The only English pope was born Nicholas Breakspear, c.1100, near St. Alban's, and rose from impoverished obscurity and monastic rejection to Papal Office
A curious thing that you notice quickly about the only English pope is a trio of 'firsts'. Nicholas Breakspear was the first English pope, was born near the place of execution of the first English martyr, and he took his name from Pope Adrian the First. Yet, ironically, in his early years he was denied entry into the great Benedictine house at St. Alban's, by its abbot Richard d'Essai.
We do not know the exact date Nicholas Breakspear was born, but there is general agreement it was in 1100. Improbably, among a clutch of modern houses in the village of Bedmond near St. Albans, is a small plaque recording the spot as his birthplace, historically in the parish of Abbots Langley. The houses were built after the destruction of the 300-year old Breakspear farmhouse, which had been a place of formal religious pilgrimage for many years, right up until the sixties. Not far away up the hill that once dominated Verulamium, was the great Benedictine Abbey of St. Alban's (also destroyed, at the Dissolution), with its imposing cathedral church (second longest nave in the country) built by its first abbot Paul of Caen in the late 11th . Here, the teenage Nicholas tried to gain entry after his limited schooling, but was not considered able enough.
His background was very poor, and the probability is he spent some time begging with his father, Robert, a clerk, who was accepted as a lay-brother, and later monk, of the abbey, abandoning his son to his own devices. Young Breakspear for some years received the alms (the original 'dole') that were given to the local poor at the Abbey gatehouse. By such desperate measures and using his wits, he survived to pursue learning in one of the major scholastic centres across the Channel. This is a time before the emergence of Oxford and Cambridge, and it was to places like Paris, Chartres, Orleans, Lieges and Arles that young Englishmen looked for learning.
It has to be said at this point that scholars differ as to the history of the young Breakspear, even to disputing his father being called Robert (rather than Richard).
Though he is recorded as 'Robert' in St. Alban's Cathedral where he is buried, along with the first eleven abbots, 'Adam the Cellarer' and the surgeon to King Edward III (the remains were translated there after the original tombs were discovered in 1978), the problem lies with the fact that two important medieval sources (William of Newburgh and the 13th Century monk and chronicler of the Benedictine Abbey, Matthew Paris) are seen as relying too much on gossip, wih the latter prone to elaboration in his passionate promotion of the abbey. An earlier source from letters by a friend and contemporary of Adrian IV, John of Salisbury, is seen as important but far from comprehensive. To these we can add the respected records of Cardinal Boso (another contemporary, died 1178) and Bernard Gui (Dominican Prior in Carcassone 1297-1301), an expert in the ecclesiastical history of Provence, where Nicholas Breakspear would become known to the Curia.
Allowing for no more than the probability that Nicholas studied for a time in Paris, he later travelled to Arles, where he helped out at the House of the Augustinian canons of the Order of St. Rufus (Saint-Ruf), renowned as a learned order, and received tuition from the monks. This introduction to the order helped him to finally become a Canon Regular himself at St.-Ruf abbey near Avignon (not Valence as some state, even Gui). And soon, after such humble and difficult origins, Nicholas was impressing his confreres, so much so that they elected him first their prior, perhaps around 1140, and then, probably in 1143, their abbot. There is a reference to Nicholas as abbot of Saint-Ruf in a papal letter of January 1147. Moreover it is not unreasona
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