0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Picture this, a Pope on trial. 0:06 [SPEAKER_00]: He sets at the front of the courtroom in a tall back, Golden Throne, encrusted with ghouls, and towering over his accusers, in a silent display of power. 0:18 [SPEAKER_00]: While the prosecutor arranged, in pieces, he sits motionless, staring straight ahead, unconcerned by the proceedings, and unimpressed by the charges laid against him, 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: His papal crown is on his head. 0:35 [SPEAKER_00]: His robes are bright and flowing, and his hands rust in his lap, as if he's merely hearing news of the day, the miservant or friend. 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But the prosecutor is screaming at him, pointing at him, saying things that would make your blood boil. 0:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of it is probably true, most of it, scandalous. 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of it is intended to ruin his reputation, once and for all. 1:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The accused, hope for Moses, is an eloquent speaker. 1:09 [SPEAKER_00]: You kind of have to be, to become Pope. 1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet he sets there with his mouth open, a vacant lock on his face. 1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Why? 1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Because he died nine months ago. 1:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He's wearing all the vestments of a living ruler, but he's swamped against the frame of the chair and his body is badly decayed. 1:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They've masked the smell with incense, but the result is a sickly sweet funk that hovers in the air. 1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: But again, why? 1:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Why would you dig up a body and prosecute someone death had already convicted and sentenced to oblivion? 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: for power, and legacy, and of course for revenge. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Only vengeance of one kind or another could account free-seen as ugly as this one. 2:03 [SPEAKER_00]: In one sense, the rivalries and intrigue behind this so-called cadavers Senate were nothing new to the Catholic Church. 2:12 [SPEAKER_00]: The papacy was for many centuries one of the most powerful positions in the Western world and because of this it tended to attract the wrong kind of people. 2:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The grassroots life of the Church and the Middle Ages continued to reflect the quiet devotional serenity of the earliest Christian believers. 2:41 [SPEAKER_00]: and just one example of the radical extent of medieval people power. 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Hope Gregory VII once excommunicated Henry IV of England in 1076 in a move that crippled the power of the English king. 2:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Because excommunication from the Roman Church could cost a king his throne, Henry made a desperate pilgrimage to Rome to plead with the Pope for forgiveness. 3:10 [SPEAKER_00]: He traveled for months in the middle of winter, crossing the snowy Alps, and a dangerous journey that nearly cost him his life. 3:18 [SPEAKER_00]: When he finally arrived at Gregory's castle, he was forced to wait outside in the snow, wearing nothing but a hair shirt, and when he entered, he did so barefoot. 3:30 [SPEAKER_00]: With his head bowed, kneeling at the feet of the pope to beg for red mission to the church. 3:38 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the kind of power any ambitious bully would rule over. 3:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In a times, the role of Pope became more of a magnet for worldly scheming than for spiritual enlightenment. 3:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The story of Pope Formosis and Pope Stephen VI, the later Pope who put Formosis's corpse in a courtroom throne fit squarely in the former category. 4:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Born in Rome, around 8-16, hope for Moses began his career in Vatican politics and 8-64. 4:13 [SPEAKER_00]: As the Cardinal Bishop of Porto, he suburb in Rome, he soon ascended the ranks of the church, and was made responsible for not only Porto, but also for converting the entirety of Bulgaria to Christianity, who were Moses proved himself a valuable Vatican asset in the Bulgarian courts, and he was soon undertaking missions in France, which had also been assigned to him by the papacy. 4:40 [SPEAKER_00]: his rise through the reigns of Catholic power continued until a disagreement with Pope John 8 led to his excommunication and exile from Rome. 4:53 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a personal beef with a technical pretense. 4:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Two quote Atlas Obscura, Pope John VIII turned on Formosus and accused him of violating a law that prevented bishops from ruling over more than one place at a time. 5:09 [SPEAKER_00]: A law that was supposed to prevent bishops from building up their own fiefdoms. 5:16 [SPEAKER_00]: and perhaps more tellingly, John accused for Moses a violating a recently passed law that forbid openly aspiring to the papacy in quotes. 5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But things in the Vatican were rarely dull and fortunes could change in a matter of minutes after John's death for Moses was allowed to return to his seat and was elected Pope in 891. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: His reign was short-lived, lasting only five years, from October 6, 891 to April 4, 896. 5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: In that short window, he managed to anger the powerful Spoleto dynasty by backing their enemy, Arnold of Corinthia, for Holy Roman Emperor. 6:04 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, friends of the Speletos took for Moses hostage, and he spent two years of his pontificate as their prisoner in the castle of the Holy Angel. 6:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Before his allies forced his release through military pressure. 6:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Once he was released, Formosis made Arnoff King, and within three years both men had died by massive strokes, he suspicious when fall of luck for their enemies. 6:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The likely reason for their deaths was poisoning. 6:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Though Arnoff was also struggling with a crippling infestation of crabs in his eyelids, yes, those crabs, also known as pubic lies. 6:47 [SPEAKER_00]: but even in death for Moses could not escape the rage of the Vinful Spollettos. 6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Four Moses was followed by Pope Boniface, a sixth, whose pontificate lasted a mere 15 days before he too died under suspicious circumstances, likely also by poisoning. 7:08 [SPEAKER_00]: with Formosis in Boniface out of the way. 7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The Spalytos had managed to move their own man to the front of the line. 7:16 [SPEAKER_00]: A local bishop who became Pope Stephen, the 6th, less than two months after Formosis's demise. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: eager to prove his alliance to this Beletto family, Stephen dug up for Moses's corpse in the first months of his pontificate, and arranged for a trial to humiliate for Moses's former friends and supporters into submission. