The power-madness probably came upon Pope Stephen almost immediately after his election, but we don’t notice it until he declares — less than nine months into his occupation of the Holy See, before the assembled curia in the Lateran council-room — “We will have the cadaver of Formosus, the pope-before-last, exhumed and put on trial.”
Struck dumb, the College of Cardinals stare for some seconds at their shiny red shoes before one brave churchman (but not brave enough to allow me to name him here) dares to speak up and reply with a question aimed at shaming the pope’s intention: “Will we be trying Formosus’s soul, Your Holiness, or his erstwhile body? Shall we expect a judgment of the late pope’s ghost or his corpse?”
Struck dumb, the College of Cardinals stare for some seconds at their shiny red shoes before one brave churchman (but not brave enough to allow me to name him here) dares to speak up and reply with a question aimed at shaming the pope’s intention: “Will we be trying Formosus’s soul, Your Holiness, or his erstwhile body? Shall we expect a judgment of the late pope’s ghost or his corpse?”
"Le Pape Formose et Étienne VII" by Jean-Paul Laurens
“What is a body other than a signifier of the soul that once resided in and animated said body?” responds Pope Stephen, feigning the philosophical engagement of a Pharisee and reminding everyone in the room of the reign of Caligula and the mad emperor’s pseudo-philosophical and theological reasons for humiliating, torturing, and murdering Romans of even the patrician class. “We will have the corpse placed before us and garnished with the rich vestments of its formerly usurped papal office, so that we might feast upon its miserable decay and hold it in canonical judgment.”
“What is the soul, Your Holiness,” responds the dissenter, following the pope’s lead into obtuse, jingoistic debate — but with all the best intentions — “other than our sacred belief, held by faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, of a life that transcends bodily death?”
“How many heresies will you rehearse today before we get our way?” retorts Stephen curtly, stamping his foot and pretending to put an end to the discussion.
“The privacy of this Lateran council is proof of Socratic immunity,” insists the still shocked and ill-advised dissenter, doggedly pursuing Stephen’s irrationality down its rabbit hole. “Must we not consider other alternatives before dragging a decomposing cadaver into this sacred chamber?”
“No. The corpse, in all of its stinking rot, will provide proof of the former pope’s actions in his role as a liar and usurper of the most sacred office in Christendom. Therefore, we command that it be brought before us! The false Pope Formosus possessed the flesh of a fallible man, not a holy body animated by the pre-beatified soul of a true pontiff — it was his corpse-meat that acted falsely in this world to obtain the Holy See. His reign is therefore subject to revision, to earthly judgment, and to punishment before the Heavenly Host deals with his eternal soul.”
“But, sire,” continues the protester, softly now, as a mother tries to calm a petulant child with a hushed voice, “it is the soul and the intellectual will — both anima and animus — that, deciding and acting in concert, produce our earthly actions. Anyway, what possible punishment could you devise for a cadaver? Soulless, it feels nothing.”
“You’re wrong,” and here the pretentious pope moves a few steps in the direction of the dissenter and begins to stare him down, “for, regardless of the impossibility of inflicting acute bodily punishment upon a cadaver, we proclaim that to act in the world is to construct a fiction, to pretend to be other. Our actions are but a shadow play of the truth of our intentions, our deeds an approximation of all that we would do. Therefore, we will perform judgment upon Formosus’s true body, just as his lying fictions falsified it when he was alive.”
The increasingly uneasy members of the curia blink and glance worriedly at one another in answer to the mad pope’s strangely compelling arguments — and the veiled threat to all to which they allude. Only the brave protester dares, once again, to respond.
“God alone, your holiness, holds us accountable for the thoughts, intentions, and omissions of action that no one but He can see. We do not pretend, here, to mock God’s judgment of souls, but merely to enact an earthly, canonical justice upon the living, worldly sins of churchmen whose holy offices are also a sacred political trust. The church is part of the world, after all, an emanation of the human side of the savior. I caution your Holiness to think of the public relations mess that such a trial will entail. Why not, therefore, a more decorous synod with the former pope in absentia.”
“No. We will have the man present, even if his corpse set before us is soulless and inanimate. Stephen will have,” the pope declares, speaking of himself frighteningly — and for the first time — in the third person, “nay, Stephen demands that the former usurper of the papacy, Formosus, be brought before this tribunal! We desire to see if our predecessor’s good looks have survived the worms these many months in the crypt. Much proof of his guilt, we daresay, will be evidenced by the cadaver’s unholy putrefaction. We venture to suggest that the holiness of his burial place has rejected the body of the apostate and that we will soon smell the stench of an all-too-human corruption issuing from the remains, proof of his sins and justification of all the charges that we shall bring against him.”
