Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
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Putschcast
#16 Vatican - The Cadaver Synod
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What happens when a dead Pope is dug up, dressed in vestments, and put on trial by his living successor? A necrophilic coup? Yes, this story is true and Steve Guerra from The History of the Papacy podcast joins Putschcast to unpack the Cadaver Synod of 897 AD, the single most bizarre chapter in Rome's history.
Steve walks us through the grisly scene: Pope Stephen VI exhumes his dead predecessor Formosus, appoints a deacon to speak for the rotting corpse, finds him guilty, cuts off his blessing fingers, and tosses him in the Tiber. It's horror, absurdist theatre, and political thriller rolled into one.
Beyond the freakshow, the Cadaver Synod reveals what happens when institutions eat themselves alive and that there has been some darkness at the heart of the Catholic Church from the very early days. Yet the questions it raises about revenge, legitimacy, and show trials echo into modern politics.
Tune in for a darkly funny and disturbing conversation about the time the Vatican put a corpse on trial.
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I just want to welcome my co-host today. James, you're back in the studio?
SPEAKER_02I am back in the studio again. My fifth time, I think.
SPEAKER_01And uh we are trying for everyone who who's on audio, we try and video. If you can't see us, then um I got it wrong. If you can see us, uh I got it right. But um we also have a guest here who we were introduced to from uh a fellow friend Gary Stevens who runs the History in the Bible podcast. And uh on the podcast today is Stephen Guerra. Hi, Steve.
SPEAKER_00Hi guys, thank you so much for having me on. This is awesome. I'm really excited about this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh record is running, so let's hope we've got something to show for at the end of this program. Um now, Gary focuses obviously on the Bible, he takes a look at, you know, what's science, what's fiction, how much evidence is there, and how did the Bible come all together? And um, while listening to his podcast, I came across the history of the papacy podcast, which you happen to be the host of. And uh I was wondering, first of all, can you tell us how you started a podcast about the papacy?
SPEAKER_00I started way back in 2013, uh uh just a little bit before Gary started, and I really liked the papacy and the popes and the Western Church because uh really that connects to everything. And I never really went out to have a podcast that would be about biographies of the popes. I like more stories, uh, organizational structure, how it all how all the pieces work together more so than just bios of the popes.
SPEAKER_01And uh we are all about power struggles here and regime change. Um, so that's usually through revolutions and revolts. Sometimes there are coups. And uh I reached out to you initially asking, um, thinking of the papacy, were there any coups in history? And do you remember what you suggested to me?
SPEAKER_00I think the cadaver synod was the first one that I suggested.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever heard of it before?
SPEAKER_02Um, I knew nothing about it, but it sounded like something out of Game of Thrones.
SPEAKER_01First of all, cadaver, we sort of all know what that is, I guess. Um but a synod for for the non-Catholics on Putchcast today. Can you explain what a synod is?
SPEAKER_00All it really is is uh uh an assembly or a meeting of bishops. It's almost like a parliament or uh congress, and there's different synods. So um this one they you they're using the synod more in the uh more in the sense of a trial, but generally a synod is just a meeting of the bishops of a locality.
SPEAKER_01They're basically the power brokers of the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00If there's any problems or questions, anything administrative, that's what they'll use synods. And they have synods all the time. There it's probably one of some sort going on right now as we speak. That's just the normal uh meeting mechanism, I guess you could call it, of within the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, uh Protestant churches might uh like the um the Anglicans might call it something slightly different, but it's still generally the same gist. Is a synod used in history a lot to put people on trial? That's another way that this is unique, that they called a synod just to put somebody on trial, let alone to put a uh dead body on trial.
SPEAKER_02And Steve, I was just wondering if you could run us through uh briefly like what actually happened with um the cadaver synod.
SPEAKER_00The story goes back to maybe even as far back as 750, so about 250-ish years earlier, that there was a major break between the Italy was run by was conquered by the Byzantines, and the papacy was controlled by the Byzantines up until about 750, the Eastern Roman Empire. And after that, the the papacy had kind of switched to being controlled by the Franks and Charlemagne. That was pretty much the what was going on, but then of course, Charlemagne that all fell apart pretty soon after him.
SPEAKER_01And the map looked nothing like it does today, right? So um Italy was fragmented, uh Northern or Central Western Europe was the or the remnants of the Frankish Empire.
SPEAKER_00So Charlemagne had the whole thing that was more or less modern day France, the stuff in between, and then modern day Germany. Uh getting into this period, what it was uh more or less, and it's a it was a fluid thing, but you had the East Franks that was more or less modern day Germany, the West Franks that was more or less modern day France, and then this center section that um was called Lotharingia that went pretty much from the North Sea all the way to Italy at that point. And what um had happened is one of the uh Frankish kings, Pepin, one of the Pepins, Pepin III, maybe, he gave the papacy a chunk of land, and then the papacy used a forgery called the donation of Constantine, which they claimed was written in the 300s by Constantine, but it was a forgery forgery clearly from about the 700s to take a claim to what would eventually become the Papal States, which was that center section of the Italian peninsula.
SPEAKER_02And Steve, just to sort of set the scene, like what type of role would the Catholic Church back then have played in the lives of just everyday people?
