STOEP CHAT

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20 April 2023

Creepy Corpses and Other Tales

What is it about macabre tales that makes them both repulsive and fascinang?

I have no idea, but I thought I would share some of these with you – light relief from loadshedding, corrupon and sewage in our rivers!

I came across these strange tales about cadavers while I was looking online for something quite different, which oen happens to me. Too curious.

One of the weirder tales is set in the Vacan over 1000 years ago. In 891 a cardinal called Formosus was elected pope and held this posion unl he died in 896. About nine months aer he died, Pope Stephen VI ruled that Formosus had to be placed on trial for alleged crimes during his lifeme.

So he had Formosus’ body dug up, dressed the decaying corpse in the finery of papal investments and put the body on a throne. There must have been quite a snk.

Pope Stephen proceeded to hold a kind of trial – later called the Cadaver Synod – where he accused the corpse of various wrongdoings during his life. Of course the corpse sat silent in the “trial”, so a deacon had to call out his answers, prepared in advance. The corpse was found guilty, his elecon as pope declared invalid, and his body thrown into the River Tiber

A plucky monk retrieved his body and Formosus was later reburied in St Peter’s Basilica. Who knows what that was all about, but apparently it backfired on old Pope Stephen because there was a violent uprising against him and he was chucked into prison where he died.

Then there was Catherine of Valois who was married to Henry V, king of England. When she died in 1437, her body was embalmed and buried in a Westminster Abbey chapel. When the chapel was to be rebuilt, her embalmed body was exhumed and put into an open coffin next to Henry V’s tomb. That is creepy enough, but it gets worse.

You’ve all heard of Samuel Pepys, who kept a detailed diary of his life and mes in London during the 1660s. Well it turns out that he had a fancy for Catherine’s embalmed corpse, and as a birthday gi he was given permission to kiss Catherine’s 200-year-old corpse. Pepys wrote: “I had the upper part of her body in my hands and I did kiss her mouth.”

Can you believe it?

Skipping a few centuries to the 1970s, we come to the tale of Charlie Chaplin’s corpse. Two men, both mechanics, decided that they could make a bit of money from Charlie’s corpse. In 1978 they dug him up where he was buried in Switzerland, phoned his widow and demanded $60,000 ransom for the return of the body She refused.

They were persistent and phoned several mes. Finally, the cops got involved, tapped her phone and had people monitoring all 200 public phone boxes in the area. The men were arrested and Charlie’s body recovered.

Strange old world isn’t it?

Perhaps it’s best to have your body cremated: saves space, doesn’t pollute underground water, and nobody can mess around with it.