ADRIAN I. Pope, ascended the papal throne A.D. 772. He was the son of Theodore, a Roman nobleman, and possessed considerable talents for business. He maintained a steady attachment to Charlemagne, which provoked Desiderius, a king of the Lombards, to invade the state of Ravenna, and to threaten Rome itself. Charlemagne rewarded his attachment by marching with a great army to his aid; and having gained many considerable advantages over Desiderius, he visited the pope at Rome, and expressed his piety by the humiliating ceremony of kissing each of the steps as he ascended to the church of St Peter. The affairs of the church now claimed Adrian's particular attention; for Irene, who in 780 assumed the regency at Constantinople during the minority of her son Constantine, wishing to restore the worship of images, applied to Adrian for his concurrence. The pontiff readily acquiesced in her proposal for calling a council, and commissioned two legates to attend it. The first council, however, was dispersed by an insurrection of the citizens; but at the next meeting, in the city of Nice, in 787, which was protected by a military force, a decree was passed for restoring the worship of images. Adrian approved the decree, but in the western church it was deemed heretical and dangerous. Charlemagne condemned the innovation, and the French and English clergy concurred in opposing it. A treatise, containing 120 heads of refutation, was circulated as the work of Charlemagne, under the title of The Caroline Books, in opposition to the decree of the council. This work was presented to the pope by the king's ambassador, and the pope wrote a letter to Charlemagne by way of reply. The king, and also the Gallican and English churches, retained their sentiments; and in 794 a council was held at Frankfort on the Maine, consisting of about 300 western bishops, by which every kind of image-worship was condemned. Adrian did not live to see a termination of this contest; for after a pontificate of nearly twenty-four years, he died in 795. Adrian seems to have directed his chief attention to the embellishment of the churches and the improvement of the city of Rome; and he was probably furnished by Charlemagne, out of the plunder of his conquests, with ample means for this purpose.

1 This work, though called by the Roman historians murus, which signifies a wall of stone, was only composed of earth covered with green turf. It was carried on from the Solway Frith, a little west of the village of Burgh on the Sands, in as direct a line as possible, to the river Tyne on the east, at the place where the town of Newcastle now stands; so that it must have been above 60 English, and near 70 Roman miles in length. It consisted of four parts: 1. The principal rampart, made of earth or rampart, on the brink of the ditch; 2. The ditch on the north side of the rampart; 3. Another rampart on the south side of the principal one, about five paces distant from it; 4. A large rampart on the north side of the ditch. This last was probably the best way to the line of forts on this work: it was so to those formerly built by Agricola; and if it did not serve the same purpose in this, there must have been no similar way attending it. The south rampart might serve for an inner defence in case the enemy should beat them from any part of the principal rampart, or it might be designed to protect the soldiers from any sudden attack of the provincial Britons. For many ages this work has been in so ruinous a condition, that it is impossible to discover its original dimensions with certainty. From their appearance, it is very probable that the principal rampart was at least ten or twelve feet high, and the south one not much less; but the north one was considerably lower. From the dimensions of the ditch, taken as it passes through a lime-stone quarry near Harlow Hill, it appears to have been nine feet deep, and eleven wide at the top, but somewhat narrower at the bottom. The north rampart was about twenty feet distant from the ditch.

2 It is certain that the principal rampart was at least ten or twelve feet high, and the south one not much less; but the north one was considerably lower. From the dimensions of the ditch, taken as it passes through a lime-stone quarry near Harlow Hill, it appears to have been nine feet deep, and eleven wide at the top, but somewhat narrower at the bottom. The north rampart was about twenty feet distant from the ditch.