“But, sire, will you not defame your Holy Office by such an exhumation? By such a trial?”
“Our infallibility and zeal will protect us from all such cowardly prudence. It is he, Formosus, who stained this office with his handsome body, and we will have him dug out of it as a physician digs a cancerous tooth from its socket.”
“The proof is in the blood pudding,” shrugs the now-resigned dissenter. “Sire, we shall disinter the corpse.”
“What is the soul, Your Holiness,” responds the dissenter, following the pope’s lead into obtuse, jingoistic debate — but with all the best intentions — “other than our sacred belief, held by faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, of a life that transcends bodily death?”
“How many heresies will you rehearse today before we get our way?” retorts Stephen curtly, stamping his foot and pretending to put an end to the discussion.
“The privacy of this Lateran council is proof of Socratic immunity,” insists the still shocked and ill-advised dissenter, doggedly pursuing Stephen’s irrationality down its rabbit hole. “Must we not consider other alternatives before dragging a decomposing cadaver into this sacred chamber?”
“No. The corpse, in all of its stinking rot, will provide proof of the former pope’s actions in his role as a liar and usurper of the most sacred office in Christendom. Therefore, we command that it be brought before us! The false Pope Formosus possessed the flesh of a fallible man, not a holy body animated by the pre-beatified soul of a true pontiff — it was his corpse-meat that acted falsely in this world to obtain the Holy See. His reign is therefore subject to revision, to earthly judgment, and to punishment before the Heavenly Host deals with his eternal soul.”
“But, sire,” continues the protester, softly now, as a mother tries to calm a petulant child with a hushed voice, “it is the soul and the intellectual will — both anima and animus — that, deciding and acting in concert, produce our earthly actions. Anyway, what possible punishment could you devise for a cadaver? Soulless, it feels nothing.”
“You’re wrong,” and here the pretentious pope moves a few steps in the direction of the dissenter and begins to stare him down, “for, regardless of the impossibility of inflicting acute bodily punishment upon a cadaver, we proclaim that to act in the world is to construct a fiction, to pretend to be other. Our actions are but a shadow play of the truth of our intentions, our deeds an approximation of all that we would do. Therefore, we will perform judgment upon Formosus’s true body, just as his lying fictions falsified it when he was alive.”
The increasingly uneasy members of the curia blink and glance worriedly at one another in answer to the mad pope’s strangely compelling arguments — and the veiled threat to all to which they allude. Only the brave protester dares, once again, to respond.
“God alone, your holiness, holds us accountable for the thoughts, intentions, and omissions of action that no one but He can see. We do not pretend, here, to mock God’s judgment of souls, but merely to enact an earthly, canonical justice upon the living, worldly sins of churchmen whose holy offices are also a sacred political trust. The church is part of the world, after all, an emanation of the human side of the savior. I caution your Holiness to think of the public relations mess that such a trial will entail. Why not, therefore, a more decorous synod with the former pope in absentia.”
“No. We will have the man present, even if his corpse set before us is soulless and inanimate. Stephen will have,” the pope declares, speaking of himself frighteningly — and for the first time — in the third person, “nay, Stephen demands that the former usurper of the papacy, Formosus, be brought before this tribunal! We desire to see if our predecessor’s good looks have survived the worms these many months in the crypt. Much proof of his guilt, we daresay, will be evidenced by the cadaver’s unholy putrefaction. We venture to suggest that the holiness of his burial place has rejected the body of the apostate and that we will soon smell the stench of an all-too-human corruption issuing from the remains, proof of his sins and justification of all the charges that we shall bring against him.”
“But, sire, will you not defame your Holy Office by such an exhumation? By such a trial?”
“Our infallibility and zeal will protect us from all such cowardly prudence. It is he, Formosus, who stained this office with his handsome body, and we will have him dug out of it as a physician digs a cancerous tooth from its socket.”
“The proof is in the blood pudding,” shrugs the now-resigned dissenter. “Sire, we shall disinter the corpse.”
