quote:To commemorate Black History Month in the United Kingdom, today we remember one of the Africans to live in Anglo-Saxon England. The man in question was Hadrian (d. 709), the abbot of St Peter’s and St Paul’s at Canterbury, who played a pivotal role in the development of church structures in what is now England.
Bede’s description of Hadrian, beginning column 2 line 18, from his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, England (Canterbury?), c. 825: Cotton MS Tiberius C II, f. 94r.
According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731), Hadrian was ‘vir natione Afir’ (translated as 'a man of African race' by Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors), who spoke both Greek and Latin. Some scholars have suggested that Hadrian was Amazigh, and that he came from the area that is now Libya. There are a series of Biblical commentaries (surviving in a manuscript in Milan) that were derived from notes on Hadrian’s teaching at his school at Canterbury, and these include references and vocabulary that were specific to north Africa. For example, there are notes on a beautiful bird called a porphyrio, 'said to be found in Libya' ('in Libia sit').
Hadrian may have been forced to flee the Arab invasions of North Africa. At any rate he arrived in Italy as young man. In Europe, he had a remarkable career as the emperor’s translator, diplomat and abbot of a monastery near Naples. He was then sent by Pope Vitalian to accompany Theodore of Tarsus, the newly-appointed archbishop of Canterbury, to Kent. They arrived in 668. The two men immediately set about touring the archdiocese, restructuring the Church in what is now England by dividing large dioceses into smaller ones, and legislating through regular synods. They also created an internationally renowned school at Canterbury where they may have introduced the study of Greek to Anglo-Saxons.
No illustrations depicting him or even physical descriptions, unfortunately.
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