Hadrian the Seventh: A Romance

I read this a long time ago and it left a very distinct and longlasting aftertaste. In my childhood, I met more than a few Catholics caught up with the elaborate outer crust, rituals and language of this religion, the religion of my childhood. Hadrian the seventh is more extreme in this way than all of those characters put together. You do not have to be a Catholic to enjoy his very original use of the English language. It is a classic. Poverty seems to have chased Frederick Rolfe even after death. This book is out of print! I read this book during the same period while I was at university that I read the Autobiography of Aleister Crowley, Milarepa by Evans-Wentz and Borges and shortly after that Marques, just before he won the Nobel Prize. I promise you young folks that reading these crazy books would take you on more thrilling trips than drugs, fast cars and mindless sex. It is all in the mind, is it not?

This really is an astonishingly modern book. He shows in part a Church capable of corruption and deceit, but also shows a Church which has what we now call a preferential option toward the poor, and a Pope also works diligently for peace.Here we have the hero, a poor, scholarly eccentric, who has been ill-treated by Church officials. His bishop did not like him and did not support his vocation to the priesthood, and told lies to boot. However, finally, a couple of bishops, one an Archbishop, look into his case and decide he has been dreadfully wronged. Rolfe delineates a structure of secrecy, deceit, and cover up. He did not anticipate the scandals of the cover-up of child abuse, but the structures of deceit are there, and one can still see them at work today.Well, the old Archbishop, after much careful and challenging questioning, determines that our hero really does have a true vocation to the priesthoood, and that his studies were sufficient. He ordains him. It just turns out that the Archbishop has come back from a Papal Conclave which is in deadlock, unable to choose a new Pope. He returns to Rome with the new priest in his entourage, and lo and behold, it turns out that his ill-treatment and his case have been discussed. By the Holy Spirit, he is chosen Pope, much to his surprise. However, the Spirit no doubt gave him strength and he accepts the office, choosing the title of Hadrian VII.Well, what kind of Pope is he? He first of all wants to be a Pope of the people, and so ensures his elections and first appearance is to the waiting crowds outside in the world. He likes going among the crowds, even though there is some danger of assassination, though he was not the traveller that J. P. II is. He insists on having his quarters built and decorated in a utilitarian way, eschewing grandeur. Having experienced poverty, he is very solicitous towards the poor and devotes a lot of Church resources towards ameliorating poverty. So, he anticipated the preferential option towards the poor.Some have pointed out that his Pope has a great deal more influence in the world than any modern Pope has had, Hadrian VII showed himself as vitally interested in peace. Truly, the Pope would not be able to engineer a division of the world into spheres of influence for various favored powerful nations. There is good and bad in the Church, and Rolfe's Hadrian VII sets out much of both. Rolfe himself was quite an eccentric, and so is his Pope. The style is full of archaisms and wierd bits of learning, but Rolfe was theologically astute, too. His Hadrian is a very complex and facinating character, somewhat depressive, hard working, kind, and strange. This novel is so interesting I can forgive it a few faults. Some of it is a hoot.

The most attractive feature of this new edition of Rolfe's bizarre classic is the introduction by Alexander Theroux, perhaps the only writer today with the fire, erudition, and vocubulary to carry on the tradition of Corvine invective. (If you like Corvo, you must read Theroux's novel "Darconville's Cat.")

Anyone fantasizing about a catholic church led by an ambitious, (relatively) young, energetic, charismatic, intelligent, prescient, and competent pope, must read this book and realize it's already been fantasized about to a truly wondrous extent. An idealization of theo-autocracy, Hadrian the Seventh bears comparison (if only for giggles) with GK Chesterton's works. Delightful, morbidly absurd and surprisingly engaging, Baron Corvo's quasi-wistfully-autobiographical novel is the epitome of what-ifs, a seminal exposition in the art of might-have-beens.

Frederick Rolfe's Hadrian is all surface and seeming - it is pontiff-ego, receiving its due recognition as a thing valuable in and of itself. A defrocked misanthropic, mysogynist Roman Catholic priest living in near hermetic solitude with his cat, and entertaining himself by counting the split infinitives in the daily paper, is approached and courted by the church, which eventually elects him Pope. Hadrian VII is a truly bizarre and interesting novel. If you enjoy Wilde, Huysmans, Orton or Alexander Theroux, or screeds of beautifully ornate abuse, you will undertake your own quest for Corvo as, sadly, not a one of Rolfe's works is in print.