SPEAKER_01Was it actually called Catholic Church at the time? Because you just mentioned the Byzantines as well. So when did that split happen?
SPEAKER_00Well, at that point, the the Byzantines or the Eastern Roman Empire and the Catholic Church were more or less still in communion. There is a little bit of a uh a controversy in this in this story where they had a minor split, but the big split between the Eastern and the Western churches didn't happen until 1054, which would have been 150 shod years after the cadaver synod. What the church would have played in an ever normal day is the person's life, it would have been everything, essentially. What the big difference would have been is that the Pope necessarily wouldn't have been what somebody considered as what we would consider maybe the Pope today, as this like all-encompassing absolute monarch figure. There's a good chance that if you didn't if you lived more than a day or two's ride from Rome, you might not even know who the Pope n even was necessarily.
SPEAKER_01The Vatican these days is the is the remnant of that those papal states, which was a small province, I would say, right? Like you it was big enough to be its own entity, and it obviously became smaller and smaller over the centuries. But um I also obviously know that Saint Peter's didn't exist in those days. So what was the residence of the Pope? Where was he where was the center of power?
SPEAKER_00St. Peter's it did exist. It was in a different form as it was today, but there the even today the official papal residence, it's called the Cathedra, that's where their uh his bishop's throne is, is in St. John Lateran, which is on the other side of the Tiber, more in um the historic center of Rome. They call it the historical center where the Pantheon is and all of that. Uh it's called St. John Lateran, and that's super old. That goes back to the Roman Empire. That's like his official throne.
SPEAKER_02What type of role would the Catholic Church play in everybody everyday life? Like, not so much the people that were the main players, like the popes and the bishops, but like was it a mainstay of sort of regular life?
SPEAKER_00I would say for most people that the the church was central to their lives, even it uh a big chunk of their day-to-day lives rotated around the daily services. You get up and you go to matins uh early in the morning, and then uh you would go to Vespers uh at night. Uh m most people would do that if you were in close to a church that's if you lived in a village or something where you could go to a church com uh taking communion on Sundays, going to marriages and funerals, like every single thing would have been the the feast days of the church. I mean, even a lot of uh the way serfs worked, they would get off certain feast days and uh really everything would have uh had some connection to the church, when to farm, when to plant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. A lot of those feast days, like even like public holidays now, are related to those days that were sort of been a little bit of a few years. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Uh and and James, you you mentioned early on there was a a range of pulpes. It's not like in in today's day where you've got a pope for 10, 15 years or so. Um back then they uh had very short stints. Who's the one that we need to talk about today?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's two popes that are really key to this. And the first one is Formosis, he was the one who was put on trial, and then there's Stephen the Sixth, who sometimes also called Stephen V. There was a kind of a controversy with the Stevens a little earlier on of whether one was actually a pope or not.
SPEAKER_01We'll learn if we learn about him in a minute. So um Formosis, that's a a formidable name. Do you know what that stands for? For Moses?
SPEAKER_00I know I did hear what it meant, and I can't remember. I believe that was his birth name. A lot of uh popes would take a new name, but I I'm pretty sure that was his birth name.
SPEAKER_01And he was the first, right? So it's not like the first and only, so no one ever named himself after Formosus.
SPEAKER_00I don't believe so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So Formosus and Stephen, let's go with the sixth, okay? Should we agree on the sixth?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, that's the most common that they'll refer to him as the sixth.
SPEAKER_01What year are we talking about, and uh who was Formosis?
SPEAKER_00He came to rise to power. He was the bishop of a city called Porto, which, as the name might suggest, was the port of Rome. So it was a major important city for the for Rome, even going back all the way back to the Roman Empire times, and Formosus was the bishop of Porto, making him a pretty powerful guy, almost not quite the maybe the secondhand man of the Pope, but within the top circle of bishops. And so what's interesting is at that time it was not even unheard of, it was against the law, so to speak, for a bishop to be a bishop of one place and then become a bishop of another place. It was it was called the technical term for it was called a translation. So if you were the bishop of um X, Y, and Z city, you couldn't become bishop of Rome or anywhere else. And there was a lot of reasons for that. And one was that they didn't want people basically like shopping to get a better city to be bishop of, for you know, a kind of tamp down on corruption and greed sort of thing. That was what it was intended for, and that they really wanted somebody who was a bishop to be the leader of their particular flock and not somebody just looking for the better job. Yeah, I'm sure everybody knows that type of person who they get a new job and then they're always looking for that better one. They didn't want people to be doing that. Yeah, but so what happened was is that Formosus was sent as an envoy to the Bulgar Khan of Bulgaria before it was Bulgaria, and uh Bulgaria was really more so in Constantinople's bailiwick or sphere of influence. If the the the Byzantine emperors and the religious leaders in Constantinople were very frowning upon Rome sending an envoy to the Bulgars, but it just so happened that the Khan of the Bulgars and Formosus really got on together, and the Khan wanted Rome to appoint Formosus to be their bishop, which was a really big deal. Formosus wanted to be the bishop, the Khan wanted him to be the bishop, but Rome kind of dragged their feet on it because it was really unheard of to have somebody jump from one bishopric to another one, and they dragged their feet on it, and eventually the Khan just accepted a bishop from Constantinople, which made Constantinople happy, more or less made the powers that be in Rome happy because they didn't have to deal with this translation, even though they technically lost sort of a new franchise, you might say. But who knows what could have happened if they could have turned into Latin Western Catholics. It's not outside of the realm of possibility.