• • •
Pope Stephen VII (click to learn more about the "Cadaver Trial")
The cadaver of Formosus, nearly ten months in the tomb, now un-shrouded and carefully re-vested in its former papal attire, is brought before the tribunal and propped up, ironically, in a richly decorated papal chair. Despite the January cold of the old stone palace — heir both to the grandeur of antiquity as well as the power-madness of Rome’s many emperors — the effect of the richly clad, yet rotting, pungent, and maggot-infested corpse is evident upon the horrified faces of the curia, except for the glowing countenance of Pope Stephen. Acting as both judge and prosecuting attorney, Stephen remains as if in an ecstasy of triumphant hatred at the re-vision of his former enemy.
Acting as prosecutor, Stephen begins: “Formosus, fraudulent usurper of the office we now hold, we hereby accuse you on three counts: One, that you did perjure yourself with practically every deceiving word you ever uttered to us — we who once trusted and even loved you before we came to know the truth of your devotion to the king of falsity. Specifically, before the Holy Pontifex John VIII, you did swear, already excommunicate, never to return to your bishopric in Porto or attempt to officiate there as a layman. However, after John’s death in the Year of our Lord 882, you did return to that episcopal see, officiating exactly as you had before your excommunication and whence you then usurped the papal throne itself in 891. Two, that you did willfully and against all canon law transfer yourself from your rightfully awarded see of Porto and declare yourself, by popular demand, bishop of Bulgaria. And, three, that you undertook both of these illicit programs because you coveted the papal mantle, which you then subsequently obtained through subversive and unholy stratagems, including witchcraft.”
After a suitably awestruck period of silence, Stephen transforms himself into officiating magistrate and declares, “The accused will now speak in answer to the charges brought.”
“My lords,” stutters the corpse through its unfortunately chosen and visibly uncomfortable spokesman (a canon lawyer who also prefers to remain nameless), “ecclesiastical law — the legal procedure of our Holy Mother Church — can no longer hide itself amidst the ruins of an outmoded equation of justice with vicious (and in this case also impotent) revenge. ‘An eye for an eye’ is not the Christian, but rather the Hebrew way — the way of the pagan furies. Christ brought us a new covenant, a new commandment, the imperative to forgive our trespassers — particularly if they are deceased.
“Sadly,” continues the cadaver’s mouthpiece, “having abandoned the absolute justice of the false and lying pagan gods, we find ourselves endlessly mired, these many years since the Christianization of the empire, in quibbles regarding where some moral values begin and others end, about how far one man’s inalienable rights extend until they infringe upon another man’s rights. Such arguments tend to provoke more disagreement than consensus and foster an endlessly self-perpetuating ill will among discussants that soon grows to consider every viewpoint other than its own with disdain. In such debates all others’ opinions come to be considered the product of inferior minds. In a word, pride has come to rule over disagreement in our ethical discussions: pride, arrogance, and false superiority — mainly through ad hominem attacks. How can we fail to arrive at such an impasse, for we all think differently and often find one another’s thinking unthinkable.”
“Your honor,” interrupts Stephen, speaking as counsel for the prosecution and appealing to himself as judge, “such remarks appear to be wandering from the case at hand, wasting this synod’s time, and to be entirely irrelevant to these proceedings.”
“Sustained,” answers Stephen, confirming the validity of his own objection.
“Well, then, in order to make my remarks more relevant,” continues the flustered corpse through his stand-in, “allow me to say this: in a Christian concept of justice — which I would suggest you are overlooking in my particular case, due, no doubt to an overabundance of zeal — you have no juridical right to judge a deceased man. In addition, particularly since I am dead, my poor inconsequential body and all of its irrelevant words — in the name of human decency and church decorum — should never have been subjected to the ridicule of this kangaroo court. The dead are God’s concern alone. Therefore, leave me alone. End this travesty.”
“No,” answers Stephen-the-judge. “And now for the prosecution’s closing remarks.”
The pope wheels around, in an absurd pantomime, to act again as counsel-for-the-prosecution and address himself as judge. “Your Holiness: our Lord and Master, God, acts as the heavenly exemplar of our earthly power. In His infinite wisdom He has bequeathed to us a pale shadow of Himself in our own temporal power as pontiff — both so that we have direct evidence of His presence in the world, and so that, through our ministrations of the power that He has ordained in us, we may also learn to dread the responsibilities that the correct use of such power entails.” And here Stephen turns glaringly on the corpse, splattering it with saliva as he rants. “This is why the lies — the usurping of power outside of one’s appointed ecclesiastical territory, and the coveting of that supremely God-like might that the holiest of the holy offices holds (which is ours and not yours despite the rich vestments being momentarily wasted upon your putrefying flesh) — are transgressions worthy of an earthly punishment that you will not escape through death! Even though, coward that you are, we know you are still hoping to escape, you sly old trickster! The seeking of worldly power for power’s sake alone — ignoring that power’s sacred significance — has led you to bodily transgression. Therefore you will not shimmy out of the consequences by simply closing your eyes to the world, to us, and passing into unearthly realms. We will keep you right here and punish your body in this very place, just as we see fit, death or no death, God or no God.”
