Oh how I love Wikipedia, and the Catholic Church
On January 30th there needs to be a celebration of a great date in British History. The dead body of Oliver Cromwell was exhumed (along with two of his comrads) and drawn and quartered. While he was dead…
After learning this, I had to check it out on Wikipedia. Turns out it was part of the process of Posthumous execution. My favorite example is this:
Pope Formosus (died 896), whose body was exhumed by his successor, Pope Stephen VII, dressed in papal vestments and seated on a throne to undergo a “trial”, later known as the Cadaver Synod or the Synod Horrenda. Found guilty, the body was stripped, three fingers from its right hand cut off, and the corpse thrown into the Tiber.