SPEAKER_02So you couldn't hold them simultaneously or you couldn't hold Oh no no, yeah. Because that that was the main issue, but you couldn't transition from one to the other either.
SPEAKER_00No, you couldn't hold two, and that would become a really big deal later on. Not so much in this story, but uh some bishops in especially in Western Europe would try and hold two or three C's. That was like an absolute no-no. But even just job shopping or job uh jumping would have been it was seriously frowned upon.
SPEAKER_02So uh presumably a lot of the popes were picked from these areas. I how did they pick the pope and how if they weren't allowed to transition other people that were already in a position to like the papacy?
SPEAKER_00Oftentimes the popes would be the uh sort of the runner, the vice pope almost. They were called the archdeacon of Rome, and so they weren't a uh bishop, they were still a high-ranking clergy, and that's honestly that's the way that they got a lot of institutional knowledge too, because they were working in the in Rome with the Pope, with that whole organization, and so they were they were generally the ones groomed into being a pope. And uh even to this day, I don't believe it is a rule that you have to be a bishop to be a pope. Generally, they always are, but they could elect one of us if you know, or anybody who's Catholic, they can become elected the Pope.
SPEAKER_01So they didn't need uh a particular education or or training like these days, you know, even becoming a local priest uh takes quite a few years to to get to that stage.
SPEAKER_00So back then it was just anyone's guess or yeah, generally they would have been educated in their uh system, and some of them may have been sent off to maybe Constantinople to get more of an education, and they had schools and that sort of thing internally, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as formalized as it is now where somebody like Pope Leo, who was just elected, he went to the very certain schools, and there's very much uh uh a predictable path that somebody who's going to be the next Pope would uh face. They they had sort of a predictable path, but it would have been a very different path than today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so presumably it's it's probably like a lot of politicians, it's sort of like they're identified when they're younger, they've got talent, and then they're put on like the accepted pathway.
SPEAKER_01Everyone's obviously watched the 2024 film Conclave, and then ironically it happened shortly after that. Was there a conclave process in those days? Or what was the actual appointment process of a Pope in the in the deep dark ages?
SPEAKER_00This was a a transition, and that's the conclave that we see today, and you would have seen in the movie. Uh that's developed basically since even before the time we're talking about now. Uh at this time period, it would have been sort of a hodgepodge, but it really would have boiled down to being in one of these synods where the top bishops would have met. I don't I'd have to do a little digging. I know around this time, it would have and maybe a little bit earlier, they did allow certain nobles to vote in the in the conclave. And they did I'm fairly certain they called it a conclave at this time. Generally, at this time, it's going to be the very top-ranking bishops, which they c actually called cardinals even back then. They were the ones who were the you know the the original cardinals, they were either high-ranking bishops, high-ranking priests, or high-ranking deacons. And they more or less, they would have been the main power in electing a new uh pope, but you can really think about it, it is it's a small group of essentially noblemen who are electing the next pope. They just wear like fancy hats.
SPEAKER_02And so what would be you know, looking looking through the list of popes that you sent, uh I suppose if you were like an aspiring pope, what did they actually look for?
SPEAKER_00The election of the Bishop of Rome in a lot of ways was like small time small town politics, and the secular leaders might have been looking for somebody who was going to swing money and trade and all the things that the popes had a lot of control over. Even at that point, a lot of money flow uh flowed through the church, and who could control that? Who could control the appointment of bishops in Western Francia, or who could control the appointment of bishops in eastern Francia, who could help uh you know, grease wheels of things going goods and trade running through monasteries? Those were the things that, and just the power, the the power of who's God behind is huge.
SPEAKER_02I mean it almost sounds like uh a bit like uh like a mafia don, like a godfather in some respects, right? It's probably not too far from the truth.
SPEAKER_01Because um what what struck me is that we I still gotta get out of my head my my twentieth and twenty-first century thinking of this all-powerful, world-famous figure when you said you can ride a day with your horse and then no one would know who you are, um, because the Pope just didn't have the influence. Yes, there was so much politicking and power struggle around this office. And um Formosus was obviously also keen to get that role. So back to our protagonist today who had a very unfortunate ending. Who was he? What do we know about Formosus? And how did he get to this semi-powerful office?
SPEAKER_00So a lot of things you could really say about him is that he was a political animal. He really had to be a political animal. He was uh from everything that I've seen, he was a good administrator. He had his faction and he was supportive of his faction. That's what essentially got him elected. He couldn't have been too bad of a guy if the con wanted him to be their bishop. The records aren't great from that time period, and one of the people who I leaned a lot on is a scholar named William S. Munro. He essentially wrote the book on this. Uh, James, you've never heard of the cadaver synod. Almost anybody I've ever talked to, and before I had ever heard of the cadaver synod, I, you know, I had no clue that this thing had ever happened. And it's really because of this one scholar, William S. Munro, who um he did the digging, and for 20 years, it's a really cool story. He found some records. He was the um librari the medieval librarian at Columbia University, and he slowly uh built a dissertation, a PhD dissertation on the Cadaver Synod. And after 20 years, he uh finally got around to defending it at Brown University and got his PhD. And as far as I know, he still just works, and not just works, I'm sure it's a really cool job to work at the Columbia University Medieval Library.
