Pope Adrian VI (1459-1523)

Adrian VI is often presented as a transitional pope, stuck between two Medicis – Leo X who precedes him, Clement VII who follows him. To reduce it to that would be a mistake. His pontificate is one of the most significant of the Renaissance precisely because he breaks with it: after the patron, warlike and ostentatious popes, here is a theologian from the North, ascetic and honest, who looks at Rome with the eyes of a foreigner and judges it.^[9][10]

The subject goes to the heart of 16th century Catholic drama. Leo X had already condemned Luther — bull Exsurge Domine (June 15, 1520), then excommunication Decet Romanum Pontificem (January 3, 1521)^[11]. Adrian VI is the first pope to publicly confess the corruption of the Curia as a cause of the Lutheran crisis, while demanding the application of the Edict of Worms. This twofold attitude — condemning heresy without denying the abuses that fueled it — illuminates the authentic Catholic position. This is exactly what the Council of Trent did later, with more resources and time.^[12][13]

The character is also interesting for his human singularity. Son of a carpenter who became pope, man of duty who did not desire the tiara and sighed when he learned of it, sincere reformer crushed by the resistance of a court which "hated even the name of reform" - Adrian VI embodies the drama of the impotent righteous, of the good shepherd who arrived too late, or too alone.^[14] For Ignispedia, his story is at the same time a decisive page in the history of the papacy and a meditation on what the Church expected, twenty-two years before Trent, and on the price of fidelity in a time of decadence.

Finally, his memory remains alive: on April 7, 2022, for the fifth centenary of his election, Pope Francis received at the Vatican the community of the Pontifical Institute of Santa Maria dell'Anima — the Roman church where Adrian VI rests —, recalling that in his brief pontificate he sought above all reconciliation in the Church and in the world, even sending Nuncio Chieregati to Nuremberg to reconcile Luther and his partisans with the Church.^[15]

Utrecht and the Brothers of Common Life

Adriaan Florensz Boeyens was born in Utrecht on March 2, 1459, into a modest family: his father, Florens Boeyens, was a marine carpenter and died when the child was only around ten years old.^[16][17] It was his mother who, despite poverty, saw to his education. The boy is entrusted to the Brothers of Common Life, in Zwolle, the spiritual movement stemming from the Devotio moderna - this interior piety, sober and practical, which had formed the author of the Imitation of Jesus Christ.^[18][19]

This imprint is decisive and will never leave him. From the Devotio moderna, Adrian will keep throughout his life the taste for methodical study, the distrust of pomp, the moral rigor and a conception of the priesthood as service and not as worldly dignity. The future pope will be, even under the tiara, a man of this school: a devotee from the North lost in Renaissance Rome.

The theologian of Leuven

In June 1476, at the age of seventeen, Adriaan entered the University of Leuven, the great university of the Low Countries, to study philosophy, theology and canon law.^[20][21] Protected as a bursary student by Margaret of York, dowager duchess of Burgundy, he proved to be a first-rate mind.^[22] Ordained priest on June 30, 1490, he obtained his doctorate in theology in 1491 and became one of the most respected professors in the faculty.^[23][24]

His academic career was brilliant: dean of the Saint Peter's collegiate church in Leuven (1498), vice-chancellor of the university (1497), he trained generations of students and published appreciated works of scholastic theology — the Quaestiones quodlibeticae and a Commentary on the fourth book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard.^[25][26] A classic theologian, attached to tradition and hostile to doctrinal novelties, he embodies the Louvanist orthodoxy which will soon be on the front line against Luther.

"He had acquired a great reputation for his knowledge, both sacred and profane, and for the holiness of his life." — The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Pope Adrian VI”, 1907^[27]

Tutor of the future Charles V

In 1507, Emperor Maximilian I entrusted the theologian of Leuven with a charge that would change his destiny: to become the tutor of the young Charles of Habsburg, then aged seven — the future Charles V, who would reign over Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, the Holy Roman Empire and the New World.^[28][29] Adrian transmitted to him an unshakeable Catholic faith, which would mark the emperor's entire religious policy.

From this relationship is born an absolute trust: Charles will make Adrian his advisor, his emissary and finally his regent. The link between the master and the imperial student is the key to everything that follows - it is he who will bring Adrian to the highest offices in Spain, then will weigh decisively in his election to the sovereign pontificate. The poor carpenter's son from Utrecht owes his rise to the most powerful man in Christendom, whose childish soul he had formed.

Bishop of Tortosa and Grand Inquisitor

In 1515, Charles sent his former tutor to Spain to prepare his succession to the crown of Castile and Aragon, the inheritance of his grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic.^[30][31] Adrian remained there and took root in public responsibility. Leo X confirmed him as bishop of Tortosa on August 18, 1516; on November 14, 1516, he was named grand inquisitor of Aragon, then, on March 14, 1518, inquisitor general of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.^[32][33]

On July 1, 1517, Leo X created him cardinal, with the title of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.^[34][35] In a few years, the Leuven theologian had become one of the great figures of the Spanish monarchy — without renouncing his personal austerity.

