My History Presentation - Pope Hadrian I

In Mr. Urban's history class, we did history presentation. I presented about Pope Hadrian, the leader of the Roman Catholics. It's pretty long, but I hope you enjoy!^^

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Hello, everyone. My name is Annie or Yeryn. I'm going to present my topic, Pope Hadrian the first, who was the leader of the Roman Catholics. I will first tell you about the role Pope Hadrian played in the movie, and how he was born. Then, I will explain his relationship with King Charlemagne, and what he did. After that's done, I'll tell you about his character and my opinion about him. Before I start my main speech, I'll remind you that Pope Hadrian is also called, Pope Adrian.

     In the movie, Pope Hadrian actsas a religious advisor of King Charlemagne, and is shown mild and heldup high. We can assume from the movie that Pope Hadrian and Charlemagne shared clso relationship with each other because when Charlemagne got the message that Pope Hadrian was dead, his face became stiff with sadness and shock.

     According to Wikipedia with the title, "Pope Adrian I", he started ruling on Febuary 1, 772 and stopped ruling and died on December 25, 795. The birthdate of Pope Hadrian isn't clear. He was a Roman, son of Theodore, and belongedto the noble family of Colonna. In other words, he was born as an aristocrat.

     I also searched in the "Papal Books", which is a search engine. It stated that he was elected as a pope with the support of the Frankish party at Rome. He got another help from the Franks. Once, the territories ruled by the popes were invaded and seized by the Lombards King, Desderious. But as a pope, Adrian got help fromt he Frankish King Charlemagne to defeat Desderious. Because of the help, he remained faithful to the Frankish alliance, and became really close with Charlemagne. It is also said that when he died, due to the nobles of the Church who disagreed with him, he was buried in the Batican and Charlemagne wept bitterly on the death of him. He had always thought of him as a father. For instance, in an epitaph written by Charlemagne, he styles Adrian as"Father". This is seen at the door of Vatican.

     According to Catholic Encyclopedia which title is "Pope Adrian I", some of the things that he did were baptizing Peppin and annointing himas the king of Italy. He also crowned Louis, who is Charles's son. He created 185 bishops, 24 priests, and 7 deacons. Moreover, he governed his state with firm and skillful hands, and restored many of the ancient aqueducts of Rome. The reign of Adrian was longer than that of any pope fromSaint Peter. He reigned for 23 years.

     Pope Adrian's character is that he always took ancient discipline, forgiving the guilty. Because he was very desirous of saving life, under his authority, no prisoner ever suffered torture. Also, he was very charitable that he expended 2580 pounds of gold and 907 pounds of silver upon the Vatican Church. Therefore, he symbolized the medieval ideal of church and state.

     Now I will tell you how I think of Pope Adrian. My opinion about Pope Adrian's character is both good and bad. Firstly, with the evidence that he was very desirous for saving life, and was charitable, I think he is a generous, love-hearted pope. I want to put him as my role model and follow his characterof loving lives with no greedin his heart. When everybody behaves like him, I think the world will turn out to be full of peace and love. Even though it's hard to be generous to all people including enemies, we should at least try to be like him. On the other hand, like there's no people who is perfect, I think he might have done bad things, too. Even though the history marks him as the greatest pope, historians might have eliminated some negative information about him because he was very powerful at that time. Also, it's over a thousand years from now. This is similar to when the winner of the war writes the history positively about them. Thus, I think that he might have had some flaws in his personality.

     This is the end of my presentation. I'll organize what I just presented. First, I told you that in the movie, Pope Adrian acted as a religious advisor of Charlemagne and I told you about his family backround. Then, I explained, his relationship with Charlemagne was very close, and what he did. I also told you about his good character and that I think of him as neutral, not good but not bad.

     I hope you enjoyed my presentation about Pope Hadrian. Thank you all for listening to my speech.