies. Some of the towns, as well as cities like Rome and Naples, also had militias which were controlled by regional nobles, but these were generally small, and defensive in nature.
The arrangement worked, so long as the Frankish Carolingian dynasty (named for Pepin’s father, Charles Martel) alliance held out and as long as the Carolingians were masters of western and central Europe. That fell apart in the middle of the 9th century when their empire fractured after the death of Charlemagne’s son and successor Louis “the Pious.” Its middle portion which bordered the Papal States to its north — a kingdom known as Middle Francia or Lotharingia (for its king, Lothar) — collapsed under the weight of a civil war among Charlemagne’s three grandsons.
At that point, the alliance between the Franks and the papacy became the object of a contest between the two remaining Carolingian kingdoms in France and Germany. The Popes could no longer count on clear, unquestioned military assistance from either. They went from being masters of their demesne allied with a powerful regime, to something of a pawn within a larger chess game being played by remaining powers.
Those “remaining powers” included the Italian regional nobility, both those residing inside the borders of the Papal States (i.e. the Popes’ own vassals) and their external neighbors, especially the dukes of Tuscany (to the north and west) and Spoleto (to the south and east).
The tale of the Cadaver Synod hinges heavily on one of those states, the duchy of Spoleto, and its leader in the final decades of the 9th century, Duke Guy III. He’d been a player in the ongoing power struggle over the remains of the splintered Carolingian empire. By 889 he was king of Italy, one of the fragments of what had been Middle Francia, at the hands of Pope Stephen V. Just a short while later, in early 891, Stephen crowned Guy as Emperor of the Romans. In fact, the two were such staunch allies that Stephen had ceremonially adopted Guy as his son. Stephen had more than a little skill as a diplomat, since he’d managed to curry the favor of Byzantine emperor Leo VI and had also allied with other Carolingian heirs such as Louis “the Blind.”
All of this had happened within the ongoing campaigns among the various nobles who were either Carolingians themselves (such as Charles “the Fat” whom Guy had succeeded as Emperor) or, like Guy, from other powerful families claiming what they viewed as their rightful slices of the vast Carolingian pie.
Stephen died in September 891 and was succeeded by Formosus, an influential bishop native to the region. He attempted to carry on the diplomatic and political maneuverings of his predecessor, but was less successful at it. He also distrusted Guy of Spoleto, who’d forced him to crown his son as a co-emperor.
Formosus found an ally in Arnulf of Carinthia, a Carolingian descendant who’d become king of Germany just a few years prior and who had designs on Italy. Formosus invited Arnulf and his forces into northern Italy where they bested the Spoletans for control of Rome by 895 (Guy died at the end of 894, leaving his duchy to his widow and son).
Formosus crowned Arnulf as Emperor, but their alliance didn’t last. Arnulf had a fit or stroke, and essentially was forced to abandon Italy. Early the next year Formosus himself died, succeeded by Boniface VI who literally is just a name in the annals of papal history — his reign lasted a mere 15 days.
The unfortunate Boniface was succeeded by Stephen VI, who like his namesake Stephen V had been a staunch friend of the Spoletans. Several months after his accession, in January 897, quite astoundingly, Stephen VI ordered that the late Pope Formosus be disinterred and put on trial.
You read that right: A dead pope was dug up and tried for crimes against the Church. This is a thing that actually happened. Nothing about this is exaggerated. It may read like gothic horror or something out of Hollywood, but there’s nothing fictional about this.
A sitting Pope put one of his late predecessors on trial. As an official act of the Papal Curia.
This gave Stephen the chance he’d long needed to rehash some controversies earlier in Formosus’s career. To be honest, Formosus’s career to that point hadn’t been what one might call “clean.”
One of those controversies was a weak one which Stephen stretched almost to the point of incredulity. That involved Formosus’s relations with the Bulgarians. In the 860s he’d been sent as part of a delegation to Bulgaria. At the time, the Roman Church had been cultivating relations with the Slavs in order to keep them out of the eastern Church’s sphere of influence. Formosus was so successful in this regard that a Bulgarian king had requested he be appointed as their bishop.
It was one thing for Formosus to be a bishop over a small see within the close environs of Rome (he was, at that point, the hierarch in charge of Porto aka Portus, a port city serving Rome). It was another for him to preside over what amounted to a nationalized see (i.e. all of Bulgaria). The latter would allow him to expand his influence over the Church as a whole. The royal request was rejected and Formosus remained in his existing office.
During the “trial,” however, Formosus was portrayed as having acted as though he were a bishop to the Bulgarians. There’s little evidence he ever did such a thing, however.
Formosus was also accused of having left his office as bishop of Porto around the time Charles “the Bald” had been crowned Emperor and another Carolingian contender, Louis “the German,” had threatened to invade the region. Formosus — and other Church officials who’d fled the area — were excommunicated for abandoning their offices in 876.
That excommunication was later rolled back and Formosus had been formally restored as bishop of Porto by Pope Marinus I in 883. It hadn’t been an issue since then, but it became one during the late Pope’s “trial.” His abandonment of Porto was also the trigger for an accusation of perjury. At the time his excommunication was lifted, but before he’d been restored as bishop of Porto, he’d sworn an oath to then-Pope John VIII not to return to Rome or its vicinity. His return to Porto, after Marinus’s restoration, supposedly caused him to violate that oath.