Cardinal and Regent of Castile

On the death of Cardinal Cisneros (Ximénès) in 1517, Adrian inherited a leading political role. When Charles V left Spain for the Empire in 1520, he left his former master as regent of Castile.^[36][37] The task was difficult: Adrian had to face the revolt of the Comunidades (1520-1521), the uprising of the Castilian cities against the Flemish administration of Charles, which he finally managed to put down with the support of the high nobility.

It was therefore a tested statesman — theologian, bishop, inquisitor, cardinal, regent of a great kingdom in crisis — who governed Spain in the emperor's name when, on December 1, 1521, news of the death of Leo X reached Rome. Adrian did not yet know that this death would make him, six hundred leagues away, the head of the universal Church.

The death of Leo X and the blocked college

Leo X died suddenly on December 1, 1521, leaving papal finances ruined by his spending and Christendom divided by the Luther affair.^[38][39] The conclave that opened at the end of December gathered thirty-nine cardinals, divided among irreconcilable factions: supporters of the emperor, supporters of King Francis I of France, and the clienteles of the great Italian families.^[40]

The dominant figure was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, cousin of Leo X and vice-chancellor — the future Clement VII. But his candidacy met the opposition of a bloc of cardinals hostile to the Medici. For almost two weeks, no name reached the two-thirds majority; the conclave bogged down.^[41][42]

Cajetan's speech and the reversal of Julius de' Medici

The unlocking came on January 9, at the eleventh ballot. Julius de Medici, who knew his own election to be impossible, proposed seeking among the absent cardinals a man "against whom nothing could be said" and suggested Cardinal Adriaan Boeyens of Tortosa — ascetic and scholar, tutor to the emperor, pleasing to Charles V; the Medici party voted for its leader's candidate.^[43][44] At that point, the Dominican Tommaso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan — the great theologian who had debated with Luther at Augsburg in 1518 and personally knew the Cardinal of Tortosa since his legation in Germany — eloquently described the high qualities of the absentee and announced his accessio, rallying support.^[45][46]

On January 9, 1522, after eleven ballots, the college elected almost unanimously an absent man, who had not set foot in Italy for years and suspected nothing.^[47][48] Out of loyalty to his baptismal name and out of humility, the new pope kept his first name and reigned under the name of Adrian VI — one of only two popes of the modern era, with Marcel II, not to change his name when ascending the throne.^[49][50]

“May God have mercy on me”: a pope in spite of himself

When the news reaches him in Vitoria, in Spain, Adrian feels no joy. Tradition reports that he sighed and relied on divine mercy, fearing the burden more than he desired it.^[51] This reluctance is not a posture: it is consistent with his whole life. Where so many Renaissance cardinals had intrigued for years for the tiara, Adrian received it like a cross.

“Patere et sustine” — “Suffer and persevere”: the motto that Adrian VI chose sufficiently expresses the spirit in which he approached a pontificate that he did not want.^[52]

It takes him almost six months to settle the affairs of Spain, organize the regency and undertake the journey. Embarked at L'Ampolla on the Catalan coast, he reached Italy by sea, along a peninsula at war, to enter Rome at the end of summer 1522.^[53][54]

An entry without pomp, into a city struck by the plague

Adrian VI made his solemn entry into Rome on August 29, 1522 and received the tiara on August 31, at the age of sixty-three, in Saint Peter's Basilica.^[55][56] But the reception was cold. The new pope forbade the sumptuous decorations and the triumphal arches that custom imposed; the plague is raging, and many Romans are fleeing or hiding.^[57][58] Where a Renaissance procession was expected, we see an old priest from the North arrive, sober and serious.

The austerity of a monk in the Vatican

The contrast with Leo X is total. Adrian VI lives in the Vatican like a monk: only one old Flemish servant to serve him, a frugal table, expenses counted as accurately as possible, days divided between prayer, study and work.^[59][60] He immediately begins to reduce the expenses of a bloated court and to dry up dubious sources of income - which immediately earns him the nickname "ladre" (miserly) in the mouths of courtiers deprived of their prebends.^[61]

"To extirpate inveterate abuses; to reform a court which thrived on corruption, and hated the very name of reform." — The Catholic Encyclopedia, on the task of Adrian VI^[62]

Artists, poets and humanists, who lived off pontifical largesse, deserted a Rome that had become miserly and devout. The brilliant patronage of Leo X suddenly died out.