“But sir, I protest: The law has long been used to legitimize and de-legitimize worldly power.”
“Well spoken, puppet corpse! Like a true perjurer who would continue his lies even from beyond the grave — like your master, Satan — even in death, even here in this holy place of judgment, you quibble. You choose to avoid the charges brought against you by attacking the premise of our arguments, by making a mockery of the papal power that you came to covet and usurp! Bulgaria, indeed! You festering son of an Ostian whore and a Saracen pirate!”
“Sir judge: Is not a defenseless corpse deserving of some modicum of decorum? Must I be subjected to these low insults in this holy place? Not to mention my erstwhile role as supreme pontiff of all Christendom!”
“I’m sorry to say, my dear defendant-cadaver,” responds Stephen, slyly threatening the counsel for the defense and pointing to himself in his other role as judge, “that he’s the pope now and that he will say what he wishes in his own palace. You, who were once yourself the bishop of Rome, will surely understand.”
“Indeed I do not, for I was ever humble in my offices. I never presided over any such absurd undertaking as this insane synod. I was a spiritual pope — before they poisoned me.”
“More lies from the German-loving, Holy Roman pawn of Arnulf of Carinthia! Why did you turn your two-faced back on our Carolingian masters, you braying pillock, in favor of the northern, long-bearded barbarians, eh? Why did you leave the Duchess Agilitrude and the House of Spoleto in the lurch by siding with the Germans against us? Foreign interests, I tell you! First claiming Bulgaria and then pimping the Holy See to the land of the lummoxy Teutons! You betrayed not only God through your false promises and transmigration of bishoprics, but your own land to these foreign interests!
“When you were bishop of Porto, why did you usurp the Holy See in such a spirit of ambition?”
“Now we are getting to the truth of your false accusations!” gloats the cadaver through its spokesperson. “Xenophobia and prejudice, my dear judge, lay behind these trumped-up charges! Let the record show that the present pope and my accuser, Stephen, is a born member of the House of Spoleto, and is therefore biased against me who did refuse to anoint the duchess Agilitrude and to extend the power of the House of Spoleto — acts which I was forced to undertake solely because of the aggressive political actions of her son, Lambert, who threatened the peace of the Papal State and the political autonomy of the Holy See.”
Incredulous, Stephen rebuts: “Did the foreign army of that Saxon thug Arnulf, camped outside the walls of the Holy City while you crowned him King of the Romans, do nothing to compromise our city’s autonomy, you ridiculous pinhead? He was a goose-stepping, bearded barbarian and you elevated him to the highest secular position in all Europe! A filthy, pasty-faced, beer-drinking lout! And you allowed his soldiers to rap their hobnailed boots up and down the wine-bearing and olive-oil-soaked soil of our precious mother Italy, land of Venus, Hera, and Aeneas’s ancient mother-goddess, oh mother, oh mommy...”
Here, breaking off, Stephen buries his throbbing head in Agilitrude’s gowns, moaning and weeping and muttering further curses into her petticoats. The lady looks a bit uncomfortable — perhaps even somewhat condescending — but consoles the pontiff, her kinsman, by patting him gently on the side of the great miter that he wears upon his swollen head.
Moved, contrite, but still rather frightened, the counsel for the defense continues more quietly: “What possible defense can any man, living or dead — particularly one in the grips of a position of political power — offer but necessity? The winds blow as they will and every man’s ideals are but scattered leaves against the realpolitik of getting things done, of protecting one’s constituents, one’s own interests — or the greater interests of one’s position — and merely getting on to tomorrow without incurring more disaster than God allows. The world functions through a cloud of whirling contradictions, is buffeted back and forth through impossibilities that throw strange bedfellows together at every turn. What I undertook I did always for the best results in that particular situation.
