In the year 897, the body of Pope Formosus was dug up, dressed in papal robes, propped on a throne, and put on trial before a room full of bishops in Rome. A deacon was appointed to speak on the corpse's behalf. The verdict was decided before the first word was spoken.

Host Shawn Spainhour takes you into the unstable world of the ninth-century papacy — the collapse of Carolingian power, the Roman noble families pulling strings behind the throne, and the bitter rivalry that drove Pope Stephen VI to put a dead man on trial. This wasn't madness for its own sake. It was a calculated act of political erasure, an attempt to unmake a pope's entire legacy and rewrite the authority of the Church itself.

The episode also covers the aftermath: the outrage that swept Rome, Stephen's own violent downfall, and the question of what bodies, relics, a ...