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Jean-Paul Laurens, Le Pape Formose et Étienne VII ("Pope Formosus and Stephen VII"), 1870.

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Immediate context

The Cadaver Synod is generally presumed to have been politically motivated. Formosus crowned Lambert of Spoleto co-ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in 892; Lambert's father, Guy III of Spoleto, had earlier been crowned by John VIII. In 893 Formosus, apparently nervous about Guy's aggression, invited the Carolingian Arnulf of Carinthia to invade Italy and receive the imperial crown. Arnulf's invasion failed, and Guy III died shortly afterwards. Yet Formosus renewed his invitation to Arnulf in 895, and early the next year Arnulf crossed the Alps and entered Rome, where Formosus crowned him as Holy Roman Emperor.

Afterwards the Frankish army departed, and Arnulf and Formosus died within months of each other in 896. Formosus was succeeded by Pope Boniface VI, who himself died two weeks later. Lambert and his mother, the empress Angiltrude, entered Rome around the time that Stephen (VI) VII became pope, and the Cadaver Synod was conducted directly afterwards, at the beginning of 897.

The dominant interpretation of these events until the early twentieth century was straightforward: Formosus had always been a pro-Carolingian, and his crowning of Lambert in 892 was coerced. After the death of Arnulf and the collapse of Carolingian authority in Rome, Lambert entered the city and forced Stephen to convene the Cadaver Synod, both to re-assert his claim to the imperial crown, and perhaps also to exact posthumous revenge upon Formosus.

This view is now considered obsolete, following the arguments put forth by Joseph Duhr in 1932. Duhr pointed out that Lambert was in attendance at the Ravenna Council of 898, convened under John IX. It was at this proceeding that the decrees of the Cadaver Synod were revoked.

According to the written acta of the council, Lambert actively approved of the nullification. If Lambert and Angiltrude had been the architects of Formosus’ degradation, Duhr asked, “how [...] was John IX able to submit to the canons which condemned the odious synod for approbation of the emperor [i.e., Lambert] and his bishops? How could John IX have dared to broach the matter [...] before the guilty parties, without even making the least allusion to the emperor’s participation?” This position has been accepted by another scholar: Girolamo Arnaldi argued Formosus did not pursue an exclusively pro-Carolingian policy, and that he even had friendly relations with Lambert as late as 895. Their relations only soured when Lambert's cousin, Guy IV, marched on Benevento and expelled the Byzantines there. Formosus panicked at the aggression and sent emissaries into Bavaria seeking Arnulf's help. Arnaldi argues that it was Guy IV, who had entered Rome along with Lambert and his mother Angiltrude in January 897, who provided the impetus for the synod.

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The list of popes buried in Saint Peter's Basilica includes the recovered body of Pope Formosus.

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The Cadaver Synod occurred sometime in January 897 in the Church of St. John Lateran, the pope's official church in his capacity as Bishop of Rome.  The defendant on trial was Formosus, an elderly pope who after a reign of five years had died April 4, 896 and been buried in St. Peter's Basilica. (According to P. G. Maxwell-Stuart's Chronicle of the Popes (1997), the name Formosus means "good-looking" in Latin.) The trial of Formosus was ordered by the reigning pontiff, Stephen VII, who had been prodded into issuing the order by a powerful Roman family dynasty and other anti-Formosus political factions, and who apparently also was personally motivated by what The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986) calls a "near-hysterical hatred [of Formosus]." Although Formosus had been, according to McBrien, "a man of exceptional intelligence, ability, and even sanctity, he [had] made some bitter political enemies ... including one of his successors, Stephen VII."

No trial transcript of the Cadaver Synod exists. Nonetheless, it is reasonably clear what happened.  Sitting on a throne, Stephen VII personally presided over the proceeding.  Also present as co-judges were a number of Roman clergy who were there under compulsion and out of fear.  The trial began when the disinterred corpse of Formosus was carried into the courtroom.  On Stephen VII's orders the putrescent corpse, which had been lying in its tomb for seven months, had been dressed in full pontifical vestments.  The dead body was then propped up in a chair behind which stood a teenage deacon, quaking with fear, whose unenviable responsibility was to defend Formosus by speaking in his behalf. The presiding judge, Stephen VII, then read the three charges.  Formosus was accused of (1) perjury, (2) coveting the papacy, and (3) violating church canons when he was elected pope.

The trial was completely dominated by Stephen VII, who overawed the assemblage with his frenzied tirades.  While the frightened clergy silently watched in horror, Stephen VII screamed and raved, hurling insults at and mocking the rotting corpse.  Occasionally, when the
furious torrent of execrations and maledictions would die down momentarily, the deacon would stammer out a few words weakly denying the charges.

When the grotesque farce concluded, Formosus was convicted on all counts by the court.  The sentence imposed by Stephen VII was that all Formosus's acts and ordinations as pope be invalidated, that the three fingers of Formosus's right hand used to give papal blessings be hacked off, and that the body be stripped of its papal vestments, clad in the cheap garments of a lay person, and buried in a common grave.  The sentence was rigorously executed.  (The body was shortly exhumed and thrown into the Tiber, but a monk pulled it out of the river.)

Stephen VII's fanatical hatred of Formosus, his eerie decision to convene the Cadaver Synod in the first place, his even eerier decision to have Formosus' corpse brought into court, his maniacal conduct during the grisly proceeding, and his barbaric sentence that the corpse be abused and humiliated make it difficult to disagree with the historians who say that Stephen VII was stark, raving mad. -- http://www.neatorama.com/

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He he, the accused apparently chose to avail of his right to remain silent even in the courtroom...

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