“The Bulgarians loved me and clamored to have me as their bishop. Pope John despised me because of my popularity and used the fifteenth canon of the Second Council of Nicaea against me to weaken my popularity and to leave his own tenuous and jealous papacy intact. As for swearing never to return to my rightful bishopric in Porto, the oath was made under duress — so as not to further displease he who was then acting as pope and so that I might remain alive. Lastly, I never coveted the papacy for any reason other than to be a good pontiff and to serve the church and Christendom in the best way possible. The proof of this statement appears evident insomuch as I never wasted the church’s time, nor harried its principal jurors, with a synod as ghoulish as this!”
In answer to these protestations the disconsolate Stephen begins uttering a string of curses too filthy to be transcribed into this document. At last, finished with his tirade against the dead man — whose morality has nothing left to lose and therefore remains inviolable — Pope Stephen declares Formosus guilty of transmigrating sees against canon law, of acting as the bishop of Porto both after having sworn before a papal tribunal that he would never do so again and, because his excommunication was never withdrawn, whilst he was also a layman. Stephen orders Formosus’s corpse to be shorn of its papal vestments, all of the former pontiff’s acts and ordinations declared invalid (including Stephen’s own ascension to the bishopric of Anagni), for the three fingers of the cadaver’s right hand — which he used in his papal blessings — to be ripped from said hand, and, lastly, for the corpse to be cast into a common grave.
All of these things come to pass.
Acting as prosecutor, Stephen begins: “Formosus, fraudulent usurper of the office we now hold, we hereby accuse you on three counts: One, that you did perjure yourself with practically every deceiving word you ever uttered to us — we who once trusted and even loved you before we came to know the truth of your devotion to the king of falsity. Specifically, before the Holy Pontifex John VIII, you did swear, already excommunicate, never to return to your bishopric in Porto or attempt to officiate there as a layman. However, after John’s death in the Year of our Lord 882, you did return to that episcopal see, officiating exactly as you had before your excommunication and whence you then usurped the papal throne itself in 891. Two, that you did willfully and against all canon law transfer yourself from your rightfully awarded see of Porto and declare yourself, by popular demand, bishop of Bulgaria. And, three, that you undertook both of these illicit programs because you coveted the papal mantle, which you then subsequently obtained through subversive and unholy stratagems, including witchcraft.”
After a suitably awestruck period of silence, Stephen transforms himself into officiating magistrate and declares, “The accused will now speak in answer to the charges brought.”
“My lords,” stutters the corpse through its unfortunately chosen and visibly uncomfortable spokesman (a canon lawyer who also prefers to remain nameless), “ecclesiastical law — the legal procedure of our Holy Mother Church — can no longer hide itself amidst the ruins of an outmoded equation of justice with vicious (and in this case also impotent) revenge. ‘An eye for an eye’ is not the Christian, but rather the Hebrew way — the way of the pagan furies. Christ brought us a new covenant, a new commandment, the imperative to forgive our trespassers — particularly if they are deceased.
“Sadly,” continues the cadaver’s mouthpiece, “having abandoned the absolute justice of the false and lying pagan gods, we find ourselves endlessly mired, these many years since the Christianization of the empire, in quibbles regarding where some moral values begin and others end, about how far one man’s inalienable rights extend until they infringe upon another man’s rights. Such arguments tend to provoke more disagreement than consensus and foster an endlessly self-perpetuating ill will among discussants that soon grows to consider every viewpoint other than its own with disdain. In such debates all others’ opinions come to be considered the product of inferior minds. In a word, pride has come to rule over disagreement in our ethical discussions: pride, arrogance, and false superiority — mainly through ad hominem attacks. How can we fail to arrive at such an impasse, for we all think differently and often find one another’s thinking unthinkable.”
“Your honor,” interrupts Stephen, speaking as counsel for the prosecution and appealing to himself as judge, “such remarks appear to be wandering from the case at hand, wasting this synod’s time, and to be entirely irrelevant to these proceedings.”
“Sustained,” answers Stephen, confirming the validity of his own objection.
“Well, then, in order to make my remarks more relevant,” continues the flustered corpse through his stand-in, “allow me to say this: in a Christian concept of justice — which I would suggest you are overlooking in my particular case, due, no doubt to an overabundance of zeal — you have no juridical right to judge a deceased man. In addition, particularly since I am dead, my poor inconsequential body and all of its irrelevant words — in the name of human decency and church decorum — should never have been subjected to the ridicule of this kangaroo court. The dead are God’s concern alone. Therefore, leave me alone. End this travesty.”
