Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/184

ADRIAN damages wrought by the Iconoclastic storms. In the year 787 he presided, through his legates, over the Seventh General Council, held at Nicæa, in which the Catholic doctrine regarding the use and veneration of images was definitely expounded. The importance of the temporary opposition to the decrees of the Council throughout the West, caused mainly by a defective translation, aggravated by political motives, has been greatly exaggerated in modern times. The controversy elicited a strong refutation of the so-called Libri Carolini from Pope Adrian and occasioned no diminution of friendship between him and Charles. He opposed most vigorously, by synods and writings, the nascent heresy of Adoptionism, one of the few Christological errors originated by the West. The Liber Pontificalis enlarges upon his merits in embellishing the city of Rome, upon which he is said to have expended fabulous sums. He died universally regretted, and was buried in St. Peter's. His epitaph, ascribed to his lifelong friend, Charlemagne, is still extant. Rarely have the priesthood and the empire worked together so harmoniously, and with such beneficent results to the Church and to humanity, as during the lifetime of these two great rulers. The chief sources of our information as to Adrian are the Life in the Liber Pontificalis, and his letters to Charlemagne, preserved by the latter in his Codex Carolinus. Estimates of Adrian's work and character by modern historians differ with the varying views of writers regarding the temporal sovereignty of the popes, of which Adrian I must be considered the real founder.

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Adrian II, (867–872).—After the death of St. Nicholas I, the Roman clergy and people elected, much against his will, the venerable Cardinal Adrian, universally beloved for his charity and amiability, descended from a Roman family which had already given two pontiffs to the Church, Stephen III and Sergius II. Adrian was now seventy-five years old, and twice before had refused the dignity. He had been married before taking orders, and his old age was saddened by a domestic tragedy. As pope, he followed closely in the footsteps of his energetic predecessor. He strove to maintain peace among the greedy and incompetent descendants of Charlemagne. In an interview at Monte Cassino he admitted to communion the repentant King Lothair of Lorraine, after exacting from him a public oath that he had held no intercourse with his concubine since the pope's prohibition, that he would take back his lawful wife Theutberga, and abide by the final decision of the Roman See. He upheld with vigour against Hinemar of Reims the unlimited right of bishops to appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff. At the Eighth General Council, which he convened at Constantinople in 869, and presided over through ten legates, he effected the deposition of Photius and the restoration of unity between the East and the West. He was unsuccessful in retaining the Bulgarians for the western patriarchate; that nation unwisely determined to adhere to Constantinople, a course which was destined to bring upon it ruin and stagnation. Adrian saved the western Slavs from a similar fate by seconding the efforts of the saintly brothers, Cyril and Methodius. Of enduring influence, for good or evil, was the endorsement he gave to their rendering of the liturgy in the Slavonic tongue. Adrian died towards the close of the year 872.

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Adrian III, of Roman extraction, was elected in the beginning of the year 884, and died near Modena in the summer of the following year, while on his way to the diet summoned by Charles the Fat to determine the succession to the Empire. He was buried in the monastery of Nonantula, where his memory has ever since been held in local veneration. By decree of Pope Leo XIII the clergy of Rome and Modena celebrate his Mass and office ritu duplici on 7 September.

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Adrian IV, b. 1100 (?); d. 1 September, 1159. Very little is known about the birthplace, parentage, or boyhood of Adrian. Yet, as is usual in such cases, very various, and sometimes very circumstantial, accounts have reached us about him. Our only reliable information we owe to two writers, Cardinal Boso and John of Salisbury. The former wrote a life of Adrian, which is included in the collection of Nicolas Roselli, made Cardinal of Aragon in 1356 during the pontificate of Innocent VI. Boso's life, published by Muratori (SS. Rer. Ital. III, I 441–446) and reprinted in Migne (P.L., CLXXXVIII, 1351–60), also edited by Watterich (Vitæ Pontificum II, 323–374), and now to be read in Duchesne's edition of the Liber Pontificalis (II, 388–397; cf. proleg XXXVII–XLV), states that Boso, the author of it, was created cardinal-deacon of the title of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, was chamberlain to Adrian and in constant and familiar attendance upon him from the commencement of his apostolate. [Ciacconius says that Boso was the nephew of Adrian, but Watterich observes (op. cit. prolegomena) that he finds no proof of this.] Boso tells us that Adrian was born in England in or near the burg of St. Albans, and that he left his country and his relations in his boyhood to complete his studies, and went to Arles in France. During the vacation he visited the monastery of St. Rufus near Avignon, where he took the vows and habit of an Austin canon. After some time he was elected abbot and, going to Rome on important business connected with the monastery, was retained there by Pope Eugenius III, and made a cardinal and Bishop of Albano (1146). Matthew Paris agrees in some measure with this, for he tells us that on Adrian's applying to the abbot of St. Alban's to be received as a monk, the abbot, after examining him, found him deficient and said to him kindly: "Have patience, my son, and stay at school yet a while till you are better fitted for the position you desire." He states further that he was "a native of some hamlet under the abbey, perhaps Langley," and I may add that it is now tolerably certain that he was born at Abbot's Langley in Hertfordshire, about the year 1100; that his father was Robert Brekespear, a man of humble means, though of a decent stock; and that Adrian went abroad as a