In 897 AD, a Pope had his predecessor's rotting corpse dug up, dressed in papal vestments, propped on a throne, and put on trial — then thrown in the Tiber River when found guilty.
In January 897, Pope Stephen VI ordered the exhumed body of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, brought to the papal court for a formal ecclesiastical trial. The corpse — dead for nine months — was dressed in papal robes, propped upright on a throne, and assigned a trembling deacon to speak on its behalf. Stephen screamed accusations at the body throughout the proceedings.
The charges against the dead pope were largely political: that he had illegally transferred between bishoprics, perjured himself, and served as bishop while technically still a layman. The real motivation was almost certainly a power struggle between rival factions vying for control of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy itself. The corpse could not, of course, defend itself.
The verdict was guilty. Stephen had Formosus stripped of his papal vestments and mutilated — the three fingers of his right hand used for consecrations were cut off. His ordinations and official acts were retroactively declared null and void. The body was then thrown into a common grave for foreigners, dug up again, tied to weights, and dumped in the Tiber River.
The spectacle horrified Rome. Public outrage turned against Stephen immediately. Within months, a popular uprising overthrew him. He was deposed, imprisoned, and strangled in his cell in late 897 — dying roughly the same year as the man he had tried. Meanwhile, Formosus's body reportedly washed ashore and was said to still be performing miracles.
Later popes moved quickly to undo the damage. Pope Theodore II convened a synod that annulled the Cadaver Synod entirely, rehabilitated Formosus, and had his body reburied in Saint Peter's Basilica in full papal vestments. A subsequent synod in 898 ordered the written records of the Cadaver Synod destroyed and banned all future trials of corpses.
The Cadaver Synod stands as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of organized religion — a reminder that at the peak of medieval papal power, the institution could descend into something that looked less like a church and more like a revenge fantasy played out on a dead man's body. Stephen VI's name has never been rehabilitated.