Pasquino, the humanists and Roman hostility

The Roman aristocracy and the cultivated Curia openly despise this foreign pope whom they consider to be a "barbarian from the North", a "tedesco" (German) incapable of understanding Italian finesse.^[63][64] On the speaking statue of Pasquino, satirical libels - the famous pasquinades - rain down on him. His scholastic Latin, his frugality, his ignorance of court customs are mocked.

This hostility is not just a matter of manners: it reflects the clash of two worlds. On the one hand, the Roman Renaissance, worldly, aesthetic, political; on the other, the Devotio moderna of the North, austere and moral. Adrian VI pays the price of being a man of reform in a city that did not want him — and of being, on top of that, a foreigner. He even thought of returning to his native Low Countries as the Roman solitude weighed heavily on him.^[65]

The great business of the pontificate is the reform of the Church, and Adrian VI wants to start at the head: the Roman Curia. A lucid theologian, he understood that the German revolt was nourished by real abuses - venality of offices, trafficking in dispensations, accumulation of benefits, worldliness of the clergy. For him, reforming Rome is the condition for everything else.^[66][67]

But the undertaking hit a wall. The finances were so burdened that any reform of the system of matrimonial dispensations and indulgences was blocked: Leo X had sold and mortgaged in advance the Curia's revenues for years.^[68][69] The college of cardinals, many of whom drew income from these abuses, obstructed reform. The imperial ambassador noted that Adrian, isolated and fearful, ended up following the advice of two or three cardinals rather than imposing his will.^[70]

Adrian VI nevertheless acted. He reduced the pace of the court, refused nepotism, created only one cardinal during his entire pontificate - his faithful friend Willem van Enckenvoirt, on September 10, 1523, a few days before his death -, and canonized, on May 31, 1523, two figures of pastoral and reforming holiness: Antonin of Florence and Benno of Misnie.^[71][72] But he lacks time and strength. His program remains a heroic intention that death interrupts.

The Edict of Worms and the Chieregati legation

The heaviest affair of the pontificate was the Lutheran revolt, which spread to Germany. Adrian VI, an orthodox theologian and former inquisitor, is resolutely opposed to any doctrinal concession: for him, Luther is a heretic who must be reduced to silence, and the Edict of Worms of 1521 — which had banned him from the Empire — must be applied.^[73][74]

He therefore sent his nuncio Francesco Chieregati to the Diet of Nuremberg (1522-1523), carrying a double mission: to demand the execution of the Edict of Worms and action against Luther, but also to present to the States of the Empire an instruction of incredible frankness.^[75][76]

The confession of curial corruption

On January 3, 1523, Chieregati read the text of the pontifical instruction before the diet. Adrian recognizes there, in the name of the pope himself, that the crisis of the Church comes first of all from the sins of the clergy, and that corruption has started from Rome, from the head to the members. Never has a pope made such a public confession.^[77][78]

"We know that in this Holy See, for several years already, many abominable things have happened: abuses in spiritual things, transgressions of the commandments, and that everything has ended up turning evil. From the head, the disease has descended into the members, from the sovereign pontiffs to the prelates: we have all deviated from our ways; for a long time there had been no one who did good, no, not even one." — Instruction from Adrian VI to Legate Chieregati (translation), read at the Diet of Nuremberg, January 1523^[79]

The pope promises to do everything in his power to first reform the Curia, "where perhaps all this evil came from", so that healing spreads from the head to the limbs as the disease had spread there.^[80]

A double-edged franchise

This confession is an act of Christian truth — and a political risk. Both camps take it against him. The partisans of Rome are scandalized that a pope thus accuses his predecessors and admits the bankruptcy of the court. The partisans of Luther see it as a justification of their revolt: if the pope himself recognizes corruption, why not break?^[81][82]

The admission of Adrian VI thus broke the force of his own request: the diet did not execute the Edict of Worms and instead demanded a free council on German soil.^[83] But the historian must do justice to this pope: his frankness was not a weakness, it was the only honest path. Recognizing abuses without giving in on faith — condemning heresy while reforming the Church — is exactly the position that Catholicism would adopt at the Council of Trent. Adrian VI was the first to hold it, alone and without means.

The fall of Rhodes (December 1522)

While Adrian fought against the German revolt, the Ottoman threat struck Christendom in the Mediterranean. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged the island of Rhodes, held for two centuries by the Knights of Saint John (Hospitallers). After six months of siege (June 26 – December 22, 1522), the city accepted Suleiman's conditions on December 22, 1522 — the grand master had requested a truce as early as December 20 — and the knights evacuated the island on January 1, 1523.^[84] The loss of this bastion was a terrible blow: it opened the eastern Mediterranean to the Ottoman fleet.

Adrian VI, who dreamed of uniting the Christian princes in a crusade against the Turks, was in despair. But his appeals go unheeded: Christianity is torn apart by its own wars, and no one responds.

