St. Adrian of Rome

Adrian was a Roman of noble family, raised to the see of the city in 772, and he held it for twenty-three years, longer than any bishop of Rome before him save the Apostle Peter by tradition. His pontificate fell at the turn of the iconoclast age, when the empress Irene of Constantinople sought to restore the holy icons to the Church.

When Irene and the patriarch Tarasius resolved to summon a general council, they wrote to Rome for its confession and its presence. Adrian answered with letters that set out at length the ancient tradition of the Church in the making and veneration of holy images, drawing on the Scriptures and the Fathers, and he sent two legates to represent the apostolic see.

At the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which met at Nicaea in 787, the letters of Adrian were read to the assembled Fathers and received as the witness of the Roman Church to the veneration of the icons. The council, with the Roman legates among its presidents, restored the holy images and condemned the iconoclast error.

Adrian governed the Western Church through years of great change, building and adorning the churches of Rome and ordering the care of the poor. He reposed on the twenty-fifth of December, 795.

He is honoured among the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, whose memory the Church keeps on the Sunday nearest the eleventh of October, as the bishop of Rome whose witness upheld the veneration of the holy icons.