“No,” answers Stephen-the-judge. “And now for the prosecution’s closing remarks.”
The pope wheels around, in an absurd pantomime, to act again as counsel-for-the-prosecution and address himself as judge. “Your Holiness: our Lord and Master, God, acts as the heavenly exemplar of our earthly power. In His infinite wisdom He has bequeathed to us a pale shadow of Himself in our own temporal power as pontiff — both so that we have direct evidence of His presence in the world, and so that, through our ministrations of the power that He has ordained in us, we may also learn to dread the responsibilities that the correct use of such power entails.” And here Stephen turns glaringly on the corpse, splattering it with saliva as he rants. “This is why the lies — the usurping of power outside of one’s appointed ecclesiastical territory, and the coveting of that supremely God-like might that the holiest of the holy offices holds (which is ours and not yours despite the rich vestments being momentarily wasted upon your putrefying flesh) — are transgressions worthy of an earthly punishment that you will not escape through death! Even though, coward that you are, we know you are still hoping to escape, you sly old trickster! The seeking of worldly power for power’s sake alone — ignoring that power’s sacred significance — has led you to bodily transgression. Therefore you will not shimmy out of the consequences by simply closing your eyes to the world, to us, and passing into unearthly realms. We will keep you right here and punish your body in this very place, just as we see fit, death or no death, God or no God.”
“But sir, I protest: The law has long been used to legitimize and de-legitimize worldly power.”
“Well spoken, puppet corpse! Like a true perjurer who would continue his lies even from beyond the grave — like your master, Satan — even in death, even here in this holy place of judgment, you quibble. You choose to avoid the charges brought against you by attacking the premise of our arguments, by making a mockery of the papal power that you came to covet and usurp! Bulgaria, indeed! You festering son of an Ostian whore and a Saracen pirate!”
“Sir judge: Is not a defenseless corpse deserving of some modicum of decorum? Must I be subjected to these low insults in this holy place? Not to mention my erstwhile role as supreme pontiff of all Christendom!”
“I’m sorry to say, my dear defendant-cadaver,” responds Stephen, slyly threatening the counsel for the defense and pointing to himself in his other role as judge, “that he’s the pope now and that he will say what he wishes in his own palace. You, who were once yourself the bishop of Rome, will surely understand.”
“Indeed I do not, for I was ever humble in my offices. I never presided over any such absurd undertaking as this insane synod. I was a spiritual pope — before they poisoned me.”
“More lies from the German-loving, Holy Roman pawn of Arnulf of Carinthia! Why did you turn your two-faced back on our Carolingian masters, you braying pillock, in favor of the northern, long-bearded barbarians, eh? Why did you leave the Duchess Agilitrude and the House of Spoleto in the lurch by siding with the Germans against us? Foreign interests, I tell you! First claiming Bulgaria and then pimping the Holy See to the land of the lummoxy Teutons! You betrayed not only God through your false promises and transmigration of bishoprics, but your own land to these foreign interests!
“When you were bishop of Porto, why did you usurp the Holy See in such a spirit of ambition?”
“Now we are getting to the truth of your false accusations!” gloats the cadaver through its spokesperson. “Xenophobia and prejudice, my dear judge, lay behind these trumped-up charges! Let the record show that the present pope and my accuser, Stephen, is a born member of the House of Spoleto, and is therefore biased against me who did refuse to anoint the duchess Agilitrude and to extend the power of the House of Spoleto — acts which I was forced to undertake solely because of the aggressive political actions of her son, Lambert, who threatened the peace of the Papal State and the political autonomy of the Holy See.”
Incredulous, Stephen rebuts: “Did the foreign army of that Saxon thug Arnulf, camped outside the walls of the Holy City while you crowned him King of the Romans, do nothing to compromise our city’s autonomy, you ridiculous pinhead? He was a goose-stepping, bearded barbarian and you elevated him to the highest secular position in all Europe! A filthy, pasty-faced, beer-drinking lout! And you allowed his soldiers to rap their hobnailed boots up and down the wine-bearing and olive-oil-soaked soil of our precious mother Italy, land of Venus, Hera, and Aeneas’s ancient mother-goddess, oh mother, oh mommy...”
Here, breaking off, Stephen buries his throbbing head in Agilitrude’s gowns, moaning and weeping and muttering further curses into her petticoats. The lady looks a bit uncomfortable — perhaps even somewhat condescending — but consoles the pontiff, her kinsman, by patting him gently on the side of the great miter that he wears upon his swollen head.
