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Adelaide of Italy (931 - 16 December 999), also called Adelaide of Burgundy, was the second wife of Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor.[1] Empress Adelaide was perhaps the most prominent European woman of the 10th century; she was regent of the Holy Roman Empire as the guardian of her grandson in 991-995.[1] Life Born in Orbe, today in Switzerland, she was the daughter of Rudolf II of Burgundy and Bertha of Swabia.[2] Her first marriage, at the age of fifteen, was to the son of her father's rival in Italy, Lothair II, the nominal King of Italy[3]; the union was part of a political settlement designed to conclude a peace between her father and Hugh of Provence, the father of Lothair. They had a daughter, Emma of Italy. Marriage to Otto I The Calendar of Saints states that her first husband was poisoned by the holder of real power, his successor, Berengar of Ivrea, who attempted to cement his political power by forcing her to marry his son, Adalbert; when she refused and fled, she was tracked down and imprisoned for four months at Como. From it she was rescued by a priest named Martin, who dug a subterranean passage, by which she escaped, and remained concealed in the woods, her rescuer supporting her, meantime, by the fish he caught in the lake. Soon, however, the Duke of Canossa, Alberto Uzzo, who had been advised of the rescue, arrived and carried her off to his castle,[1] where she was besieged by Berengar. She managed to send an emissary to throw herself on the mercy of Otto the Great. His brothers were equally willing to save the dowager queen, but Otto got an army into the field: they subsequently met at the old Lombard capital of Pavia and were married in 951; he was crowned emperor in Rome, 2 February 962 by Pope John XII, and, most unusually, she was crowned empress at the same ceremony.[2] Her children were: Henry, born in 952; Bruno, born 953; Matilda, the first Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg, born about 954; and Otto II, later Holy Roman Emperor, born 955. In Germany, the crushing of a revolt in 953 by Liudolf, Otto's son by his first marriage, cemented the position of Adelaide, who retained all her dower lands. She accompanied Otto in 966 on his third expedition to Italy, where she remained with him for six years. Retirement Adelaide had long entertained close relations with Cluny, then the center of the movement for ecclesiastical reform, and in particular with its abbots Majolus and Odilo. She retired to a nunnery she had founded in c. 991 at Selz in Alsace.[4] Though she never became a nun, she spent the rest of her days there in prayer. On her way to Burgundy to support her nephew Rudolf III against a rebellion, she died at Selz Abbey on December 16, 999, days short of the millennium she thought would bring the Second Coming of Christ. She had constantly devoted herself to the service of the church and peace, and to the empire as guardian of both; she also interested herself in the conversion of the Slavs. She was thus a principal agent-almost an embodiment-of the work of the Catholic Church during the Early Middle Ages in the construction of the religion-culture of western Europe.[5] A part of her relics are preserved in a shrine in Hanover. Her feast day, December 16, is still kept in many German dioceses. Issue In 947, Adelaide was married to King Lothair II of Italy. The union produced one child: Emma of Italy - born 948, queen of France and wife of Lothair of France In 951, Adelaide was married to King Otto I, the future Holy Roman Emperor. The union produced four children: Henry - born 952 Bruno - born 953 Matilda - born 954, Abbess of Quedlinburg Otto II - born 955, Holy Roman Emperor Legacy Adelaïde is the heroine of Gioacchino Rossini's 1817 opera, Adelaide di Borgogna and William Bernard McCabe's 1856 novel Adelaide, Queen of Italy, or The Iron Crown. Adelaide is a featured figure on Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party, being represented as one of the 999 names on the Heritage Floor.[6][7] Notes ^ Jump up to: a b c Campbell, Thomas. "St. Adelaide." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 20 Sept. 2012 ^ Jump up to: a b McKitterick, Rosamond (1999). The new Cambridge medieval history (1. publ. ed.). Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 0521364477. Jump up ^ Gallick, Sarah (2009). The big book of women saints. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books. ISBN 0061956562. Jump up ^ “Saint Adelaide of Bugundy”. Saints.SQPN.com. 15 June 2012. Web. {2012-9-20}. Jump up ^ "The Saints: A concise Biographical Dictionary", edited by John Coulson, published by Hawthorn Books, Inc. 1960.[1] Jump up ^ "Adelaide". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Adelaide. Brooklyn Museum. 2007. Retrieved 15 December 2011. Jump up ^ Chicago, 104-105. Bibliography Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. New York: Penguin Books (1993). ISBN 0-14-051312-4. Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. London: Merrell (2007). ISBN 1-85894-370-1 References Genealogie-Mittelalter: "Adelheid von Burgund". Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Another version: Adelheid Die Heilige, French Sainte Adélaïde, Italian Santa Adelaide, consort of the Western emperor Otto I and, later, regent for her grandson Otto III; she helped strengthen the German church while subordinating it to imperial power. The 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 imprisoned Adelaide (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 regent 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 Holy Roman Emperor in 996, she retired from court life, devoting herself to founding churches, monasteries, and convents. http://en.wikipedia.org
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