HIST-308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Autopsy, Manorialism, Arson
16 Nov 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Few of his contemporaries were much better. the dismal nature of the situation can be glimpsed from what befell those popes who came immediately before and after him: Stephen vi (896 897) was strangled while rotting in a prison cell; Benedict vi (973 974) was smothered while he slept: and john xiv (983 984) was poisoned in the papal retreat at castel sant"angelo. The dead pontiff was brought into the synod, propped up in the witness chair, convicted on all counts. then his corpse was stripped naked and thrown into the tiber river. Before throwing the body into the river, though, boniface cut off the finger on which formosus had worn the papal ring; he kept the finger as a memento of his bizarre triumph. The attack on the churches and the oppression of the poor, they proclaimed, was an offense against god and nature.
