Pope Stephen VI
Pope
- Fame62.6
- Momentum4.1
- Religious Figures rank#51
Source-basedStable
- Fame62.6
- Momentum4.1
- Religious Figures rank#51
- Wikipedia11.6K
Italy
ItalySummary
Updated 2026-06-08
He put a corpse on trial. Stephen VI dug up his predecessor, propped the body in papal robes before a church court, and condemned it — an act so grotesque it turned Rome against him and sealed his own violent end.
Biography
About
Stephen VI became bishop of Rome in May 896 and quickly set in motion one of the papacy's darkest episodes. He ordered the exhumation of Pope Formosus, dead nine months, dressed the decomposing body in full vestments, and staged a tribunal — the Cadaver Synod — to retroactively invalidate his predecessor's papacy. The spectacle horrified the city. By August 897, barely a year into his reign, the backlash caught him: Stephen was deposed, imprisoned, and killed.
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The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
Fame
Stable62.6
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum4.1
Historical23.1
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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- WikidataHigh confidencewikidata · wikidata.org
- WikipediaHigh confidencewikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Pantheon 2.0High confidencedatabase · pantheon.world
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