Marinus’s restoration itself could have been interpreted as obviating Formosus’s earlier oath — since if he remained away from Rome and in turn from Porto, he wouldn’t be able to act as bishop there. As with the claim that Formosus had simultaneously claimed two ecclesiastical sees (acting as bishop of both Porto and Bulgaria), this too was a real stretch.
The “trial” of Formosus was true performance art and effectively a kangaroo court. His body was clothed in papal vestments and seated on an ad hoc throne. A curial functionary acted as his voice as he was “questioned” about what he’d done, both as Pope and prior to his elevation.
It went as well as you’d expect, for him. He was found guilty on all counts (unsurprisingly, since everyone in the room had been appointed — and directed as to what to say and do — by Stephen).
Formosus’s body was stripped of its vestments; the three “blessing fingers” of his right hand were severed; and he was thrown in the Tiber River outside Rome after having briefly been reburied in a paupers’ field.
That was just what was done to Formosus’ body. In addition to that, all of his acts as Pope were annulled, and his ordinations were undone. Ironically, this meant that Stephen’s own ordination as bishop of Anagni was annulled. That, ultimately, was never addressed.
This hideous spectacle did not go unnoticed within Rome and its surrounding region. People of all classes — nobility and peasantry alike — were almost uniformly appalled. As it happened, Formosus’s body washed up downriver on the banks of the Tiber which triggered an additional wave of furor over the phony “trial” and some miracles were even attributed to it.
The outrage remained in force for several months. Stephen was never able to tamp it down sufficiently. By late spring, a popular uprising gripped Rome (which wasn’t put down by any of the nobility or local militias) at which time Stephen was seized and thrown in prison. He was killed in prison in August, succeeded by Pope Romanus who appears to have been removed from office just a couple months later, for reasons that aren’t clear. Romanus was succeeded by Theodore II who died less than a month later.
Romanus had begun the process of unraveling the results of the Cadaver Synod but didn’t have time to finish (his removal may have been because he’d dallied). Theodore was much quicker on the draw, restoring many of the clergy which had had their titles vacated. He also ordered Formosus’s body to be recovered and reburied at St Peter’s.
Theodore’s sudden death led to something of a contest for the office of Pope, which was won by John IX with the apparent help of the Spoletan faction. Although neither John nor the Spoletans were fans of Formosus, he continued the process of rolling back the results of the Cadaver Synod, going so far as to ceremonially burn records of that “trial.”
Historians have surmised as to why something like this had been done. Most concluded it was a political play; this was Stephen’s way of cozying up to the House of Spoleto and an attempt to rehabilitate the papacy in their eyes. While this makes a little sense, there were other, less dramatic and far less revolting ways he could have gone about doing so.
So really, calling it a political play doesn’t do much to explain it.
Something that can’t totally be dismissed is what may be the single most obvious explanation: Perhaps Stephen VI was insane. Few historians would ever say such a thing out loud, but I assure you, they think it. A lot. Even if they keep it to themselves. The fact that his “trial” had undone his own ordination as a bishop ought, itself, to be an indication of Stephen’s insanity.
It’s unfortunate that so many historians — both in the past, and the current day — won’t face this possibility. But Stephen having been insane very well might be true, and it very well might explain the Cadaver Synod.
Once in a while you’ll hear someone try to explain the Cadaver Synod away as something that wasn’t unexpected or even unusual, in the context of that time and place. It’s true that Italy in the 9th century could be a violent place, with armies marching through, people being killed, and so on. Shocking and terrible things happened, quite often. There’s no question of that.
But it’s not safe to assume the people of Italy thought that it was anything close to normal or acceptable to dig someone up and put him on trial for what amounted (at best) to trivial dealings. Almost no one saw it that way (at least, outside of Stephen VI’s associates). The average 9th-century Italian who heard about the Cadaver Synod, was horrified. Shocked. Enraged. However you want to put it, they viewed the Cadaver Synod as the opposite of acceptable or normal.
As a matter of fact, it’s likely that even some of those friendly to Stephen were reviled by it — but they had no say in whether or not it was done, so they were forced to go along with it. The Spoletan faction whom Formosus had opposed, and supposedly ought to have found the Cadaver Synod impressive, later assisted subsequent popes in rolling back its effects (John IX was a strong ally of theirs).
Perhaps the most significant effect of the Cadaver Synod is that it discredited the papacy, in a fundamental way. It was difficult for anyone in the western and central European theater, and even outside of it — including the Byzantine Empire — to take the Bishops of Rome seriously, if they were willing to embark on outrageous stunts such as this. The Spoletan faction, moreover, was also discredited, since they were associated with Stephen VI and his horrific maneuver. Other regional Italian factions, such as in the county of Tusculum, were able to supplant them and their influence.
Another long-term effect is that it exposed the papacy for the weak institution it was; it suggested the Popes were unimpressive, if not primitive, men who could, conceivably, be manipulated. This of course is precisely the lesson Italy’s nobility learned and which some of them applied skillfully as the papacy later entered its phase known as Saeculum Obscurum or “the Pornocracy,” which I describe at length elsewhere.
That’s another story for another time.
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