From Here To Eternity Book

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This one Youtuber I follow released a new book that I'm thinking about getting. From Here to Eternity

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead.

With boundless curiosity and gallows humor, Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world’s funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico’s Días de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light.



Doughty contends that the American funeral industry sells a particular―and, upon close inspection, peculiar―set of “respectful” rites: bodies are whisked to a mortuary, pumped full of chemicals, and entombed in concrete. She argues that our expensive, impersonal system fosters a corrosive fear of death that hinders our ability to cope and mourn. By comparing customs, she demonstrates that mourners everywhere respond best when they help care for the deceased, and have space to participate in the process.

She has a very vast knowledge of the dead and discusses very interesting things, like, The Trial of The Corpse Pope



Oh, and I really like her Iconic Corpse series:

Eva Peron


She also covers Rosalie Lombardo, Vladimir Lenin, and Lady Dai

What do you guys think? Should I break down and buy her new book?

[Deleted]

Certainly sounds fascinating and, in my experience, addresses that problem our culture has with death.

I may break down and buy it, too.

[Deleted]

I had a credit on Amazon, so I went ahead and bought it.

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Oct 15, 2017 16:26:40 GMT @pony said:

I had a credit on Amazon, so I went ahead and bought it.

Uh! Lucky, I have to wait 'til I deposit my check. LOL. I'm hoping my sister might buy it before me and save me the money 

[Deleted]

Shoot me your address in PM. I'll send it to you when I'm done with it.

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2017 17:33:51 GMT @pony said:

Shoot me your address in PM. I'll send it to you when I'm done with it.

Are you sure? Because if you like to hold onto your books I can buy my own. If you're a read it and pass it on kind of person then that'd be cool. I'm a bit of a book horder, at least with nonfiction, I like to refer back to things I've read.

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Oct 15, 2017 18:49:35 GMT @toni said:

Oct 15, 2017 17:33:51 GMT @pony said:

Shoot me your address in PM. I'll send it to you when I'm done with it.

Are you sure? Because if you like to hold onto your books I can buy my own. If you're a read it and pass it on kind of person then that'd be cool. I'm a bit of a book horder, at least with nonfiction, I like to refer back to things I've read.

There are books I like to hang on to, and there are books I like to pass along.

I have to do more of the latter, though, because I read a lot. A LOT. As in, we have a $200 credit at the used book store, because every six months or so, we weed out books and run the boxes of books over to the store.

Please, let me share the book with you.

[Deleted]

Oct 15, 2017 20:45:44 GMT @pony said:

Oct 15, 2017 18:49:35 GMT @toni said:

Are you sure? Because if you like to hold onto your books I can buy my own. If you're a read it and pass it on kind of person then that'd be cool. I'm a bit of a book horder, at least with nonfiction, I like to refer back to things I've read.

There are books I like to hang on to, and there are books I like to pass along.

I have to do more of the latter, though, because I read a lot. A LOT. As in, we have a $200 credit at the used book store, because every six months or so, we weed out books and run the boxes of books over to the store.

Please, let me share the book with you.

Sweeeeet! My sister and I have to weed out books every now and again. I can't part with my nonfiction. I should brag and show it to you sometime When we do get rid of books, we like to use Bookmooch.com. I'd rather we gave them to the used book store and got credit for it, but we have no used book store around us. How Bookmooch works is if we want to get rid of a book, we put it in our inventory. If someone wants the book then they request that we send it. We have to pay the shipping to send it, but we get 1 point in return which we can 'spend' on any book we want. Unfortunately they don't usually have the books that I want.

Let me double check with Dad that it's okay to give our address. If it's cool with him, you'll get a PM.

[Ozarks Tom]

@toni, You don't have to worry about Pony, she's a licensed Psychopath Psychologist.

[Deleted]

Yes, I've read about Pope Stephen VI's infamous Cadaver Synod of 897 several times over the years, the first being through a book owned by my mother.

You might find this interesting:

5 Prominent People Put On Trial After Their Death

Three of them were exhumed and "punished" (John Wycliffe, St Thomas à Becket, and, of course, Pope Formosus).

Source: listverse.com/2008/06/20/5-prominent-people-put-on-trial-after-their-death/

[Deleted]

More on:

The Cadaver Synod: When a Pope’s Corpse Was Put on Trial

BY ELIZABETH HARPER

MARCH 03, 2014

Basilica of St. John Lateran (via Wikimedia)

ROMAN CHURCHES USUALLY AREN’T SHY about their macabre histories. At Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte a nun will be happy to let you photograph their crypt of abandoned bodies in exchange for a small donation. At Santa Prassede a sacristan will give you a pamphlet and helpfully point out the well where St. Praxedis and St. Pudentiana poured the blood that seeped out of the three thousand bodies of martyrs they were hiding. At the famous Capuchin crypt you can even buy postcards of the mummified monks to send to dear friends or enemies.

But if you go to the Basilica San Giovanni Laterano looking for such morbid attractions, you’ll find you’re on your own. What happened there over one thousand years ago is still too horrible to speak of. This is the church where Pope Stephen VI put the rotting corpse of Pope Formosus on trial in January of 897.

