Posthumous execution - Definition and Overview

Posthumous execution is the ritual execution of an already dead body.

Examples include:

• 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.

• John Wyclif (1328 - 1384), who was burned as a heretic 12 years after he died.

• Vlad the Impaler (1431 - 1476), who was beheaded following his assassination.

• King Richard III of England (1452 - 1485), who was hanged by his successor King Henry VII following his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. His body was further desecrated following the dissolution of the monasteries and, according to legend, cast into the River Soar.

• Pietro Martire Vermigli (1500 - 1562), who was burned as a heretic following his death.

• Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658), English Civil War Puritan leader, whose body was exhumed by King Charles II of England and hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, before being thrown, minus its head, into a common pit. The head was finally buried in 1960. Other Parliamentarians given the same treatment were Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw.

• François Duvalier (1907 - 1971), Haitian dictator, whose body was exhumed and ritually beaten to 'death' in 1986.