January, in the year 897. A courtroom in Rome. In the defendant's chair sits a pope who has been dead for nine months. His name was Formosus. The reigning pope ordered the body pulled from its tomb, dressed in full vestments, and propped upright for trial. Church law required that a defendant answer, so the synod supplied a voice: a junior deacon stood beside the throne and replied to the prosecution on the dead man's behalf. The court convicted the corpse, stripped the vestments from it, cut the three blessing fingers from the right hand, and threw what remained into the Tiber. A monk fished the body from the reeds and kept it hidden until saner men could bury it again.
