rederic
told a story to this effect--that Pope Adrian died by a judgment of
God, who permitted him while drinking at a well, a few days after
denouncing excommunication against the emperor, to swallow a fly,
which stuck in his throat, and could not be extracted by the surgeons,
till the patient had expired through the inflammation produced by the
accident. Adrian, however, did not excommunicate the emperor at all,
but died on the eve of doing so. His body was carried to Rome, and
entombed in a costly sarcophagus of marble, beside that of Eugenius
III., in the nave of the old basilica of St. Peter.

In the year 1607, on the demolition of this church, the body was
exhumed and found entire, as well as the pontificals in which it was
arrayed. It was re-interred under the pavement of the new basilica.

According to Pagi, Pope Adrian IV. composed Catechisms of Christian
Doctrine for the Swedes and Norwegians, a Memoir of his Mission to
those nations--_de Legatione sua_--various Homilies, and a Treatise on
the Conception of the Blessed Virgin,--performances which appear to
have perished. The work, describing his mission to the north, must
have been of great interest for the light which it no doubt threw on
the history and manners of those countries. Munter, the church
historian of Denmark, mentions that he sought to discover it at Rome,
but without success; it being supposed, if still extant, to lie buried
beneath the impracticable hoards of the Vatican.

Cardinal Boso, an Englishman, and Pope Adrian's private secretary,
whom he sent out on a mission to Portugal, wrote a life of his patron,
but so invaluable a work is also unavailable, as no trace of it now
exists. From an anecdote preserved in William of Newbridge, Adrian IV.
would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh
extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes
who afterwards practised nepotism. For it is related of him, that
rather than award a pittance towards the relief of his aged and
destitute mother out of those ample revenues, which as pope he had at
his disposal, but which he did not feel himself justified in diverting
to private uses, he allowed her to subsist as best she could on the
alms of the Chapter of Canterbury. Notwithstanding the incessant
conflicts of his short career, he yet found time to do something
towards the improvement and decoration of Rome. To this end he
projected and carried out various new building