AH Challenge: Make Cadaver Synods common

[ArKhan]

Is it possible for the practice of Popes digging up dead former popes and putting them on show trial to become a common practise in the Roman Catholic Church?

 

[iddt3]

Perhaps if the protestant reformation stayed internal to the church, and traditionalists and reformers traded off the papacy, with each successive pope digging up his predecessor and putting him on trail. Would be pretty absurd I think after the 2nd or third time.

 

[Roger II]

Uh, a custom of mummifying poples or other prominent religious figures is introduced somehow? That's probably difficult at best but it's the only way around the obvious "digging up smelly dead people gets old after a while" problem.

 

[Pesterfield]

I wonder, instead of trial is there anyway to get them used for advice instead?

Upon death Popes are mummified, then the current Pope uses them as advisors like the Inca did.

 

[ArKhan]

Maybe it'd be an entirly bureaucratic thing? A pope makes a proclimation that's in contridiction to an earlier pope. Since popes are infallible, the current pope has to dig up any pope that disagrees with him, put him on trail, find him guilty, and then declare his papacy and all his proclimations invalid, and therefore not infallible. The current pope can then go ahead with his reforms.

 

[Space Oddity]

The problem with that is that papal infabillity is a fairly recent doctrine that likes to masquerade as a very old one.

 

[Antipater]

Probably not. The one instance of a "Cadaver Synod" put the Pope Stephen VII in a very poor position. It was clearly a political move to annul the old Pope's decision, however the method selected, i.e. putting the former Pope's dead body on trial was considered abhorrent by contemporaries. Pope Stephen actually found himself quickly deposed and strangled in a cell for the infamous deed.

The spectacle of trying a dead body simply put cast the current Pope, and to some extent the Papacy into disrepute. Even if a less macabre method was used, subjecting a predessesor to a post-mortem show trial would only undermine the Papacy.

The only other times I can see something like that happening would be with the body of one of the anti-Popes who managed to die before the rightful Pope managed to overthrow him. For example, if anti-Pope John XXIII died in 1415 before being formally deposed, his successor might feel the need to degrade him even if he was already dead.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

This would be the end of the Roman-Catholic Church. The Reformation would be much more successful because many catholics found this practice disgusting. Thus many more would follow, Luther, Calvin etc.

 

[Space Oddity]

The only other times I can see something like that happening would be with the body of one of the anti-Popes who managed to die before the rightful Pope managed to overthrow him. For example, if anti-Pope John XXIII died in 1415 before being formally deposed, his successor might feel the need to degrade him even if he was already dead.

While I generally agree with your post, I have to note that there was NO way that would have happened with John XXIII--he was an anti-pope during the height of the Western Schism, and the council that threw out--which he called--declared him AND the other two claimants anti-popes. Then set up a new claimant.

Simply put, in the scenario you're talking about, nobody's going to have the authority to do anything of the kind. (Hell, in point of fact, IOTL, the Church had to deal with something of a backlash to how shabbily he'd been treated.)