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How a Murder Solved a Theological Debate · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're in Rome, January 897.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of winter day where the sun never really shows its face.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: The streets are muddy.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: The air is sharp but wet.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of cold that sinks into your bones.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not alone.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: The roads are filling.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bakers are closing their shops early.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: You see monks in coarse wool robes, merchants with their rough hands.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is walking the same direction.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: People are passing ancient stone walls, still scarred from old sieges.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: A dog darts between your legs.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The smell of wood, smoke hangs in the air.
• 0:46
  And all of it,
• 0:47
  every step,
• 0:48
  every quiet glance leads towards the same place.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Lateran Basilica.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Usually,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: this is a place of celebration,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: coronations,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: mass,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: the scent of incense and fresh flowers.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But not today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Inside, it's dim.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Candles flicker against high arches,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: the air is heavy with incense,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: and something else,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: a cold,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: sour smell beneath the perfume.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: All eyes face the front, and that's when you see it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where the Pope should be sitting is a corpse.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not a metaphor.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: An actual corpse.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Propped up in a chair,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: wearing white papal robes,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: a tall tiara rests quickly on his decaying head.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The trial is about to begin.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the cadaver Sidnan.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: One of the strangest moments in church history.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: A pope on trial, months after his death.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like a plot of a dark political satire,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: something that Jean-Paul Sartre would write.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But this wasn't.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't medieval theater for theater's sake.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: This was about power,
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: revenge,
• 1:53
  and a theological question that the church had been wrestling
• 1:55
  with for centuries.
• 1:57
  A question so important that when the trial ended and the pope
• 2:00
  who ordered it was
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: murdered,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: the answer would shape Christian life for over a thousand years.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: To understand why a dead pope ended up in court, we have to go back.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not just a few years, but hundreds.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The early church had faced persecution that was brutal and relentless.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Christians were dragged from their homes, beaten, imprisoned, executed.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: But not all stood firm.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some priests and bishops, they handed over sacred scrolls to be burned.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some offered incense to Roman gods in exchange for their lives.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some betrayed the name of fellow believers.
• 2:32
  And when the persecution ended,
• 2:33
  these same clergy wanted to return to ministry.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a problem.
• 2:38
  If a priest had denied Christ,
• 2:40
  could his baptism still be considered valid?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: If a bishop had been a coward under pressure,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: was the Eucharist he served still truly the body and blood of Christ?
• 2:50
  It became one of the greatest controversies of the early
• 2:52
  church,
• 2:54
  the Donatist controversy.
• 2:56
  And the Donatists argued,
• 2:57
  the purity of the church depends on the purity of its leaders.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: If a minister is corrupt, their ministry is null and void.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: They must be replaced and their sacraments done over.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: But Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, disagreed.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine this is sort of like a courtroom.
• 3:11
  The Donatist on one side,
• 3:13
  holding up a priest's betrayal as if it's evidence in their
• 3:15
  trial.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Donatist prosecution,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: your honor,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: this man denied Christ,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: his hands are unclean,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: any baptism he performed is contaminated,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: void.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then Augustine, leaning forward, his voice calmer.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: If that's true, then none of us are safe.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: For every minister is a sinner.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The sacraments do not depend on the worthiness of the one who gives them.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: They depend on the grace of the one they point to.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Augustine's side won the case.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: The church declared the validity of a sacrament rests on God's promises,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: not the minister's performance.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: But like all three debates, it didn't stay settled.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It would resurface whenever the church faced scandal.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the 9th century, scandal was brewing.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Europe was fractured.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: The once mighty Carolingian Empire was collapsing.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: The papacy was in constant turnover.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Popes rose and fell like the seasons.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And into this chaos stepped for Moses.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Before becoming Pope, he was a talented diplomat.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He brokered peace between warring kings.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: He could navigate politics with almost the supernatural skill—
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But diplomacy in that age was dangerous,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: and his decisions,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: while it made him allies,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: it also made him enemies.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And his worst enemies accused him of breaking canon law,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: of seeking the papacy unlawfully,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: even of treason.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when they couldn't get him while he was alive, they waited.
