ADRIAN of Oudenaarde. – A Belgian Benedictine, d. at Liège c. 1482. He received the habit in the convent of St Lawrence at Liège and professed in 1441. A cantor, librarian, and later perhaps cellarer, he enjoyed great esteem. In 1470 he was attached to Guy de Humbercourt, lieutenant of Charles the Bold.
He wrote many historical works, including a Diarium up to 1468, a chronicle of Liège (1429–82), a primary historical source, and a Historia monasterii S. Laurentii Leodienis, a continuation of the chronicle of Rupert (1038–1475), edited by E. Martène in Veterum scriptorum... amplissimum collectio, IV, Paris 1729, cols. 1063–1164.
Born at Rome of an aristocratic family, he lost his father Theodore at an early age. He was brought up and educated by his uncle Theodatus, a consul and duke who later became primicerius. Intelligent, pious, and charitable, he soon attracted the attention of Pope Paul I, who ordained him subdeacon. He was a deacon when he was called to succeed Stephen III under particularly difficult circumstances. His first concern was to break the influence of Paul Afiarta, an agent of Lombard policy to whom his predecessor had been too compliant. To this end he sent Afiarta to King Desiderius, who proposed a renewal of the agreement concluded with Stephen II, promising to restore the territories usurped from the Holy See. But Desiderius failed to keep his word and invaded the Patrimony of St Peter, with the complicity of Afiarta himself, who was also suspected of involvement in the murder of the secundicerius Sergius during the previous pontificate. He was seized by the archbishop of Ravenna and put to death against the Pope’s wishes, which were merely to exile him.
Faced with the renewed pressure of the Lombard threat, Adrian did not hesitate to follow the path already indicated by his predecessors and to appeal for help to the Franks. He accordingly turned to Charlemagne. Crossing the Alps rapidly in 773, Charlemagne defeated the Lombards and laid siege to Pavia, arriving in Rome at Easter 774. On Wednesday in Easter week, 6 April, a memorable meeting took place in the secretarium of St Peter, at which Charlemagne undertook to fulfil the promise made to Pope Stephen II at Quierzy-sur-Oise in 754, by which the papal domains were to be extended to include the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, Tuscany, Corsica, the Venetian lagoon, Istria, as well as the duchy of Rome, the Pentapolis, and the exarchate of Ravenna, as they had been before the conquest of Liutprand.
It should be said at once that many historians have regarded the agreements of Quierzy and Rome as implausible, while others, in agreement with Duchesne (Liber Pontificalis, I, Paris 1886, pp. CCXXXVI–LIII), consider them authentic, though all admit that, if they ever existed, they must have remained at an ideal level which the Carolingians did not subsequently trouble to implement. In fact, it was only through subsequent concessions obtained by Adrian during two further visits to Rome in 781 and 787 that he succeeded in establishing the Papal State as it was to remain throughout the Middle Ages until Pius IX. Nevertheless, Charlemagne, in his capacity as patricius Romanorum, sought to arrogate to himself the direction of foreign policy and a right of high oversight in internal affairs. The interference of his agents was sometimes very troublesome, so much so that Adrian was forced to protest, but always ended by coming to terms with him. In this way he succeeded in persuading the Frankish king to refrain from intervening in the election of the archbishop of Ravenna (Ep. 48, ad Carolum regem: PL, 98, cols. 416–18).
Adrian’s ecclesiastical activity was also considerable. Above all, he worked hard to suppress abuses in episcopal elections and to free the churches from Carolingian caesaropapism; thus he restored all rights to the old metropolitan sees (Ep. ad Bertherium episc.: PL 96, 1215–16). Yet the fact remains that his delicate position vis-à-vis Charlemagne prevented him from carrying out all the reforms he desired and advocated. According to Sigebert of Gembloux, he would have granted Charlemagne, on his return to Rome after the capture of Pavia (774), the right to elect the Pope and the right of investiture for the episcopal sees in his kingdom. This fable, which probably dates from the period of Otto I, is already found in a decree of the antipope Leo VIII in 963, and later passed into the Decretum of Gratian under the name of the Privilegium Hadriani pro Carolo.
The Frankish clergy had taken to bearing arms and waging war. Adrian drew Charlemagne’s attention to this habit (Ep. 25: PL 98, 367). He also worked for the unification of the Roman and Gallican liturgies, sending the king a copy of the Gregorian Sacramentary (c. 780), as he had already sent him the collection of canons by Dionysius Exiguus in 774.
Adrian’s influence on the Spanish Church was chiefly disciplinary and doctrinal. In one of his two letters to Egila (PL 98, 333 and 346) he deals with fasting on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the feast of Easter, predestination, grace, and free will. Two dogmatic letters were also devoted by him to the Spanish adoptionist controversy (PL 99, 374 and 386; V. also ADOPTIONISM).
The most important religious event of Adrian’s pontificate was the restoration of ecclesiastical unity between East and West, broken by the iconoclastic persecution. At the Second Council of Nicaea, the seventh ecumenical council (787), to which the Pope sent two legates, the cult of the saints, their images, and their relics was declared legitimate and salutary. The Pope’s letter to the Empress Irene and her son Constantine VI, in which Roman primacy was solemnly proclaimed, was approved by the council fathers. Since the council was almost entirely composed of Easterners and the Western bishops had not been invited, it was viewed with great disfavour by Charlemagne and his theologians. The Latin translation of its acts, ordered by Adrian, proved particularly defective. Thus the Greek word πρὸς ἀνθρωπίας, meaning veneration, was rendered as adoratio, as if the council had defined the adoration of images.
At the instigation and under the direct control of Charlemagne, a group of theologians composed a detailed and polemical refutation of everything in the conciliar acts that displeased them, and this became known as the Libri Carolini. Adrian then took up his pen to defend the council and provide the Frankish king with the necessary explanations, doing so with gentle firmness and remarkable erudition (PL 98, 1247–92; Mansi, XIII, 759–810). But it seems that this reply came too late to prevent the Synod of Frankfurt in 794 from condemning the Council of Nicaea as one that taught the adoration of images.
The biographer of Adrian tells us that he was a great lover of churches, amator ecclesiarum, and insists on the restorations and embellishments made to the basilicas and churches of Rome during his pontificate; nor did Adrian fail to distinguish himself by his great charity towards the poor. He died on Christmas Day 795, after a pontificate of about twenty-four years. Charlemagne mourned him as a friend and father and
On the marble he had carved a nineteen-distich epitaph, which is now set into the rear wall of the portico of St Peter’s Basilica (cf. G. B. De Rossi, *L’inscription du tombeau d’A. I. in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École française de Rome*, 8 [1888], pp. 478-501).
The character of A. presents a remarkable blend of firmness and adaptability. Unyielding toward the Lombard king, he showed himself conciliatory without servility toward Charlemagne, while employing all the uncommon resources of his skilful diplomacy for the greater good of the faith and the exaltation of the Holy See. One might almost be tempted to reproach him for some weakness in repressing certain abuses, were it not—as we have said—that the very nature of his relations with Charlemagne compelled him to show particular consideration. His dogmatic letters reveal a patristic erudition far from common. They abound in quotations from Greek Fathers, a phenomenon very rare in the West during the Middle Ages.
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