Adrian II

Adrian was a Roman noble of the family of Stephen IV and Sergius II, seventy-five when he was elected on 14 December 867 after refusing the papacy twice before. He had married before ordination, and his wife Stephania and their daughter were still living. Within the year both were dead. Eleutherius, brother of Anastasius the Librarian, carried off the daughter, and when the emperor's officers came for him he killed her and her mother. Eleutherius was executed; Anastasius, suspected of complicity, was excommunicated and within three years quietly restored, because no one else could deal with the Greeks.

The Greeks were the business of the reign. Adrian's legates presided at the council of Constantinople in 869 and 870 that deposed Photius and restored Ignatius; three days after it closed, the eastern patriarchs ruled, over the legates' protests, that Bulgaria belonged to Constantinople, and Boris expelled the Latin clergy. Adrian had already, in 868, received Constantine and Methodius with the relics of Saint Clement, laid their Slavonic books on the altar of Santa Maria Maggiore, and ordained their disciples; Constantine, who took the monastic name Cyril, died in Rome in February 869 and was buried in San Clemente, and Adrian consecrated Methodius archbishop for the Slavs of Pannonia and Moravia, with leave to celebrate in their tongue provided the Gospel was read first in Latin.

He died in December 872 and was buried in Saint Peter's. The archdeacon who had done his work succeeded him.