Church News

Midnight in the Dark

Formosus was probably a native of Rome, and must have been born about 816. The name Formosus means "good looking".

In Rome at the beginning of 897, Formosus had already been dead for about nine months when he was disinterred to  be judged by his lifetime enemy and  successor pope,  Stephen VI.     The trial issue was whether Formosus had been unworthy of the pontificate  since he was bishop of another  see.  At the trial, Stephen VI sat in the  chair as judge and opposite him sat Formosus clad in papal vestments seated on a throne. Close by stood a teenage deacon to answer for him.

Working himself into a hysterical frenzy, Stephen VI screamed and ranted against his opponent, mocking and insulting Formosus.  Occasionally he caught his breath and offered the deacon a chance for rebuttal.

Formosus was found guilty of all charges and  stripped of his papal robes.  His three right fingers used to bless people were cut off.   He was then dragged through the streets and thrown in a common grave.  After the adequate number of days he was dug up and thrown in the Tiber.

Stephen VI was strangled later that year and the new pope,  Theodore II had a monk draw  Formosus from the Tiber and after a solemn procession with honors buried him in St. Peters.

Sergius III in 904, according to some historians had Formosus exhumed for a fourth time, put to trial, found guilty and "beheaded".

Rome  1626

by Mark Twain

The Capuchin Crypt displays the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin friars collected between the years of 1528 and 1870 and fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style.

Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters had been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment, and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar to itself -- and these decorations were in every instance formed of human bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones; there were startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there were quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin bones and the bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving vines were made of knotted human vertebræ; whose delicate tendrils were made of sinews and tendons; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and toe-nails. Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in these intricate designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,) and there was a careful finish about the work, and an attention to details that betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled ability.

"Who were these people?"

"We -- up stairs -- Monks of the Capuchin order -- my brethren."

"How many departed monks were required to upholster these six parlors?"

"These are the bones of four thousand."

"It took a long time to get enough?"

"Many, many centuries."

"Their different parts are well separated -- skulls in one room, legs in another, ribs in another -- there would be stirring times here for a while if the last trumpet  should blow. Some of the brethren might get hold of the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer together than they were used to.

You can not tell any of these parties apart, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, I know many of them."

"This was Brother Alexander -- dead two hundred and eighty years.

The  monk put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo -- dead three  hundred years

This was Brother Carlo -- dead about as long."

The reflection that one must some day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose owner is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which possibly they lacked at present. 
 

What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be