As difficult as it is to imagine that a pope could die from a happening as bizarre as choking on a fly, it’s nearly as difficult to imagine a pope being English. Before becoming Pope Adrian IV, Nicholas Breakspear was raised in a clerical family. Nicholas’ father Robert was a monk at St. Albans Abbey northwest of London. Described as “a man of humble means, though of a decent stock,” Robert assumed his son would join his monastery with him (per the Catholic Church Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales). Nicholas, however, was refused entry because he wasn’t well-educated enough and relegated to performing menial jobs around the monastery grounds. Speaking to BBC’s The One Show (via Hertfordshire Mercury), Reverend Dr. Anders Bergquist said Robert eventually got so embarrassed by the situation that he ordered Nicholas to stay away.
It’s this very path, however, that led Nicholas to become Pope Adrian IV. Historic U.K. says that Nicholas went to France, got educated there, and joined St. Rufus Monastery near Avignon. Nicholas became a favorite of the monastery and through a combination of charisma and reported good looks got elected abbot. He wound up catching the attention of Pope Eugene III, who made him Cardinal Bishop of Albano in 1149 C.E. After that Nicholas worked on church and education reforms in Scandinavia before being elected pope — unanimously, we might add — in 1154 C.E. But he was only pope for five years before he met his strange and untimely death.
