Long before Chaucer began to build the English language, long before Buonarroti sketched his plans for St. Peter's, a British islander named Nicholas Breakspear became priest, then Abbot, then Cardinal, then Legate, then Pope, assuming the grand Roman Imperial name of Adrian (Hadrian) IV. And never before or since has an islander been Pope.
It was in 1146 that Breakspear quit the monastery of which he was Abbot in a pleasant Province, and proceeded, as Cardinal-Legate, to the rough untutored northlands of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
There he did such Christian service that the Northmen...
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