SPEAKER_01But that's so recent. So you basically, if I would have asked anyone in the 19th century, they wouldn't have any recollection of that historical event.
SPEAKER_00I think they would have known about it. There's a famous uh painting by uh Jean Paul Lorraine of the Cadaver Synod. I the people would have known about it, but um It was this one person, and I actually interviewed him on my podcast and I uh emailed back and forth with him quite a bit. And uh he's the first one who really put an academic uh look at the cadaver Synod, and uh he really is the one who dug through the and did the homework, so to speak, in a real modern historical way. And uh that was maybe going back five years ago, really. So it was in the within the last 25, 30 years that he's the one who really got on top of it. Any source you really look at, if you go and watch any other videos, but um on there, he's probably gonna be somewhere uh as one of the main sources.
SPEAKER_02What's the view of it now from the Catholic Church? What do they say on it?
SPEAKER_00Is it something that they sort of cover over or they talk about or as far as I know, it's just still one of those things that people just don't know much about. And if they do uh talk about it, it's just like, wow, that's a crazy story. I think it's just too bizarre to uh put in a in a neat box.
SPEAKER_01But it's perfect for putchcast. So um I'm very happy that we get to talk about this today. Because we we are mainly interested in the power struggle, in the the inner workings of a political system and how how change can sometimes happen very suddenly, um brutally and unexpectedly. Um so Formosus is our character today. He's the man, you called him a political animal. We we just explained um that he must have been very good at it, otherwise the Khan of the Bulgars, which was a very powerful entity at that time in in uh Eastern Europe, wouldn't have asked him or to be appointed. However, we also learned from you that they weren't keen on that. You were not supposed to change um offices because he was already the bishop of of Porto. So what then happened on his journey, and how did he actually end up becoming Pope with that track record?
SPEAKER_00So he he did get elected Pope because he was popular amongst the bishops, and he was uh uh for all uh uh intents and purposes a stand-up guy. He did get translated, so he did go from one bishopric to the next, which was seen as scandalous as going from the bishop of Porto to the bishop of Rome, but it kind of got papered over, and there's not a lot about that of the the inside baseball on that, but he did more or less, by all accounts, uh was a pretty good pope. He was Pope for about five years, made some reforms, nothing extraordinary, no scandal or anything like that, and then he died a natural death. Uh and that's about it. That's about it for him, and then he you know he's buried like every anybody else is, and nothing to see here.
SPEAKER_01Happily ever after. And and the reason why we're talking about him today is because what happened to him after his death. So he died of a natural cause. What was the year?
SPEAKER_00There's no other evidence to say of anything other than natural causes in April of 896. After Formosus died, there's a uh very short papacy of Boniface VI, and he's the second shortest papal reign of all time at just under two weeks. Maybe he was murdered by Stephen VI. Uh some say that he died of gout, but gout back then, I did a little research on that because you hear of so many people back then dying of gout. And uh gout was cons sometimes they would say that somebody died of gout because uh because they might say it's a disease, they thought of it as a disease of excess, that you drank too much, you partied too much, you ate too much. I don't know, I'm not even 100% what gout is, to be quite quite honest. And thankfully I've never had it.
SPEAKER_01But so um there's a race to the bottom. So this is the number two, the second shortest papacy in history.
SPEAKER_02So um do you want to just but briefly describe what Stephen VI decided to do to Formosus?
SPEAKER_00Formosus was more on the sides of the Lombards. Uh their center was around the town of Spoleto in southern Italy. These two factions, it's so uh convoluted, and you could go on for hours. People have done entire podcast series on these um Spoleto versus this versus that. But so um he was uh Stephen was very much on the the opposite, uh kind of the opposite side of Formosis. But so he was translated. Stephen, he's this another one who had been translated. He was actually appointed to be bishop of this place, Agna Agani, which is another town near Rome, to be the bishop, but then he was translated, and that was still seen as a bit scandalous to have been translated. And really, the most we can say it about Stephen is he must have been absolutely mentally insane before, like you could say that in the clinical sense, you could say that in any sense, that he was a stark raving lunatic. I or he was crazy like a fox. I don't know. I mean, either one, it's it's really hard to pinpoint. He must have absolutely hated Formosis, and it could have been political, it could have been personal, it could have been all of the above.
SPEAKER_02Because the story is is uh and I you know I was reading through it and I was like, it definitely sounds like something like Game of Thrones. Um actually, even a bit more extreme for Game of Thrones, is that he dug out Formosis, he put him on trial, he had someone who was acting in his stead, and then he would uh question Formosis. And then after the troll was done, he decided to cut Formosis up a bit more just for good measure.
SPEAKER_00Yes, so that's the craziest thing. There was three major charges against Formosis, perjury, which they never really s exactly enumerated that, ambition in coveting the papacy. I mean, I guess Stephen would be guilty of that one, and then s various other crimes. I mean, you want to talk about uh throwing this uh kitchen sink at somebody, and that's exactly what he did. You would pr describe that exactly. They took Formosus out of his grave, put him in his full papal uh attire, sat him in a chair, and I think that it's important to show, like, so I mentioned that uh Jean-Paul Arendt have a uh he did a uh uh a portrait of the cadaver synod in the 1800s, and it sort of um portrays Formosus looking kind of like a skeleton. He was only dead about four-ish, four to six months, and that's a very different look to you.
