In one of the darkest and most bizarre moments in church history, Pope Stephen VI staged a trial — not of a living man, but of a rotting corpse.

The accused? His predecessor, Pope Formosus, who had died nine months earlier.

The event, known as the Cadaver Synod, took place in 897 AD. Driven by political vendettas and power struggles within the Church and Roman nobility, Stephen VI had Formosus's decomposed body exhumed, dressed in full papal regalia, and seated on a throne inside a Roman basilica.

Stephen appointed a deacon to "speak" on behalf of the dead pope, accusing him of usurping the papacy and violating canon law. Of course, the corpse didn’t respond, and the trial ended with Formosus being found guilty.

The punishment? His three fingers of benediction were cut off, his body stripped of its sacred garments, and then thrown into the Tiber River.

This grotesque event shocked even the medieval public. Pope Stephen VI was soon imprisoned and later strangled to death — possibly as a result of backlash from the scandal.

The Church later annulled the trial and declared it invalid, but the event remains one of the most surreal in papal history — a reminder that even the sacred isn’t immune from medieval madness.