Nicolas Breakspear and Leonin of Paris

Did you know there was an English Pope? Nicolas Breakspear served as Pope Adrian IV from 1154 to 1159. In 1152, shortly before his papacy began, Breakspear was sent as papal legate to Scandanavia. As he returned to Rome in 1154, he met Leonin (ca.1135- ca.1201), poet, priest, musician and the founder of the Notre Dame School. He also composed the collection of organa called the Magnus Liber Organi. According to musicologist Craig Wright, when the two men met in Paris, Breakspear "promised the young cleric [Leonin] his assistance." Such help never came, but Leonin found favor with the next pope, Alexander III (1159-1181). Alexander III lived in France from 1162 to 1165 and it was he that supposedly "laid the first stone of he new catherdral." (Source: Craig Wright, "Leonius, Poet and Musician," Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, Spring 1986, pp.23-25)