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The Vatican and all of Rome really now belonged to this Beletto dynasty, and Stephen wanted to make a show of it. 7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: If all Stephen and the Spaletto crime family wanted to do, was formally condemned for Moses in the courts. 7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They could have done that without digging him up. 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The cadaversenid was basically a mafia tactic, combined with all the retap of Vatican propriety, which resulted in one of the more bizarre scenes in medieval history. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Four Moses was dug up and propped up in his throne 8:20 [SPEAKER_00]: after his probable poisoning. 8:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephen ranted and marked the corpse in a church deacon with a signed with a surreal task if answering all accusations on behalf of the dead pope. 8:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But rather than intimidating his political rivals, or gaining any kind of moral victory, Stephen only succeeded in making himself look like a crazy person. 8:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He had four Moses's church vestments torn off his body, and wanted had been stripped, he approached it himself, and cut three fingers off four Moses's right hand, the thumb, the pointer, and the middle finger. 8:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The symbolism of this act was significant. 9:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The paper blessing is traditionally done with those three fingers on the right hand. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: All pressed together in the direction of the blessed. 9:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The meaning behind their removal, all the blessings, or donations, and act of foremoses, should be considered null and void. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Legend has it that during the trial an earthquake shook the cathedral in which it took place. 9:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The papal arch Basilica of St. John Latterin and damaged a part of the beautiful building and had housed these ugly scenes. 9:37 [SPEAKER_00]: What was definitely damaged, and not just in part, with Stephen's reputation? 9:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It never recovered, Catholic historians and officials can disagree on just about everything, but in the words of one historian, Stephen VI is defended by no one. 9:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Some historians refuse to even acknowledge the authority of his pontificate. 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: or to include him in their lists of poops. 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Others are ruthless and their assessments. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Ludovico, Muratory, the seventh century Italian, Catholic scholar and historian, said simply, his memory will be forever detestable in the Church of God. 10:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But the end of the trial for Moses was of course found guilty, and his body was rebairied in an unmarked grave for a few weeks. 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephen was like a revenge junkie, still chasing the last high. 10:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He had for Moses exhumed again, and thrown in the type of river. 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: As if to accentuate the mafia vibe of the whole proceeding, sending his enemy as the 10:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Historians have also suggested that with this move, Steven was partaking in a century's old Roman tradition in which the worst kind of criminals were disposed of by throwing them in the tiger. 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a common fate for vilified groups, like the early Christian martyrs, as well as the political rivals in critics of Emperor's. 11:17 [SPEAKER_00]: the following the trial and his ongoing abuse of Formosis's corpse, Stephen was finished in more ways than one. 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd blown all his political capital on this one idiotic, spate of revenge. 11:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And for as many powerful enemies as Formosis had, he had been well-liked among his peers. 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: As medieval Pope's go, he was a fairly good one, and being hated by a maniac, like Stephen immediately bolstered his legacy. 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Just one year later, Stephen had lost all influence, and all allies, and he was thrown into prison. 11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: By an angry mob before being strangled at his cell in the summer of 897, the same year the papal archbicilica was also destroyed by fire that some suggested was symbolic of the building being cleansed by the memory of the embarrassing, cadaver senate. 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Hope Stephen was succeeded by Pope Romanus who basically did to Stephen what Stephen had done to form Moses, minus the corpse, he annulled all his predecessors' acts in decrees. 12:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And more or less try to erase his memory from the Vatican, and of course after the pattern of late 9th century papacy, Romanus himself was promptly overthrown within the year, and followed. 12:42 [SPEAKER_00]: by Pope Theodore II, whose pontificate ended only 19 days later. 12:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Theodore died, like for Moses, suddenly, in suspiciously, after officially annulling the cadavers in it. 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It would only be during the following year, in 898, that for Moses' body, after being recovered from the tiger, would be respectfully laid to rest by Ramonus' successor, Hope John, the Knight. 13:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're ever in Rome, you can visit his tomb in St. Peter's Basilica, one of the greatest churches in all of the world. 13:21 [SPEAKER_00]: For those of you keeping squirrel at home, that makes six poops in two years. 13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The papacy was originally established to provide consistent moral leadership in careful charitable decision making in the name of the church. 13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: This two-year stretch represents a total failure of the office in just about every imaginable way. 13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The 9th and 10th centuries are remembered today as some of the most corrupt and violent in the history of the church between 872 and 965 at least 24 different poops were appointed in Rome. 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Many of them dying under suspicious circumstances. 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: this struggle for power continued in the church into the 11th century, which would end up making the 9th and 10th look almost peaceful and collaborative by comparison. 14:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The grace gizm of 1054 divided the whole church into east and west and inflaimed by the Muslim capture of Jerusalem, the church went to war, the 1st crusade. 14:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The fighting went lost for 200 years,
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