A pope put his predecessor's corpse on trial nine months after it was buried

In January 897, Pope Stephen VI had the exhumed body of Pope Formosus dressed in papal vestments and propped up in court to answer charges of perjury and violating canon law. The corpse was found guilty, stripped, mutilated, and thrown into the Tiber. Stephen himself was deposed and strangled in prison within the year, and the episode is remembered as one of the lowest points of the medieval papacy.

— Liutprand of Cremona (contemporary chronicler), Cadaver Synod — Antapodosis, 10th century