The Pope Who Put a Corpse on Trial

They dug up a dead pope, sat him in a chair and put him on trial, probably in January 897. It really happened. Sort of. The records were burned, so nobody agrees on what happened next. This video tries to sort the documented from the legend. 0:00 The trial (cold open) 1:07 Who was Formosus? 2:32 A city with two emperors 3:35 The weathervane pope 4:23 The trial 5:44 The verdict 6:48 Aftermath 7:28 Stephen's end 8:02 The undoing 9:02 The reversal of the reversal 10:21 How do we know? Main sources Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. IV (1910): Formosus, Boniface VI, Stephen VI/VII, Romanus, Theodore II, John IX, Sergius III. Mann quotes Auxilius, Vulgarius, the Invectiva, the Annals of Fulda and Alamannia, Flodoard and the 898 councils, which is how we read them. Liutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, book I (F. A. Wright translation, 1930). Written about 958-62; he puts the trial under the wrong pope. Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope Formosus" and "Pope Stephen (VI) VII". Wikipedia, "Cadaver Synod" and related pages, used as pointers to modern scholarship (Duhr, Arnaldi and others), which we did not read directly. Not verified by us: anything from Noble or Richards; Auxilius, Vulgarius and the annals are read through Mann only. Image and sound credits "Le Pape Formose et Etienne VI" (1870), Jean-Paul Laurens, Musee d'arts de Nantes. Public domain. "Dance of Death" woodcut, Hans Holbein the Younger, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0). 16th-century courtroom woodcut, Sturmhoefel. Public domain. All other images are original animation made for this video. Coins are redrawn from inscriptions. Music and sound effects were produced with AI tools. Script, research and animation: the channel