SPEAKER_01Hence the word cadaver. Yeah, it's a very and uh not a nice look. Do we know how long the actual trial lasted?
SPEAKER_00Uh it would have been fairly short, and again, like you got to a really funny point that the the uh Formosis wasn't appointed like a uh court-appointed attorney to re represent him, or I'm not exactly sure what they call it in Australia, the you know, the solicitor or whatever who will defend you. He was supposed to defend himself through that deacon who is more or less, if you're watching on the uh on the video, he's like talking behind him as pretending he's Formosis.
SPEAKER_01Okay, can we can we just digest all that? Sorry. So um yeah. So Formosus dies of a natural death, all good. However, someone holds a grudge. The someone who holds a grudge is called Stephen the Sixth. Stephen the Sixth is also an animal, but not a political animal, he's a real animal. Um because he has some very sinister thoughts, and he wants to put someone on trial who actually wasn't as bad to maybe make himself look better, or uh we we don't know. We just don't know why he hated him so much that he had him exhumed many months after his death, put on a chair in his papal gown. And then can you paint a picture for us here? So it was obviously a stinking rotten corpse. First of all, how did they hold this up? Because I'm still uh wondering how that actually physically happened. If you know anything about it, please sh please share. And then what, Stephen just stood opposite him and shouted at him like, why did you do this and that? And then also, as I understand it, Stephen that you mentioned translation, which is changing offices basically, right? So he was doing the same thing, but he accused him put him on trial for the very same thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's uh that's exactly what happened. And as far as I mean, just to get your mind wrapped around it, not to be too gross, but it's not just Stephen, this deacon and Formosus, it's a synod. It's all the reigning bishops, and they're presumably sitting there trying to pretend that this is normal. Or I I don't know what they could have possibly been thinking. Yeah. I I think you could put yourself sort of in maybe the mindset of like maybe you've had been in a work meeting that's just absurd, and you you sit there stonefaced and just pretend like, oh, this is you know, whatever, I'm going home at five, and who cares? But I mean this was a rotting human corpse that they're talking behind, answering questions, and you have somebody with screaming at the at this corpse. It's just it's beyond imagination.
SPEAKER_02It almost seems like that would be a work meeting that I would be happy to attend. I mean, just for just for like the pure spectacle of the the novelty. I dug up my former boss. I'm like, oh, let's let's talk. Oh man. Um just just uh just I'm just interested, Stephen. Is this I mean, obviously it's pretty extreme to dig up your predecessor, but was it something uh like in the context of the time that people did?
SPEAKER_00As far as I know, it was never done. I know there were some examples, I believe there were some other examples more or less contemporaneous, but uh in basically like the whole swath of human history, there's uh very, very few examples of something like this. This is a unique event, and it wasn't like there was some precedence for it to say, oh yeah, we've done this plenty of times, let's go for it. This was highly, highly unusual. So much so not to skip ahead. But the uh one interesting thing is that there actually was the in Latin, they call them acta or acta, probably more like it. Uh acts. A synod will always have sort of the minutes of it. And the minutes actually survived after this, but they were it was so horrible. A later synod demanded that they be burned, basically, almost like to just we gotta get rid of this, and we'll never speak of this again.
SPEAKER_01That would have been my next question. Is uh do we know anything what was in the minutes? What was actually his defense, what was for Moses' defense?
SPEAKER_00The only thing with the the only thing they really know about the minutes is that the the the counts a later council, the council of Ravenna, that happened a year or two later, that repudiated all of this, mentions the axe and quotes the axe, but then they insisted that the axe be burned, I think just because they must have been realizing sitting like holy smokes, what happened here, guys?
SPEAKER_02Uh I just it just and I suppose it brings into question like the other bishops. Like what were they doing? Like what were they thinking? And like how I would Do you think that someone might be like, well, you know, hold on, there's a bit far.
SPEAKER_00I think that there I maybe there was, or maybe the the just the what the way Steven set it up that they they felt they couldn't. I I mean there could have been some threat of violence because there, you know, there was the the the secular military was in in in the secular leadership, but but I I just don't know. There's I I mean if we had those acts, that would have just be incredible. You know, maybe just by force of will he kept them all in line. There's no real good answer to that.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to play devil's advocate now. So Stephen, let's let's give him a benefit of a doubt. This is still the Catholic Church we're talking about, yeah? This is um the religion of love and kindness and all that. Now, and we should probably dial in Gary Stevens from the history um of the Bible podcast. He could probably give us an answer, but maybe you have opportunity because I know you've prepared for this. Is there any biblical evidence or um precedence? Even maybe even the old testament as well, that this was done that that Stephen could have referred to and say, hang on, actually, you know, as um John said in whatever is there any evidence or historic example?
SPEAKER_00I don't think there would have been an example enough to say that this is normal. I mean, there's um oh one interesting one is I think it's in the book of Samuel, and Gary can um uh correct me on this, where uh the King Saul used a medium or a witch to bring back Samuel from the dead, but that still wasn't like br dragging him out of his tomb and it's uh I just don't see in any way, shape, or form that this I mean I just cannot see that there is enough precedence or precedent or anything of that to say, yeah, this is just this is totally normal. Let's just let's just do this. I I cannot imagine because it's so far out of left field.
