Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

170 ADRIAN IV.
people, and inquired Carefully of them who was the
man lately deceased and what sort of life he had led.
They all declared that he had been a just and Godfearing
man, the father of orphans, and the consoler
of the afflicted, and that he had during his life given
all his property to the poor and to strangers.
Further, he had at his own expense maintained a
priest in his house, who every day said prayers and
offered Mass for the holy souls. AVheii the bishop
heard this, he at once understood that the voices
proceeding from the churchyard were the voices of
the souls that bewailed the death of him, through
whose charity they had been consoled in their pains.
Then the bishop summoned the priest who had been
used to celebrate Masses for the dead, and gave him
a portion in the parish church, enjoining on him to
continue the same work of mercy for the rest of his
life."
i
The year 1154 was remarkable for more than "the
death of the last Norman king. Nicholas Break-
speare, the only Englishman who has ever been
Pope, ascended the Chair of St. Peter under the
name of Adrian IV., a self-made man if ever there
was one. His illegitimate birth necessitated a
special dispensation first for the priesthood and afterwards
for the highest priesthood on earth. The
father of Nicholas Breakspeare was a cleric, not
necessarily a priest, in the neighbourhood of Bath.2
1 Historia Minor, 312.
2 Kirchenlexicon (Artikel " Hadrian IV.")