Adrian

ADRIAN: Author of an extant Introduction to the Holy Scriptures, written in Greek. He was evidently a Greek-speaking Syrian; but nothing is to be learned of his life from the book. There is no doubt, however, that he is identical with the monk and presbyter Adrian to whom St. Nilus addressed three letters (ii. 60, iii. 118, 266, in MPG, lxxix. 225-227, 437, 516-517), and who lived in the first half of the fifth century. This work is no introduction in the modern sense, but a piece of Biblical rhetoric and didactics, aiming to explain the figurative phraseology of the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, from numerous examples. It closes with hints for correct exegesis. The hermeneutical and exegetical principles of the author are those of the Antiochian school. F. Gössling edited the Greek text with German translation and an introduction (Berlin, 1887).

G. Krüger.

Bibliography: A. Merx, Rede vom Auslegen, pp. 64-67, Halle, 1879.

Adrian

ADRIAN: The name of six popes.

Adrian I.: Pope 772-795. A Roman of noble birth, he entered the clerical state under Paul I., and was ordained deacon by Stephen III., whom he succeeded Feb. 1, 772, not, apparently, by as unanimous a choice as the official record of his election asserts; for soon afterward he encountered vehement opposition from the Lombard party in Rome led by Paul Afiarta. His adherence to the Frankish faction, his hesitation to crown the sons of Karlman, who had fled to Pavia, and thus to set them up as pretenders against Charlemagne, and the imprisonment of Afiarta by Archbishop Leo of Ravenna at his orders incited the Lombard king Desiderius to invade the Roman territory, and finally to march on Rome itself. Adrian appealed for help to Charlemagne, who arrived in Italy in Sept., 773, and forced Desiderius to shut himself up in Pavia.

Aided by Charlemagne.

During the siege of that town, which lasted till the following June, Charlemagne suddenly appeared unannounced in Rome. Adrian, though alarmed, gave him a brilliant reception. On Apr. 6 a meeting took place in St. Peter’s, at which, according to the Vita Hadriani, the emperor was exhorted by the pope to confirm the donation of his father, Pepin, and did so, even making some additions of territory. This donation, which rests solely upon the authority of the Vita 51 (xli.-xliii.), if substantiated, has a great importance for the development of the temporal sovereignty of the popes. The question has received much attention, and its literature is scarcely exceeded in bulk by that of any other medieval controversy. No sure and universally recognized result, however, has been reached. Some modern historians (Sybel, Ranke, Martens) consider the story a pure invention; others (Ficker, Duchesne) accept it; and a middle theory of partial interpolation has also been upheld (Scheffer-Boichorst). All that can be maintained with certainty is that Charlemagne gave a promise of a donation, and the geographical delimitations give rise to difficult problems.

Disagreements with Charlemagne.

In the years immediately following Charlemagne’s return from Italy, his friendly relations with Adrian were disturbed by more than one occurrence. Archbishop Leo of Ravenna seized some cities from the pope, who complained to Charlemagne; but Leo visited the Frankish court to defend himself, and met with a not unfavorable reception. Charlemagne’s keen insight can not have failed to read imperfectly masked covetousness between the lines of Adrian’s repeated requests for the final fulfilment of the promise of 774; e.g., in the hope held out of a heavenly reward if he should enlarge the Church’s possessions; in the profuse congratulations on his victory over the Saxons, which was attributed to the intercession of St. Peter, grateful for the restitution of his domain; in the comparison drawn by Adrian between Charlemagne and “the most God-fearing emperor Constantine the Great,” who “out of his great liberality exalted the Church of God in Rome and gave her power in Hesperia [Italy]”—expressions which have caused a subordinate controversy as to whether the so-called Donation of Constantine is referred to. How far Adrian’s consciousness of his own importance had grown is evident from the fact that while in the beginning of his reign he had dated his public documents by the years of the Greek emperors, from the end of 781 he dated them by the years of his own pontificate.

Charlemagne Again Helps.

Yet Adrian could not afford to despise the Greeks; they joined the Lombard dukes of Benevento and Spoleto, and forced him once more to turn for help to Charlemagne, who made a short descent into Italy in 776, put down the revolt of the duke of Friuli against both him and the pope, but did nothing more until 780. In 781 he visited Rome again when his sons were anointed as kings—Pepin of Italy and Louis of Aquitaine. Charlemagne came to Italy for the fourth time in 786 to crush Arichis of Benevento, and Adrian succeeded in obtaining from him additional territory in southern Italy. But various misunderstandings in Adrian’s last years gave rise to a report that Charlemagne and Offa of Mercia had taken counsel together with a view to the pope’s deposition. The iconoclastic controversy (see Images and Image-worship, II., § 3) brought fresh humiliations from Charlemagne and from the Greek emperor Constantine VI. and his mother, the empress Irene. When the last-named was taking steps to restore the veneration of images in the Eastern Church she requested Adrian to be present in person at a general council soon to be held, or at least to send suitable legates (785). In his reply, after commending Irene and her son for their determination respecting the images, Adrian asked for a restitution of the territory taken from the Roman see by the iconoclastic emperor Leo III. in 732, as well as of its patriarchal rights in Calabria, Sicily, and the Illyrian provinces which Leo had suppressed. At the same time he renewed the protest made by Gregory the Great against the assumption of the title of universalis patriarcha by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Council of Nicæa in 787.

