Saint or madman? A fictional pontiff and a modern classic
Frederick Rolfe, the author of Hadrian the Seventh, published in 1904
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Scholars argue that Frederick Rolfe was a pioneering practitioner of autobiographical fiction and, consequently, one of the precursors of modernism
Frederick Rolfe’s “romance” Hadrian the Seventh, published in 1904, is one of the most extraordinary novels of the twentieth century. George Arthur Rose is a penniless writer, long rejected for the priesthood, who receives a visit from an old friend, the Bishop of Caerleon, accompanied by the stuffy Cardinal Archbishop of Pimlico – on leave from a stalled papal conclave in Rome. They summon him to holy orders, and in no time he is, to his unfeigned surprise, elected pope, taking the name Hadrian, after the only other Englishman ever elected, Hadrian (or Adrian) IV, supreme pontiff 1154–59.
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