A Prison for the Dead--a Trial for the Departed, 897

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2438

Biographies and histories and other sorts of lit can essentially place a dead person on trial, to a degree, but generally not so far in that there are legal ramifications. As much as can be written and presented against a person their body will not be dug up and place in prison, though this does have a certain Borges/Chinese Hell Scroll quality to it. If it was the case that people could be dug up and brought to the legal bar, I guess that everyone would opt out for cremation, unless that was made illegal. It seems half-a-miracle that with the threat of eternal damnation in the minds of billions of people, that there is no threat to the consequences of ill-spent life in death.

Depiction of the synod by Jean-Paul Laurens, 1870. Source: Wikicommons.

There is a very famous case of this, however, and at a very high level.

The weird and fanatical--and fatal--issue of the Cadaver Synod of 897 is the case in point. A probably-unbalanced Pope Stephen VI decided upon retribution of his predecessor Pope Formosus, and for various reasons (examined in many place, but a decent article on the matter is found in Wiki, here) had his positively-dead corpse exhumed and brought in for trial. The poor dead pontiff was dressed up in pope-finery and placed on a throne, and was heaped with insult and perfidy at the end of which came a guilty verdict. His appointments as pope were annulled, plus other stuff, and he was taken to the Tiber and tossed in, though it would have been more interesting for the pope to have been imprisoned. 

It was an action that made Pope Stephen very seriously unpopular, which led relatively quickly to his being deposed, and then imprisoned, and then to being strangled to death in prison, all of which happened in less than a year's time.

A new synod was called the debunked and refuted the Cadaver Synod, and the finding and records of which were overturned and burned. Formosus' body was evidently recovered (and recovered enough to have been reported doing miraculous/miracle-making things) and returned to its original place of burial.

Also the possibility of bringing dead people to court was discarded.

Given the Human Condition it might be possible that there would be more dead people in prison than in the ground--depending on the possible payoff of dead litigation.  Given the new fascination with zombies, I guess that dead prisons are possible, at least in tv land.