Someone over on the R&P board brought up the Cadaver Synod that I recall just chuckling and shaking my head at when hearing about for the first time.
Of course, looking at it through the current lens is what makes it funny in a macabre type of way. The Papacy back then had degenerated into a thoroughly corrupt office with tangential ecclesial responsibilities that the named Bishop of Rome may or may not have cared for at all. One guy wasn't even ordained as a deacon a week before he was made Pope. Full disclosure, I'm Catholic, but not a particularly Roman one. Mentioning anything related to the Vatican on the internet typically brings out the same dumb stuff, but that's certainly not my intent here.
I was curious what this board may have run across in a similar vein.
Quote:
At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence."
Of course, looking at it through the current lens is what makes it funny in a macabre type of way. The Papacy back then had degenerated into a thoroughly corrupt office with tangential ecclesial responsibilities that the named Bishop of Rome may or may not have cared for at all. One guy wasn't even ordained as a deacon a week before he was made Pope. Full disclosure, I'm Catholic, but not a particularly Roman one. Mentioning anything related to the Vatican on the internet typically brings out the same dumb stuff, but that's certainly not my intent here.
I was curious what this board may have run across in a similar vein.