In January 897, the sitting Pope screamed accusations at the nine-month-old corpse of his predecessor, propped on a throne in full papal vestments. Officially recorded as the Synodus Horrenda, the Cadaver Synod was not an act of madness but a meticulously calculated legal proceeding born of total political desperation.

This episode reconstructs the architectural, political, and theological mechanisms that made trying a dead man seem rational. We trace the rise of the brilliant diplomat Formosus, the gang-war papacy where a new pope was installed nearly every year, and the historical detective work that finally identified who really ordered the macabre spectacle.

• How the collapse of the Carolingian Empire turned the papacy into a violently contested military prize
• The canon law against "transmigrating sees" that functioned ...