Adrian VI, Pope

Person

Adrian VI, Pope

• original name: Adrian Florenszoon Boeyens
• also called Hadrian VI

1459-1523

Adrian Boeyens was born on March 2, 1459, in Utrecht. He was the only Dutch pope there has been, elected in 1522. He was the last non-Italian pope until the election of John Paul II in 1978. He lost his pious father, Florentius Dedel, at an early age, and was kept at school by the fortitude of his widowed mother Geertruid, first at home and then at Zwolle with the Brothers of the Common Life.
He then studied at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain). After a thorough course in philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence he was created Doctor of Divinity in 1491. His two chief works were Quaestiones quodlibeticae (1521), and his Commentarius in Lib. IV Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (1512), which was published without his knowledge from notes of students, and saw many editions. The great Humanist Erasmus was one of his pupils. As dean of the collegiate church of St. Peter in Louvain, and vice-chancellor of the university, he laboured to advance the arts and sciences and live a life of singular piety and severe asceticism.
In 1506 the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I appointed Adrian tutor of his grandson Charles (the future Charles V), who afterwards entrusted him to perform many of the highest offices. Transferred from the academic shades into public life, the humble professor rose to eminence. Within a decade he became Bishop of Tortosa (1516), Grand Inquisitor of Aragon (1517) and Castile (1518), Cardinal of the Roman Church in 1517, and finally Regent of Spain.
He was elected pope on January 9, 1522, succeeding Pope Leo X and was crowned at Rome on August 31. Adrian came to the papacy in the midst of one of its greatest crises, threatened not only by Lutheranism to the north but also by the advance of the Ottoman Turks to the east. He had a difficult job before him – to clean up abuses, reform the corrupt court, calm the princes who demanded war, stem the rising tide of revolt in Germany and to defend Christendom from the Turks. He took up the tasks with great earnestness, starting with reforming the Curia, but could accomplish little in the face of opposition by the Italian cardinals, the German Protestants, and the Turkish armies. Through the reckless extravagances of his predecessor, the papal finances were in a sad state. Adrian's efforts to retrench expenses only gained for him from his needy courtiers the epithet of miser. Vested rights were quoted against his attempts to reform the curia. His nuncio to Germany, Chierigati, received but scant courtesy. His urgent appeals to the princes of Christendom to hasten to the defence of Rhodes from the Turks failed and on 24 October 1522 the city was taken.
His unrelaxing activity and Rome's unhealthy climate combined to shatter his health. He died on September 14, 1523 in Rome. He bequeathed property in the Low Countries for the foundation of a college at the University of Leuven that became known as Pope's College.

Articles written by the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (2017) and by NewAdvent, the Catholic Encyclopedia (no date given).