| Like in the days following Pope Formosus, the radicals of the left are choreographing a mockery of our founding fathers' constitutional process in their rabid denunciations of all that former president Donald Trump has accomplished for the good of the USA. This posthumous impeachment of a presidency is not completely unprecedented. Not if you study world history and the Great Roman Empire. In 896 AD, when the mingling of religious powers into the crumbling Roman Empire served to further advance the latter's demise. The 'Cadaver Synod' of 2021 Jean Paul Laurens was a very political figure in the Vatican of the 9th century. A predecessor pope had assigned many political duties to him. But Pope Stephen V (his immediate predecessor) was from the aristocratic Hadrean Roman family, & Laurens was their political foe. |  One of the worst political hacks pretends to be a chief justice. |
Pope Steven V died in 891. Laurens' political skills were at work in the conclave when a new pope was selected in that same year. Laurens emerged as Pope Formosus. For 5 years he led the church and largely influenced Roman Empire politics.
Formosus died in 896. Riots broke out in Rome at the news of Formosus' death, & immediately Pope Boniface VI was selected by the cardinals' conclave in a very contentious political era, but died just 2 weeks later. That's when Stephen VI of the Spolitan Party rose to church power and was an even more divisive political pope, largely because he was set up by radical elements who disdained the Formosus papacy. A mockery of papal court process then occurred. it was a macabre desecration of a corpse, and it involved the dead pope's body.
 The Cadaver Synod: The dead corpse of Pope Formosus was put on trial in 896 AD, by a successor papacy | Stephen VI, the successor of Boniface VI, influenced by Lambert and Agiltrude, sat in judgment of Formosus in 897, in what is known as the Cadaver Synod. The corpse was disinterred, clad in papal vestments, and seated on a throne to face all the charges of sedition against the Holy See. The verdict was that the deceased had been unworthy of the pontificate. The damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) was applied to Formosus, all his measures and acts were annulled, and the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body, the three fingers from his right hand he had used in blessings were cut off, and the corpse was thrown into the Tiber, later to be retrieved by a monk. Pope Stephen VI was arrested in 897 and imprisoned in Rome, then executed later that year. these popes were all surrogates for regional factions of secular power which were seeking greater control as the great Roman Empire was disintegrating. |
Following the death of Stephen VI, Formosus' body was reinterred in St Peter's Basilica. Further trials of this nature against deceased persons were banned. Later the validity of Formosus' pontificate was re-reinstated. The decision of successor popes with respect to Formosus has subsequently been universally disregarded by the Catholic Church, since Formosus' condemnation had little to do with piety and more to do with politics.
The Roman Catholic priesthood changed greatly since those days. Priest are now very separated from involvement in politics and no longer allowed to even be married as they had been for the first 1000 years of the Roman Church.
Perhaps its the hard lessons learned during this era of the 9th century, and how the great commission of the Christian church was usurped by folks who were more preoccupied with politics, than piety and proselytes.
Perhaps its the hard lessons learned during this era of the 9th century, and how the great commission of the Christian church was usurped by folks who were more preoccupied with politics, than piety and proselytes.
