SAINT ADELAIDE (947-74)

Consort of the Western emperor Otto I and, later, regent for her grandson Otto III who helped strengthen the German church while subordinating it to imperial power.


Daughter of Rudolf II (d. 937), king of Burgundy, and Bertha of Swabia, Adelaide was married (947) to Lothair, who succeeded his father, Hugh of Arles, as king of Italy in the same year.


After Lothair died (950), Berengar of Ivrea,, his old rival, seized the Italian throne and imprisioned her (April 951) at Garda. After her escape four months later, she asked the German king Otto I the Great to help her regain the throne. Otto marched into Lombardy (September 951), declared himself king, and married her (December 951). They were crowned emperor and empress by Pope John XII in Rome in 962. She devoted her time to promoting Cluniac monasticism and to strengthening the allegiance of the German church to the emperor.


After Otto´s death (May 7, 973), Adelaide exercised influence over her son Otto II until their estrangement in 978, when she left the court and lived in Burgundy with her brother King Conrad. At Conrad´s urging she became reconciled with her son, and, before his death in 983, Otto appointed her his gerent in Italy. With her daughter-in-law, Empress Theophano, she upheld the right of her three-year-old grandson, Otto III, to the German throne. She lived in Lombardy from 985 to 991, when she returned to Germany to serve as sole regent after Theophano´s death (991). She governed until Otto III came of age (994), and, when he became emperor in 996, she retired from court life, devoting herself to founding churches, monasteries, and convents. Miracles reportedly occurred at her tomb at Seltz. Her fest day is December 16.