Moved, contrite, but still rather frightened, the counsel for the defense continues more quietly: “What possible defense can any man, living or dead — particularly one in the grips of a position of political power — offer but necessity? The winds blow as they will and every man’s ideals are but scattered leaves against the realpolitik of getting things done, of protecting one’s constituents, one’s own interests — or the greater interests of one’s position — and merely getting on to tomorrow without incurring more disaster than God allows. The world functions through a cloud of whirling contradictions, is buffeted back and forth through impossibilities that throw strange bedfellows together at every turn. What I undertook I did always for the best results in that particular situation.
“The Bulgarians loved me and clamored to have me as their bishop. Pope John despised me because of my popularity and used the fifteenth canon of the Second Council of Nicaea against me to weaken my popularity and to leave his own tenuous and jealous papacy intact. As for swearing never to return to my rightful bishopric in Porto, the oath was made under duress — so as not to further displease he who was then acting as pope and so that I might remain alive. Lastly, I never coveted the papacy for any reason other than to be a good pontiff and to serve the church and Christendom in the best way possible. The proof of this statement appears evident insomuch as I never wasted the church’s time, nor harried its principal jurors, with a synod as ghoulish as this!”
In answer to these protestations the disconsolate Stephen begins uttering a string of curses too filthy to be transcribed into this document. At last, finished with his tirade against the dead man — whose morality has nothing left to lose and therefore remains inviolable — Pope Stephen declares Formosus guilty of transmigrating sees against canon law, of acting as the bishop of Porto both after having sworn before a papal tribunal that he would never do so again and, because his excommunication was never withdrawn, whilst he was also a layman. Stephen orders Formosus’s corpse to be shorn of its papal vestments, all of the former pontiff’s acts and ordinations declared invalid (including Stephen’s own ascension to the bishopric of Anagni), for the three fingers of the cadaver’s right hand — which he used in his papal blessings — to be ripped from said hand, and, lastly, for the corpse to be cast into a common grave.
All of these things come to pass.
• • •
Postscriptum
Days later, still unable to contain his near-demonic loathing for his predecessor, Pope Stephen has Formosus again disinterred and the cadaver thrown roughly into the Tiber.
However, as history may have already told you, the body will be retrieved by renegade monks and, the following December, after Stephen has been imprisoned and strangled during a popular uprising, the succeeding pontiff, Theodore II, will overturn the verdict against Formosus and restore everything except for the cadaver’s three fingers and its dignity.
I’ve asked around, but nobody seems to know what happened to the fingers.
In saecula saeculorum, Year of our Lord 897. Signed, Ser Durante, papal scribe.
However, as history may have already told you, the body will be retrieved by renegade monks and, the following December, after Stephen has been imprisoned and strangled during a popular uprising, the succeeding pontiff, Theodore II, will overturn the verdict against Formosus and restore everything except for the cadaver’s three fingers and its dignity.
I’ve asked around, but nobody seems to know what happened to the fingers.
In saecula saeculorum, Year of our Lord 897. Signed, Ser Durante, papal scribe.
Header art by T. Guzzio. Original photo by R. Miro.
CONNECT WITH LEE:
East Bay, California native Lee Foust relocated to San Francisco to study creative writing in the early ’80s; abandoning both, he traveled to Europe, a novel idea in his head, and fell in love with a fugitive Finn and the city of Rome. Later, he studied in Florence and NYC, obtained a Ph.D., wed a well-known rock critic, and co-edited Resister magazine. Still later, washing again upon Tuscan shores, Lee began teaching Literature and Creative Writing courses for a couple of US universities in Italy, re-married and fathered a child. Nowadays he rents in Florence with photographer Debra A. Zeller, writes a literary column for The Florence Newspaper, still teaches, and recites his own works, with and without banging a drum, to anyone who’ll listen. Foust’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared inAql, Dark Ages Clasp the Daisy Root, h2so4, the Village Voice, Semicerchio, Resister, WTF, and The Book of Broken Pages. He also wrote the “Crass” entry for the Spin Alternative Record Guide because no rock critic would touch it. In 2013 he published Sojourner, a collection of poetry and prose about the people and places Lee has encountered during his twenty-five years of travel. Learn more about Lee via his website, keep up with him through his blog, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook. You can also hear Lee on Soundcloud.
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