SPEAKER_02It's quite inventive in a sort of a macabre way.
SPEAKER_01And I never thought of the whole bringing back the dead. Yeah. I never thought of that part. Maybe Stephen was very fond of him, wanted to see him once more. Um yeah, in a different way. Okay, we're we're uh we're we're making fun of the dead here. But anyway, so there was a room full of the most powerful people in the land at the time. Everyone nodded along, which means Stephen must have been an autocrat, he must have been a very strong ruler that no one dared to question or challenge. I think that's the political uh lesson we we take from here. And then we don't know exactly what was said because the evidence was burnt. Wonder why. And um, again, for many, many centuries, uh never spoken about. But then what was the outcome? So what happened?
SPEAKER_00So the charges were perjury, ambition, and coveting the papacy, which again, what does that mean, and then various other crimes. Of course, he was convicted. I mean, big shock there. And so his uh what it was what happened was is that uh the three fingers, so on a bishop, they use three fingers to give a blessing, and they cut off those three fingers, and there's uh a lot of reasons symbolically why they would have done that. So, yeah, he can never give a blessing. Uh, also that those fingers may uh they may have been concerned that those would become relics, uh, things that people would want to venerate or remember Formosus by, and so they wanted those out of the picture. Uh so he was uh condemned and excommunicated. Not that I don't know what that really would have mattered at that point, but what that would matter at that point was that being stripped of all of his papal vestments, having those fingers cut off, uh what happened was, and what uh a practical outcome of that was they had uh banished all of the pro-Formosis clergy. Formosus himself was tossed into the Tiber River, and that's a cultural thing that Romans had done since Rome was a village, is you would throw things symbolically into the Tiber River, and uh they did that to Formosus. Supposedly he was fished out of the river by a shepherd or something and reburied, but that could be legend. All of the bishops who were appointed by Formosus were uh unconsecrated, which was very convenient for Stephen because if you recall earlier, Stephen was appointed by Formosus. Now, because his bishop to that small Italian town was no longer valid, suddenly he he hasn't done a translation anymore. So that's something that he can't be accused of of having a translation. It's a very technical outcome because he was never the bishop of Aganni in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Good old Stephen Stickler for the rules, huh? Like he's he's very surprised when it comes to process driven. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Which I mean, there's gotta be a million and other ways to game the system to make that work besides what he did. But uh, I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_01And I assume it's uh it all comes down to corruption as well, right? So there would have been uh vested interests by various um power brokers to get certain new bishops appointed and all those uh vacancies that now were available.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's a win-win for sure.
SPEAKER_02And what happened to I suppose after this occurred?
SPEAKER_00Stephen was murdered, and uh he was the first pope to actually be murdered or assassinated. I can't imagine why, but and he couldn't have made any enemies down uh along the way, could he have? The next pope after Stephen, he overturned the entire Cadaver Synod, reinstated all of Formosus's appointments, all of his proclamations, uh cleared Formosus's name. But then this kind of was a back and forth over the next few popes. That after that, a pope who was against Formosus would go and put all of it back in again.
SPEAKER_01It was with him. There must have been there must have been where's the smoking gun here? Like Formosa he's such a divisive figure. Literally, people love or hate him. They they reincarnate him.
SPEAKER_02They're digging him up from the grave.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um and and someone deify him. So it's like we need to find out what actually he must have done something.
SPEAKER_00And really the end of the the end of the end with that is that that council in Ravenna in northern Italy, which you would never think that a council outside of Rome would have a direct impact on the Pope of Rome, but it that's just how things worked back then. They said that nope, this is over, this was all wrong. Uh, they made a rule that you can't dig up someone and uh put a dead corpse on trial. You ever see the what do they say? Like every law that's on the books, even the most absurd ones, it's because somebody actually did it. That's the point.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So like a like a a macabre weekend at Burnie's type of thing. I mean really. I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's the medieval weekend at Bernie's.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, what was the the the people's reactions? There are any sources saying about or even internationally, like from other courts, you know, from how did Constantinople respond to this? Like, was there any other feedback on this horrific event?
SPEAKER_00I have to imagine the people. I mean, that must have been the spectacle of a lifetime. I mean, that that's a time where people are going the entertainment was hangings and that sort of thing. I mean, that that must have and you Rome was essentially a small village by that point that was really clustered around these church buildings. I think you could probably maybe see that people were terrified of it and just wanted to lay low, or it was uh the party of the year going on. I think you could see it either way. There probably wasn't just everything was going normally. I think that it was either people were terrified or they were it was just like the everybody was waiting outside of the uh c cathedral wanting to hear what had gone on.
