HADRIAN (Adrian) I°

HADRIAN° (Adrian) I, pope (772–95). Under Hadrian's papacy the Second Council of Nicaea, which condemned iconoclasm, was held in 787. On several occasions when Hadrian intervened personally in the controversy over graven images, and again in letters to Empress Irene and to Charlemagne, he fulminated against the Jewish respect for the biblical command against images; finally he compared the iconoclasts – whom the Council of Nicaea eventually declared heretics – with the Jews. In several edicts attempting to regulate relations between Christians and Jews he forbade Christians to celebrate Passover with the Jews, to accept unleavened bread from the Jews, and to rest on the Sabbath "after the Jewish fashion." In a letter addressed in 794 to the bishops of Spain, Hadrian complained in passing that he had learned that "many people who claim to be Catholics live freely with Jews and unbaptized pagans, sharing both food and drink with them." He urged the bishops to see that nothing of the sort occurred again and that the regulations laid down by Church Fathers were followed. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens latins… (1966), 142ff. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)