Adrian of Canterbury
Anglican Church | |
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Feast | 9 January |
Adrian, also spelled Hadrian (born before 637, died 710), was a
Canterbury
He was twice offered the vacant
The two set out from Rome on 27 May 668, and proceeding by sea to
At length, however, the tyrant became convinced that there was no ground for this notion, and Adrian was permitted to proceed to England, where, immediately on his arrival, he was made abbot of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul (afterwards called Saint Augustine's) at Canterbury, an appointment which was in conformity with instructions given by the pope to Theodore. Such is the account given in the Ecclesiastical History (iv. 1.). Adrian was known to be a man learned in the Bible, as well as in
In another account, also attributed to Bede, in his Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth, it is stated that Adrian was not made abbot till after the resignation of Benedict Biscop, who is made to have accompanied Theodore all the way from Rome, and to have been immediately on their arrival appointed to this place, which he appears to have held for about two years. The facts in the two relations are not perhaps absolutely irreconcilable; but they are strangely dissimilar in manner, and in the circumstances which they respectively notice, to have come from the same pen.
Bede describes Adrian (or Hadrian, as he calls him in the Ecclesiastical History), as not only a distinguished theologian, but eminently accomplished in secular learning; he and Theodore, we are told, traversing all parts of the island, gathered multitudes of scholars around them wherever they appeared, and employed themselves daily with equal diligence and success in instructing those who flocked to them not only in the truths of religion but in the several branches of science and literature then cultivated. Bede particularly mentions the metrical art, astronomy, and arithmetic (which may be considered as representing what we should now call rhetoric and the
To the flourishing state of learning thus introduced into England, and for a short time maintained, King Alfred appears to allude in the preface to his translation of Pope Gregory I's Liber Pastoralis Curae, in the latter part of the ninth century, where he says that it often came into his mind what wise men there were in the country, both laymen and ecclesiastics, in a former age; how the clergy in those happy times were diligent both to teach and to study, and how foreigners then came hither to acquire learning and wisdom; whereas now, in his own day, if any Englishman desired to make himself a scholar, he was obliged to go abroad for instruction.
Death
Adrian, long surviving his friend the archbishop, is said to have lived for 39 years after he came to England, continuing till his death to preside over the monastery at Canterbury. (Bede,
See also
- Noble Communion and Holy Apostolic Order of St Hadrian of Canterbury, part of the Apostolic Pastoral Congress
- Saint Adrian of Canterbury, patron saint archive
Notes
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39256. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Bede (1907). Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England: A Revised Translation With Introduction, Life, and Notes. Translated by A. M. Sellar. George Bell and Sons.
- ISBN 978-0-9544767-9-3.
- ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5.
- ISBN 9780199239696.
Sources
- Long, George. The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1842-1844. 4 vols.
- Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-14-051312-4.