ABSTRACT
When the papal chamberlain and cardinal Boso in his continuation of the Liber Pontificalis described the early life of Pope Adrian IV, he used nearly biblical language to describe young Nicholas Breakspear’s progress from the Benedictine abbey of St Albans in Hertfordshire to the monastery of Augustinian canons regular of Saint-Ruf in Avignon, thus, at least to the medieval reader, suggesting a parallel between the biblical patriarch Abraham and the future pope. As Boso told it, Nicholas left his homeland to improve his education and, while he was pursuing his studies in Arles, he received the religious habit of a canon regular at Saint-Ruf. 1 Apart from the conventionally-phrased reference to his desire to advance his knowledge of ‘letters’, Boso provided no explanation for Nicholas’s departure from England; neither did he record what he studied, or why the young Englishman chose to became an Austin canon in Provence.