• 4:39
  Formosus died in 896,
• 4:41
  and his immediate successor lasted only 15 days before dying
• 4:45
  himself.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then came Pope Stephen VI.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen had deep ties to Formosus' political rivals,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: and he was about to put on a spectacle Rome would never forget.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So seven months after from Moses' death, Stephen had his body dug up.
• 5:03
  Corpse was dressed in papal robes,
• 5:06
  a tiara placed on his head,
• 5:08
  set on a throne.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: A deacon was assigned to defend him,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But Stephen himself shouted the charges,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: perjury,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: violating church law,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: illegally seizing the papacy.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the trial lasted days.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, well, for Moses was declared guilty.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: His vestments were stripped away.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: The three fingers used to bless were cut off.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: His body was dragged through the streets and thrown into the river.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Stephen's goal, it wasn't just humiliation.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't simply about dragging a rival's name through the mud.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was theological.
• 5:40
  Because in the 9th century,
• 5:41
  theology and politics weren't separate arenas.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were two sides of the same coin.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if Stephen could prove that for Moses had never been a true pope,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: then every single act of his papacy could be nullified.
• 5:54
  That meant every bishop that he had ordained would be
• 5:56
  considered illegitimate.
• 5:58
  And if those bishops were illegitimate,
• 6:00
  then every priest they had ordained were also invalid.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if those priests were invalid,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: then every baptism,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: every marriage,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: every Eucharist they had performed could be declared void.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, think about that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: In a time when sacraments were not just religious symbols,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: but the visible lifeline of salvation,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: this would have sent shockwaves across the Christian world.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: People would have woken up to find their marriage suddenly non-existent.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: in the eyes of the church.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Children thought to be baptized might need to be baptized again.
• 6:29
  Priests serving in towns and villages,
• 6:31
  they could be stripped of their roles overnight.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: This was the Donatist question, but it was back with a vengeance.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Centuries earlier,
• 6:37
  Augustine had fought against this idea that the worthiness of
• 6:40
  the minister
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: determined the validity of the sacrament.
• 6:43
  He had insisted that the sacrament's power came from God,
• 6:45
  not from the human who performed it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen, in effect, was taking the dawn to his side.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was using the old logic to weaponize theology against his enemies.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a doctrinal argument being used as a political sledgehammer.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And for Stephen, the beauty of it was he didn't just discredit his rival.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It retroactively unraveled the entire legacy.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But Stephen...
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: had miscalculated.
• 7:11
  What he thought was a brilliant maneuver,
• 7:13
  the Roman people saw as a grotesque sacrilege.
• 7:17
  The sight of a dead pope,
• 7:18
  dressed in sacred robes,
• 7:19
  propped up and mocked before a council.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: It crossed a line even in an age accustomed to public brutality.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So whispers in the streets, they turn to shouting.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Shouting soon turned to fury.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Soon crowds surged against the papal palace.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen was dragged, stripped of his office, and thrown into prison.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: A few months later, his political allies gone and his enemies closing in.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was found dead, strangled in his cell.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: The new pope, Theodore II, annulled the cadaver Sidnon.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: For Moses' body was recovered from the river and reburied with honor.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: More importantly,
• 7:54
  the church once again declared the validity of a sacrament does
• 7:57
  not depend on the
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: moral character of the minister.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism by a corrupt priest was still baptism.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Communion from a sinful bishop is still Christ's body and blood.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think that's just a medieval curiosity,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, think again, because this question still comes up.
• 8:11
  When a pastor today is caught in scandal,
• 8:13
  people ask,
• 8:13
  was my baptism real?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did my marriage vows count?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Did I really know God?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer the church gave over a thousand years ago still stands.
• 8:21
  Your faith,
• 8:22
  it rests on Christ,
• 8:23
  not the unbroken record of a human minister.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the good news of grace.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel doesn't collapse when a human messenger fails.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because grace is not chained to the hands that give it.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: The cadaver synod still feels like a bad dream.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: but it left the church with something solid,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: a reminder that God's mercy will not rot in the ground.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Jordan.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Theology Made.