The trial was called the Cadaver Synod or Synodus Horrenda (since everything is more colorful in Latin). It ushered in one of the most corrupt eras in the history of the papacy, a time that’s now referred to in all seriousness as the pornocracy.

Basilica San Giovanni Laterano (photograph by Rafel Miro)

To understand what happened to Pope Formosus’s unfortunate corpse, you have to understand that the world around him was falling apart. The western empire Charlemagne had united had since crumbled away into smaller and smaller factions. Little fiefdoms were eyeing Rome’s treasures and demanding protection money while the city was still smarting from the Saracen sack of 846. Rifts formed within the church as the men who aspired to be pope found they needed the additional strength of one of the many secular leaders to achieve it.

The story of the corpse trial actually starts during the reign of Pope John VIII. At this time, Formosus was bishop of Porto (the Roman suburb, not the city in Portugal). He was also a successful missionary, known for spreading Catholicism throughout the Bulgar kingdom. But he might have been a little too good at his job. Pope John VIII turned on Formosus and accused him of violating a law that prevented bishops from ruling over more than one place at a time — a law that was supposed to prevent bishops from building up their own little fiefdoms. And perhaps more tellingly, John accused Formosus of violating a recently passed law that forbid openly aspiring to the papacy. Formosus was getting a little too close for comfort, so John had him excommunicated.

Detail of the Basilica San Giovanni Laterano (photograph by Rafel Miro)

As it turned out, John’s paranoia was justified. He was the first pope to be murdered by his own people. At first he was poisoned, but the poisoner lost patience waiting for the potion to take effect and bashed John’s head in with a hammer. After John’s death the papacy had such a high turnover rate, it’s a wonder anyone wanted the job at all. Marinus I succeed John and re-instated Formosus as bishop. The following year Pope St. Adrian III succeeded Marinus, but barely lasted a year before being assassinated himself. Pope Stephen V followed shortly thereafter.

Finally in 891, it was Formosus’ turn. He managed to hold on to the papacy for five turbulent years before dying of a stroke. His successor, Boniface VI, was elected quickly to squelch riots, but he was an odd choice — he had been defrocked twice for “immoral conduct.” He only ruled for 15 days before he died of either gout or poisoning (again).

Next up was Pope Stephen VI. Less than a year into his papacy, he gave the order to dig up Formosus and force his corpse to stand trial for crimes Pope John VIII had excommunicated him for: seeking the papacy and ruling over more than one place a time as bishop.

Now Stephen VI’s reason for desecrating this poor corpse could have been to shore up some political alliances with a faction that hated Formosus, but more than likely it was to cover for the fact that Stephen was guilty of the exact same things he was accusing Formosus of. Formosus had made Stephen bishop, and Stephen had become bishop of Rome (a title that comes with the papacy) while he still held that post. But if Formosus could be found guilty of that same crime (being a simultaneous bishop of two places), his actions would be null and Stephen wouldn’t have been a bishop when he was elected pope. Stephen also might have been completely insane.

Jean-Paul Laurens, “Pope Formosus and Stephen VI - The Cadaver Synod” (1870) (via Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes)

So the corpse of Formosus was dragged out, dressed in papal robes, and propped up in a chair at San Giovanni Laterano. Ironically, poor Formosus’s name means “good looking” though by then he was a horrific sight. A deacon was appointed to speak for him, but predictably didn’t say much while Stephen screamed at the corpse. At one point in the trial an earthquake shook the basilica, damaging part of it. But even in the face of this ominous sign, Formosus was found guilty on all counts, stripped of his vestments, and had the three fingers he used for blessing on his right hand chopped off.

Stephen had him buried on an obscure plot of land, but then, thinking better of it, had him dug up one more time and tossed in the Tiber. At this point the people of Rome had just about enough of Stephen and his corpse trial. A mob threw him in prison where he was strangled in his cell. Later that year, San Giovanni Laterano was nearly destroyed by a fire as if to rid itself of the whole nasty business...

[More At Source]

Source: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-cadaver-synod

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Since this is under Book Reviews, the following looks like an excellent resource, one I am planning on acquiring.

The Bad Popes

by E.R. Chamberlin (1994)


www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0880291168/atlaobsc01-20

www.goodreads.com/book/show/638250.The_Bad_Popes

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Oh, I also recommend this site, if any of you have not yet discovered it.

Atlas Obscura: www.atlasobscura.com/

They also have a daily email newsletter to which I have been subscribed for some time. I wish I had more time to explore it all.

[Deleted]

Oct 16, 2017 3:26:28 GMT Ozarks Tom said:

@toni , You don't have to worry about Pony, she's a licensed Psychopath Psychologist.

The terms are not necessarily mutually exclusive. BWAHahahahahaha!

(oh, and though technically I am a psychologist, as in "one who studies the mind," legally I am a psychotherapist, and my license is LCSW. Had a friend get in trouble for using the term "psychologist" two weeks before she graduated her doctoral program. Some people are so picky....)