Cadaver Synod: The Trial of a Dead Pope

Discover the most grotesque and vicious true crime story ever committed by a sitting Pope against his predecessor.

Welcome to the darkest chapter in Church history—the Dark Age of the Papacy. Forget pious tales of saints and miracles. This is an era of pure, earthbound political terror, where ambition was measured in daggers and vengeance knew no limits—not even the sanctity of the grave.

In Eight Hundred and Ninety-Seven A D, the Eternal City of Rome became the stage for a spectacle so shocking, it defies belief: The Cadaver Synod. This single, brutal event is a disturbing true story that historians still struggle to categorize. Was it political theatre? Was it an act of black magic? Or was it sheer, psychotic madness ordered from the very throne of Saint Peter?

Our victim is Pope Formosus, a savvy politician who reigned until his death in Eight Hundred and Ninety-Six. His fatal error was purely political: crossing the powerful Italian noble family, the House of Spoleto. Though Formosus died of natural causes, his enemies were not satisfied. Power changed hands, and the Spolaytos’ puppet, Pope Stephen the Sixth, took the Papal Chair, driven by a thirst for total, posthumous revenge.

Stephen the Sixth was not content merely to reverse his predecessor’s policies. He demanded the annihilation of Formosus’s legacy and every single man he had ever ordained. To accomplish this, Formosus had to be officially, legally, and spiritually condemned. The fact that the target was nine months dead meant absolutely nothing.

Under the cover of a freezing January night, Stephen the Sixth issued the most macabre command in Church history: exhumation. A terrified group of attendants and grave diggers were dispatched to the tomb, hauling the wretched, decomposing remains out of the sacred ground. The putrefied, black, slumping body—barely recognizable—was stripped of its burial clothes, crudely redressed in the full, sumptuous papal regalia, and dragged across the city to the Latteran Palace. The stage was set.

Listen now to this complete, unforgettable story of political terror, desecration, and final bloody justice from the most chaotic age of the Papacy. Subscribe for more dark historical true crime stories.