ADRIAN IV. (Nicholas Breakspear), pope from 1154 to the only Englishman who has occupied the papal chair, was born before A.D. I roo at Langley, near St. Albans, in Hertfordshire. Nicholas went to Paris and became a monk of the cloister of St. Rufus, near Arles. He rose to be prior, and in 1137 was unani mously elected abbot. Eugenius III. created him cardinal bishop of Albano. From 1152 to 1154 Nicholas was in Scandinavia as legate, organizing the affairs of the new Norwegian archbishopric of Trondhjem, and arranging for the recognition of Uppsala as a metropolitan see in 1164. Nicholas was elected pope on Dec. 4, 1154. He at once endeavoured to compass the overthrow of Arnold of Brescia, the leader of anti-papal sentiment in Rome.
Disorders ending with the murder of a cardinal led Adrian, shortly before Palm Sunday 1155, to put Rome under the interdict. The senate thereupon exiled Arnold, and the pope, with the co-opera tion of Frederick I. Barbarossa, was instrumental in procuring his execution. Adrian crowned the emperor at St. Peter's on June 18, 1155, a ceremony which so incensed the Romans that the pope had to leave the city for some months. At the diet of Besancon in Oct. 1157, the legates presented to Barbarossa a letter from Adrian which alluded to the beneficia conferred upon the emperor, and the German chancellor translated this beneficia in the feudal sense. In the storm which ensued the legates were glad to escape with their lives, and the incident at length closed with a letter from the pope, declaring that by beneficium he meant merely bonum factum. The breach subsequently widened, and Adrian was about to excommunicate the emperor when he died at Anagnia on Sept. I, 1159.
In 1155 Henry II. of England sent an embassy to Adrian to ask for permission to invade and subjugate Ireland, in order to gain absolute ownership of that isle. Unwilling to grant a request counter to the papal claim (based on the forged Donation of Constantine) to dominion over the islands of the sea, Adrian pro posed that the king should become hereditary feudal possessor of Ireland while recognizing the pope as overlord. This compromise did not satisfy Henry, so the matter dropped; Henry's subsequent title to Ireland rested on conquest, not on papal concession, and was therefore absolute. The much-discussed bull Laudabiliter is, however, not genuine.
See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, 3rd ed. (excellent bibliog raphy), and Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed. under "Hadrian IV." ; also Oliver J. Thatcher, Studies concerning Adrian IV. Chicago, 1903) ; R. Raby, Pope Adrian IV.; An Historical Sketch (London, 1849) ; and A. H. Tarleton, Life of Nicholas Breakspear (London, 1896).