Pope Formosus

This is the infamous Cadaverous Synod.

Dated to January 897, Pope Stephen VI ordered the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus Exhumed, dressed in pontifical garments and seated before an ecclesiastical tribunal and formally tried to no, this wasn't fiction invented by Protestant polemicists.

It really happened.

And we've got to understand why it happened.

Today, we're going to talk about this cadaver synod, where...

It is an unfortunate event that occurred.

And in order to understand it, we've got to understand who was Pope Formosus.

Now, Formosus was not originally a Roman political nobody.

Nice.

His name is Pope Formosus.

And in the year 897, his corpse was dug out of his grave, dressed in the papal clothing, placed on the throne, and put on trial.

This extraordinary event became known as the Cadaver Synod, or Synodus Horrenda, the Horrible Synod.

And although it sounds almost like something from a horror film, this was a genuine thing that happened.

So, who was Pope Formosus? To understand why anyone would go to such extraordinary lengths to have to go back before the courts were sitting in court.

Formosus had been an important churchman for decades before becoming Pope.

He was the Bishop of Porto near Rome and became involved in the intense political struggles surrounding the papacy.

Okay, so I'm going to start off.

If we get through Dirty Secrets About the Popes, then I might throw in some extra hidden history.

But let's do it.

Pope, so again, I am reading from Hitler's Secret Jewish Psychic.

Pope Raj.

Had Pope, had Pope Formosus exhumed and formal-

Wait, wait, who's the second pope?

Pope Formosus.

The Formos-

The Formo- he opened the Formosus Cafe?

[laughs]

You're right.

Let's go.

The title of the article is, Have Heretical Anti-Popes Invalidly Reigned for Decades? Now we're getting to what an anti-pope is in a minute.

But he first asked the question, let's go to our next slide.

What do you think of Sedevacantists claiming that the heretical anti-popes have reigned in the church? So let's look at the slide.

It's not huge, but it's not tiny either.

And the story of the painting, it's titled Pope Formosus and Pope Stephen VI, the Cadaver Synod.

This is a total fantasy of a story.

It did not actually happen.

But

there's this story in the Catholic annals by some historians that Pope Formosus takes over the Catholic Church and takes as the new pope in the Middle Ages.

It's really kind of like...

It's even before the Middle Ages.