When, however, the council met at Nicæa in 787, while it removed the prohibition of images, it paid no attention to any of these demands. The acts of this council, which Adrian sent to Charlemagne in 790, provoked the emperor’s vigorous opposition, and led ultimately to the drawing up of the Caroline Books, in which the position of the Frankish Church with reference to both the Roman and the Greek was made plain, and the decisions of the Council of Nicæa were disavowed. Although Adrian, after receiving a copy, took up the defense of the council with vehemence, Charlemagne had the contention of the Caroline Books confirmed at the Synod of Frankfort in 794. It may, however, have been some consolation to Adrian’s legates that the same synod publicly condemned Adoptionism, against which the Roman as well as the Frankish Church had been struggling. Adrian died not long after (Dec. 25, 795).

Throughout his long pontificate Adrian had been too exclusively dominated by the one idea of gaining as much advantage as possible in lands and privileges from the strife between the Franks and Lombards. He rendered no slight services to the city of Rome, rebuilding the walls and aqueducts, and restoring and adorning the churches. His was not a strong personality, however, and he never succeeded in exercising a dominant or even a strongly felt influence upon the policy of western Europe.

(Carl Mirbt.)

Bibliography: Vita Hadriani, in Liber pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, i. 486-523; Einhard, Vita Caroli, in MGH, Script., ii. (1829) 426-463; Vita Caroli, ed. G. Waitz, in Script, rer. Germ., 4th ed., 1830; also in Jaffé, Regesta, iv., Eng. transl. in Thatcher and McNeal, Source Book, pp. 38-45; Codicis Carolini epistolæ, in Jaffé, l.c. iv. and in MPL, xcvi.; one of Adrian’s letters, in verse, dated 774, in MGH, Poet. lat. ævi Caroli, i. (1881) 90-91; Jaffé, Regesta, i. 289-306, Leipsic, 1885; De sancto Hadriano papa I an III Nonantulæ in editione Mutinensi, in ASB, July, viii. 643-649 ; P. T. Hald, Donatio Caroli Magni, Copenhagen, 1836; T. D. Mack, De donatione a Carolo Magno, Münster, 1861; J. Ficker, Forschungen zur Reichs- und Rechts-Geschichte Italiens, ii. 329 sqq., 347 sqq., Innsbruck, 1869; A. O. Legge, Growth of the Temporal Power of the Papacy, London, 1870; W. Wattenbach, Geschichte des römischen Papstthums, pp. 47 sqq., Berlin, 1876; O. Kuhl, Der Verkehr Karls des Grossen mit Papst Hadrian I., Königsberg,1879; R. Genelin, Das Schenkungsversprechen und die Schenkung Pippins, Vienna, 1880; W. Martens, Die römische Frage unter Pippin und Karl dem Grossen, pp. 129 sqq., 368-387, Stuttgart, 1881; idem, Die Besetzung des päpstlichen Stuhles unter den Kaisern Heinrich III. und IV., Freiburg, 1886; idem, Beleuchtung der neuesten Kontroversen über die römische Frage 52 unter Pippin and Karl dem Grossen, Munich, 1898; H. von Sybel, Die Schenkungen der Karolinger an die Päpste, in Kleine historische Schriften, iii. 65-115, Stuttgart, 1881; Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, i., pp. ccxxxiv.-ccxliii., Paris, 1884; J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, ii. 22 sqq., Stuttgart, 1884; P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Pippins und Karls des Grossen Schenkungsversprechung, pp. 193-212, Innsbruck, 1884; L. von Ranke, Weltgeschichte, v., part 1, p. 117, Leipsic, 1885; S. Abel, Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reiches unter Karl dem Grossen, i. 768-788, Leipsic, 1883 (and ii. 789-814, by B. Simson, 1888), and for donation of Charlemagne, ib. i. 159 sqq.; P. Kehr, Die sogenannte karolingischen Schenkung von 774, in Sybel’s Historische Zeitschrift, lxx. (new ser., 1893) xxxiv. 385-441; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. iii.; Eng. transl., vol. v.; Hauck, KD, vol. ii.; Mann, Popes, I., vol. ii. 395-497.