



Produced by Michael Gray




POPE ADRIAN IV.

AN
HISTORICAL SKETCH.



BY RICHARD RABY.



LONDON:
THOMAS RICHARDSON AND SON,
172, FLEET STREET; 9, CAPEL STREET, DUBLIN; AND DERBY.
1849.



I. PREFACE.

The following sketch was written to supply what its author felt
persuaded could not fail to interest his fellow Catholics in England;
namely, some account of the only English Pope who ever reigned.

In it he does not pretend to any novelty of research; but simply to
present a connected narrative of such events in the history of Pope
Adrian IV. as have hitherto lain broken and concealed in old
chronicles, or been slightly touched for the most part in an
incidental way by modern writers.

In the course of his sketch, the author has ventured to take part with
Pope Adrian in some acts of his, which it is commonly the mode to
condemn. Should his opinions in so doing not be deemed sound, he yet
hopes that at least the spirit which inspired them--in other words,
the spirit to promote the cause of practical rather than theoretical
policy, as also of public order and legitimate authority, will deserve
commendation.

For the rest, the striking similarity between the difficulties which
Pius IX. in our day has to contend with, and those which Pope Adrian
had to encounter in the twelfth century, should only lend the more
interest to his story.

R. R.

_Munich, May, 1849._



POPE ADRIAN IV.
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
I.

THE information, which has come down to us respecting the early life
of the only Englishman, who ever sat on the papal throne, is so
defective and scanty, as easily to be comprised in a few paragraphs.

Nicholas Breakspere was born near St. Albans, most probably about the
close of the 11th century. His father was a clergyman, who became a
monk in the monastery of that city, while his son was yet a boy. Owing
to extreme poverty, Nicholas could not pay for his education, and was
obliged to attend the school of the monks on charity. [1] This
circumstance would seem to have put his father so painfully to the
blush, that he took an unnatural dislike to his son; whom he shortly
compelled by his threats and reproaches to flee the neighbourhood in a
state of utter destitution.

Thus cruelly cast on the world, Nicholas to settle the church in those
remote countries, where it had been planted about 150 years. The
circumstances which led to this legation were as follows:[2]--originally
the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were
spiritually subject to the archbishop of Hamburg, whose province was
then the most extensive in Christendom. In the year 1102, Denmark
succeeded, after much protracted agitation of the question, in
obtaining from Pope Paschal II., a metropolitan see of its own, which
was founded at Lund; and to whose authority Sweden and Norway were
transferred. The same feeling of national independence, which had
procured this boon for Denmark, was not long before it began to work
in those kingdoms also; and the more so as the Danish supremacy was
asserted over them with much greater rigour than had formerly been
that of Hamburg, and was otherwise repugnant to them, as emanating
from a power with which they stood in far closer political relations,
and more constant rivalry than with Germany. After some indirect
preliminary steps in the business,--which do not seem to have
forwarded it,--the kings of Sweden and Norway sent ambassadors to Pope
Eugenius III., to request for their states the same privilege which
his predecessor had granted to Denmark; and which he himself had just
extended to Ireland, in the erection of the four archbishoprics of
that