SPEAKER_02So would you say that like in the history of the Catholic Church this would be a pivotal moment in terms of you don't dig up like your predecessor, but I suppose they'd never done that before. Um or is it just a sort of another sort of blip in the road of a fairly sort of scandal laid um
SPEAKER_00Trail. I'm going to sound like my teenage daughter here. I think it was a low-key pivotal event. It was it it's a pivotal event that uh is really lying under the surface because a lot of things happened after that that were more or less a direct result of the of the cadaver synod and kind of the craziness that had led up to it. Um one of the things is the time after the about the 60-ish years after the cadaver synod, it's a time called the in Latin, the seculum obscurum. That's literally the dark ages. They called it the dark ages of the papacy, or they also called it the pornocracy of the papacy, because this is a time like everybody talks about the Borgia popes and the Renaissance popes. This is a time period where these popes did things that would have made them blush. It was so bad. And what really came out of that is that out of this terrible period that lasted into the 960s, 970s, was a huge amount of reform. Uh, two of the reforms, one's maybe not so uh an everyday one, it's called the Cluniac Reforms, and that came from a monastery uh called Cluny that really completely reformed the way that Western uh monasticism worked, which was a really big deal without getting into too many details. And then something called the Gregorian reforms would come out of that time, and it was a really a major reform of how the clergy operated morally and financially. So I think they really came out of this period realizing that some major house cleaning needed to happen. Uh not too long after this, you see you see things like the um the Normans come along. This is the end, that end of the early part of the Middle Ages where things were very difficult, and Europe starting to claw its way back out again, going into the early part of the high Middle Ages, where I mean, you you said the crusades are obviously a bad thing, but it they really were an uptick for Western Europe that wealth was starting to come back in. There was some degree of stability because the knights weren't fighting in Europe, they were fighting abroad, the crops were starting to grow, there was a temperature uh upswing. So things were generally on the upswing after this time, but you really they uh you could call that period really rock bottom.
SPEAKER_02Do you think at any point because it does actually the the more you talk, it's just it just sounds like a sort of a a mafia, um they were able to justify any of their actions sort of biblically, theologically, or with any kind of reference to Christianity? Because it doesn't even sound like Christianity is part of the picture at this point.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it really was. I I don't I'm sure I I could picture Stephen not, I mean, maybe in the vaguest terms, using Christianity as his as his uh tool or even his weapon, but I I don't see how they could have. I mean you can come up with a justification for anything from anything, but I think the people who are maybe thinking in a more Christian mindset were those popes who came later and the Council of Ravenna and then those later on uh reformers who are saying like this is dramatically wrong and we have to fix what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01After learning about all this today, um from you, Stephen, and uh listening to more of your episodes, I can't believe we still have a Catholic Church. I can't believe we actually still have a Vatican. I can't believe they made it through that. Like just looking at the the change of leadership, yeah, and and how they changed, obviously, you know, no no elections involved, it was usually poison or knives or whatever was available. Um and and this this it wasn't a period, they were talking centuries of instability, of of constant infighting, literally backstabbing, um simultaneously, from what I remember, the uh the Eastern Roman Empire is still thriving in in those days, right? It's it's it's still the the pinnacle of um civilization, really, at the time in Europe. Um yet you made it through all that chaos. As an expert on the papacy, was there a time that even maybe the Catholic Church these days looks back at the pinnacle of their power? Because you talked about, you know, and and when we think about the papacy, I I really couldn't tell you when I think was the strongest point because around the Renaissance time, they were always in decline again and there was so much corruption and therefore reformation occurred. But maybe before that, maybe the Crusades, was there a time when the Catholic Church was in its peak, the most powerful from a powerful point of view?
SPEAKER_00It's kind of interesting because uh from my the you know real survey of an almost 2,000-year-old institution, you can see a lot more points where it was on its back heels than you can see where it was triumphant, really. There there was a lot of uh down points. I think that you the the time period of the Renaissance uh really was uh one of the peaks just because it was wealthiest at that so so wealthy, and so much money was going flowing through the church through Europe as as well as from the New World, that uh that massive increase in wealth and in converts was even even in the time period of the uh just after the uh uh Protestant Reformation and um uh Martin Luther, where so much of Europe split uh split with the Catholic Church, it was still riding high. And even in that time period, I uh there was still major reform movements as well. The papacy, this is a little known fact, and I certainly didn't know it. The papacy was almost done in the French Revolution. One of the popes was arrested, and there was really no plan or even ability to have a conclave for as a new pope, and they were able to cobble something together, but that could have very been an ending point. And then during the Risorgimento in the 1860s, when the uh during Italian unification, that could have been another uh time period where the papacy, as we think of it, could have disappeared.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I don't know a great deal about the Catholic Church, but you know, I do know that there's a fair amount of scandal. Um and I just wonder how much this has sort of followed followed it's followed through in in the organization.
SPEAKER_00It's been dark enough, but we'll get a little darker with like the current abuse scandal. I don't know how you know how far you want to go down that rabbit hole, but I think that that scandal maybe uh exposed something very dark in the church that um maybe not to the level and to the real extreme corruption of that that time period during the the cadaver synod, but I think that and it's going to force the church, and it is forcing them in a lot of ways, how much they're doing. I don't, you know, I I don't keep up with the the modern papacy as much, but I just being as somebody who's uh around and observing it, they're going to have to figure out a way to deal with that and do some degree of reform that directly addresses that particular scandal.
