Adrian IV
Pope from 1154 to 1159 · United Kingdom · On the map · Religious Figures
The only Englishman to ever hold the papacy. Nicholas Breakspear - born somewhere in Hertfordshire around 1100 - rose from obscure beginnings to the throne of St. Peter, where he spent five years locked in a losing fight with the Holy Roman Emperor and the chaos of 12th-century Rome.
Adrian IV is read about 520 times a day, in 78 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
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Photos 11
St Albans Abbey, now a Cathedral, pictured in 2005
Trondheim Cathedral
Medieval Rome; the Leonine City is to the northwest of the city, outside the Leonine Wall (in blue)
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, as depicted in a 12th-century chronicle
Map of 12th-century Italy, illustrating the respective boundaries between the Papal States and Patrimony and those claimed by King William and Emperor Frederick![Charter of Pope Adrian IV, also beginning Adrianus eps servus servorum dei, dated the Lateran, 30 March 1156. Note the Papal monogram, Bene Valete, bottom-right-hand corner.[200]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/K.._MOM-Bilddateien._~StiASG2jpgweb._~StiASG_1155~11559999_TTT2%28II%29-Nr3_r.jpg/1280px-K.._MOM-Bilddateien._~StiASG2jpgweb._~StiASG_1155~11559999_TTT2%28II%29-Nr3_r.jpg)
Charter of Pope Adrian IV, also beginning Adrianus eps servus servorum dei, dated the Lateran, 30 March 1156. Note the Papal monogram, Bene Valete, bottom-right-hand corner.[200]About this person
Breakspear left England as a youth for France, studied law in Arles, and joined the Abbey of Saint-Ruf near Avignon, eventually becoming abbot. His monks complained he was too strict a disciplinarian, so Pope Eugene III made him Bishop of Albano around 1149 and sent him to Scandinavia, where he reorganized the Norwegian church during a civil war and left Sweden to chroniclers calling him a saint. He returned to Rome in 1154 just after Eugene's successor died, and the cardinals - for reasons now lost - elected him pope. Adrian restored papal authority in a city considered a den of heresy and republicanism, but his relations with the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I collapsed over a series of grievances, pushing him into an alliance with Byzantium that came to nothing when the Normans crushed Manuel I and forced Adrian to terms at Benevento. He died at Anagni in September 1159, leaving behind a 22-year schism and a reign scholars still argue over - brief, besieged, but managed with a competence his circumstances never rewarded.
