Lentorama 2025: Perfunctory Popes

Day 37: Adrian V

Adrian was born into a noble family of Liguria, and was given a number of positions in the church in the mid 13th century, perhaps most notably being made the Cardinal Deacon of San Adriano by his uncle, Pope Innocent IV.

His greatest service to the church came in England, where he was sent to mediate a dispute between King Henry III and his barons (Adrian was related somewhat distantly to Henry by marriage, as his sister was married to a cousin of Henry's wife).

Adrian was successful in that mission, and stayed on in England for some years as papal legate. His name actually appears in the oldest extant English statute law, the 1267 Statute of Marlborough (Adrian is named as a witness to its adoption). Adrian would also promulgate a set of canon for England that remained in force until the Reformation.

Adrian was elected pope after the death of Innocent V, but died in Viterbo just over a month later. For all of his positions in the church, he had never actually been ordained a priest.  For his troubles Adrian shows up in Dante's Divine Comedy on the fifth level of purgatory, reserved for prodigals and the avaricious. It's thought that Dante may have put him there by mistake, attributing accounts of Adrian IV's avarice to the next Adrian in line. There's little existing evidence that Adrian V was especially greedy. It probably didn't help that Adrian V spent a lot of time in England, while Adrian IV was English-born.