Adrian IV elected pope

December 4, 1154

Nicholas Breakspear, a poor English priest who had worked his way to the top of a Provencal monastery and been used as a papal diplomat, was elected the first and so far only English pope. He would spend his reign wrestling with Barbarossa and a Roman republic. Adrian's remarkable ascent from a Hertfordshire village to the throne of St. Peter remains one of the most improbable careers in medieval ecclesiastical history.