SPEAKER_01I always thought I knew a bit about history, but I always thought that from Jesus, Peter, and as it then developed, Rome became the center. That it was a linear development and it just got worse over time, and it its peak was the Reformation when people had enough because the decadence and the um the double standards, the hypocrisy just gone so much out of control that the Reformation had to occur. What I take away from today, James, is that it wasn't linear at all. There was actually worse periods before. There were periods where there's much more abuse and and violence. And again, if you put your own predecessor as a cadaver on trial, can you imagine what else those people would have done? And then what I'm also thinking, because Europe at the time wasn't Christian at all at this stage, right? There was still it was still the bring the all the East, the North was all pagan still, right? So the Scandinavia was still pagan, the Eastern again we talked about the Bulgarians joining Christianity, the Serbs, the Magayars were coming in. They were all pagans, pagans considered by the Catholic Church. And then you hear those stories. Imagine you're one of those rulers somewhere in the steps, and and and they call you a pagan and uh uncivilized human being, and then you hear what they do. It's like, uh, maybe I'll stick to my faith.
SPEAKER_02Like the fact that it's been going for so long and it is mired in so much scandal and corruption and you know everything else in between, that it is still a fairly prominent I mean the papacy and the papers is still a fairly prominent thing in many people's lives.
SPEAKER_00And what I think is so exciting about that time period, that is the time period, like you said, that there was large swathes of Europe that weren't Christian, yet they were coming in some voluntarily, like the Rus uh in Russia would voluntarily come in at that time. The Bulgarians voluntarily uh came in, some less so, like the Saxons. Uh but then the Normans and the Vikings, they're all coming into Christianity, and it's really to plug into this network that the Catholic Church and uh Christianity in general at that time that they had really started to try to plug back in these institutions that had collapsed in during the Roman Empire, and they were certainly less perfect than they were in the Roman Empire, but Christianity was really one of the ways to come into that system, and maybe honestly, because of all of that corruption and all that's where the money is. That's uh like to go back to your mafia metaphor. You why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um incredible. Uh now, Steve, at the end we we've got a few questions, but uh one is let's let's learn a bit about your podcast and and why people should listen to it because I think it's worthwhile. So I think we've got a rough idea of what the topic is, but um tell us a bit more about your podcast.
SPEAKER_00So the my podcast, the history of the papacy podcast, I really I take more of a thematic approach. So I'll take uh one time period in history, and sometimes it's as short as a few years to maybe a century, and I'll just go and dive in and take a look at all these different aspects and how do the people affect the institutions. That's really the thing that I'm interested in, and that's what I love to see. And I also uh one of the things that I really love to see is what are the s the little stories like this that maybe some somebody's never heard of, and it's like wow, it you know, that one little takeaway I think is what is what I'm really looking for is what's that one or two really cool stories? I want to just tell a fun story. And Steve, um, do you have a favorite pope? Yeah, I it's funny. I t I was talking, somebody asked me this, and he asked me it in the way of what pope would you want to have dinner with? And there's a pope he's named Pius IX. He lived in the 1860s during the Italian unification when the the Papal State, uh what was left of it, was completely wiped out by Garibaldi. He he was known not to be one of the most the intellectually the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was just an absolute larger-than-life character, and he knew how to play the situation perfectly, where he took something that could have been a complete disaster, and he's really the author of the Catholic Church that we think of it today, as the Pope being an influencer and the Pope being uh, you know, sort of a cult of personality. He was the first Pope to be photographed, and that's where po people had a picture of the Pope. They might not have a picture of their own family members because you know you couldn't have access to a camera, but you had a picture of the Pope in your living room. Like that, I think he would have been and there's so many stories about him. I could um you could go on for I actually did a s several part series just on him.
SPEAKER_01Incredible. That brings us to a close here today. Um, James, I've already shared what I've learned that the history of the Vatican is certainly not linear. What what did you learn?
SPEAKER_02The history of it is almost as much about politics as it is about religion, if not more so.
SPEAKER_00I th it's just such an insane story. It's uh I I talked to a friend just the other day about it who's very deep into church history, and uh probably I think he knows more than I do. And I I mentioned, oh, have you heard of the Cadaver Synod? I'm gonna record an episode uh next week with uh a couple of guys on the on the cadaver synod. He was like, What? He had never heard of it in his life. Even if you're really not even interested in church history, medieval history, uh European history, how can you not be interested in somebody getting dug up from their grave and put on trial? Like it uh it's a horror story.
SPEAKER_01It is a horror story, straight out of Rome, out of the Vatican. And I want to thank you for your time, Steve. And uh, where can people find your podcast?
SPEAKER_00Uh you can go to my website, a2zhistorypage.com, or um, you can find me on Facebook primarily, but also Instagram at um a2z or Z for our uh Commonwealth friendshistorypage.com.
SPEAKER_01I would say this is probably the most graphic putcast episode we've ever done. Um lucky we don't have any um smell yet included in this podcast, but we do have visuals now, so we talk about what happened to a man who was underground, slept peacefully, never done anything wrong, and then was put on trial, half rotten, probably covered in maggots, and everyone was clapping along and uh he had to defend himself. Yes, that's weird, but that's what the Vatican did in the late 9th century. So uh make sure you also check out our website on Putschcast where you find more details. You also find a link uh to the history of the papacy um on our website and an overview of all our other episodes that we have. And if you've got any questions or feedback, um if there's even weirder stories that you're aware of, then please share them with us on putchcast at gmail.com.
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