The one and only English pope was Nicholas Breakspear. A failed vocation from St Albans, he later made a name for himself as the hard-boiled Abbot of St Rufus in Avignon, France, and then as the Bishop of Albano, a diocese near Rome, before he embarked on an extremely successful diplomatic career as a papal legate in Scandinavia, establishing separate hierarchies for Norway and Sweden which until his arrival were governed by the Danish Church.
Bishop Breakspear was crowned Pope Hadrian IV “on a wave of triumph” in 1154, according to historian Professor Eamon Duffy, and in his five-year reign he destroyed his domestic enemies in Rome with the help of Frederick Barbarossa before ultimately asserting his own authority over the German king. At the same time, he cosied up to the Normans by recognising the claim of William I as the King of Sicily and by giving his blessing to the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland which would be led at the end of the 12th century by Raymond…