Between Charles V and Francis I

The pope wanted to be arbiter of peace between the two giants who were fighting over Italy: his former student Charles V and the king of France Francis I.^[85][86] He fails. Pressed by circumstances and by his dependence on the emperor, Adrian ended up abandoning his neutrality: in August 1523, he entered into a league with the Empire, England, Venice and other Italian states against France.^[87] The man who wanted to reconcile Christianity found himself drawn into its divisions - further proof of the impotence of an isolated pontiff in the face of the forces of his time.

The affair of Cardinal Soderini

On the internal Roman level, Adrian VI had to face the intrigues of the court. Cardinal Francesco Soderini, suspected of plotting with France against imperial interests in the kingdom of Naples, was arrested and imprisoned at the Castel Sant'Angelo in the spring of 1523.^[88] The episode shows a Rome torn by Franco-imperial rivalries even in the Sacred College, and a pope forced to crack down on one of his own cardinals.

Worn out by work, disappointments, hostility and the unhealthy climate of summer Rome, Adrian VI fell ill during the summer of 1523. He died on September 14, 1523, the day of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, after one year, eight months and six days of pontificate.^[89][90]

His successor would be, by a twist of history, the same Giulio de' Medici whose withdrawal had allowed his election: on November 19, 1523, the conclave brought to the throne the cousin of Leo X, who took the name of Clement VII. The Roman Renaissance regained its rights — until the sack of Rome in 1527, four years later, which many interpreted as the punishment for the abuses that Adrian VI had denounced in vain.

A tomb and an epitaph that remain famous

Adrian VI was first buried in Saint Peter's, then transferred to the church Santa Maria dell'Anima, the church of the Germans of Rome, where his faithful Willem van Enckenvoirt had him erect a funeral monument due in part to the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi.^[104][105] The epitaph, which remains famous, expresses in one line the tragedy of this pontificate:

"Alas! how much it matters in what times the virtue even of the best man falls." — Epitaph of Adrian VI, Santa Maria dell'Anima, Rome^[106]

Another inscription, more biting, had first circulated in Rome - “Here lies the impious among the pious” (impius inter pios), a cruel play on words on the Popes Pius who surrounded him. But it is the formula of the grave that has crossed the centuries: not a mockery, but the lucid observation that a righteous person can fail because his time was not ready to hear it.

An abortive reform, prophecy of Trent

The pontificate of Adrian VI was, in appearance, a failure. Twenty months, no reforms achieved, Rhodes lost, Germany carried away by Luther, Christianity still divided, an unchanged Curia. But judging Adrian VI by his immediate results would be a historical injustice. What he saw and said mattered more than what he could do.^[107][108]

Adrian VI made the correct diagnosis: the Protestant revolt would be defeated neither by repression alone nor by complacency, but by an internal reform of the Church, begun in Rome. This intuition, twenty-two years before the opening of the Council of Trent (December 13, 1545), made him a precursor of the Catholic Reformation. Trent would accomplish, with the authority of a council and the support of saintly reformers, what a single old man could not initiate.

The last non-Italian pope before 1978

His historical singularity is immense: after him, it would be necessary to wait four hundred and fifty-five years — the election of John Paul II in 1978 — for a non-Italian to once again ascend the throne of Peter.^[109][110] For more than four centuries, the papacy was Italian without exception; Adrian VI remained the last northern exception until the Polish pope. The comparison did not escape John Paul II or his successors, aware of this Netherlandish predecessor.

The Pope's College in Leuven

Adrian VI did not leave only regrets. Faithful to the university that had trained him, he bequeathed his possessions in the Low Countries to found a college at Leuven — the "Pope's College" (Collegium Adrianum), intended to train theologians.^[111][112] The institution survived him for centuries and perpetuated, in the great Brabant university, the memory of the carpenter's son who became pope.

For Ignispedia, Adrian VI remains an exemplary figure: that of the upright, lucid and disinterested pastor, who did not shrink from the truth - even when this truth accused his own court - and who, failing to have reformed the Church, at least named its evil with a frankness that Trent would give him reason to have dared.

• Pope Leo X (1513-1521), the lavish Medici pope whom Adrian VI succeeded, and whose spending had ruined papal finances
• Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), Giulio de' Medici, whose withdrawal had allowed Adrian's election and who succeeded him
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563), which carried out the Catholic reform that Adrian VI was the first pope to demand
• Martin Luther (1483-1546), the reformer whose revolt dominated the entire pontificate of Adrian VI
• Charles V, the emperor of whom Adrian was the tutor, then the regent in Spain, and whose support weighed on his election
• Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), first non-Italian pope after four hundred and fifty-five years, of whom Adrian VI was the distant predecessor