Difference between revisions of "Adelaide of Italy" - New World Encyclopedia

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==Religious life==
 
==Religious life==
[[Image:DeutschesSprachgebiet962.png|thumb|150px|The Holy Roman Empire of Otto I in the tenth century]]
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[[Image:DeutschesSprachgebiet962.png|thumb|170px|The Holy Roman Empire of Otto I in the tenth century]]
 
Adelaide had long entertained close relations with [[Cluny Abbey|Cluny]], then the center of the movement for ecclesiastical reform, and in particular with its abbots [[Majolus]] and [[Odilo of Cluny|Odilo]]. She retired to a monastery she had founded in c. 991 at [[Selz Abbey|Selz]] in [[Alsace]]. She took her final title: "Adelheida, by God's gift empress, by herself a poor sinner and God's maidservant."  
 
Adelaide had long entertained close relations with [[Cluny Abbey|Cluny]], then the center of the movement for ecclesiastical reform, and in particular with its abbots [[Majolus]] and [[Odilo of Cluny|Odilo]]. She retired to a monastery she had founded in c. 991 at [[Selz Abbey|Selz]] in [[Alsace]]. She took her final title: "Adelheida, by God's gift empress, by herself a poor sinner and God's maidservant."  
  

Revision as of 16:46, 31 October 2008

For another Saint Adelaide, see Adelaide, Abbess of Vilich.
Saint Adelaide
200

Born 931-932 in Burgundy, France
Died December 16 999 in Seltz, Alsace
Venerated in Catholic Church
Canonized 1097

by Pope Urban II

Feast December 16
Attributes empress dispensing alms and food to the poor, often beside a ship
Patronage abuse victims; brides; empresses; exiles; in-law problems; parenthood; parents of large families; princesses; prisoners; second marriages; step-parents; widows

Saint Adelaide of Italy, also called Adelaide of Burgundy (931/932 – 16 December 999) was perhaps the most prominent European woman of the tenth century. She was married to Lothair II, her father's rival in Italy. When he died, her kingdom was taken over by Berengar of Ivrea and his cruel wife Willa, who imprisoned Adelaide, tried to force her to marry their misshaped son, and plundered her treasury. She escaped but was captured again and tortured. She sent a message to Otto I, the most powerful man in Europe, to rescue her with a promise of marriage. He did indeed rescue and marry her. They were reported to have had a happy marriage with five children. Upon his death her son Otto II came into power, but his wife, Theophano a Byzantine princess, separated mother and son, on her death Adelaide guided her grandson, Otto III until he could stand alone.

She retired to Selz Abbey where she did many good works and believed that in the year 1000 the apocalypse would occur. She died at Selz Abbey in Alsace on December 16, 999, days short of the millennium she thought would bring the Second Coming of Christ.

Early life and marriages

She was the daughter of Rudolf II of Burgundy and Bertha of Swabia. 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; 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.

The Calendar of Saints states that her first husband was poisoned by the holder of real power, his successor, Berengar of Ivrea, who crowned himself king and attempted to cement his political power by forcing her to marry his misshaped son, Adalbert. An educated noble nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim, who knew Adelaide, wrote, "Engorged with hatred and envy, Berengar directed his fury against Queen Adelaide. Not only did he seize her throne but at the same time forced the doors of her treasury and carried off, with greedy hand, everything he found...He even took her royal crown..."[1]

Fearing Berengar and concerned that Adalbert helped to poison her husband, she escaped with two handmaids. Willa, the wife of Berengar turned vicious. She tore at Adelaide's hair and jewelry, scratching her face, and kicking her. She was then locked up in one of Berengar's castles on an island in Lake Garda. There she suffered for four months.

Her friend, a faithful priest named Warinus, saved Adelaide by digging a hole into the castle's thick walls. Each night boring a little deeper until Adelaide and her remaining maid did the same from inside her room until they could squeeze out, and all three escaped in a waiting boat. Aggressively pursued, they hid in a wheat field while their pursuers stabbed the wheat with their lances. Yet they were not found. They traveled to the castle of Count Adalbert Atto in Canossa, Italy and she put herself under his protection. She was besieged by Berengar again.

Faithful Warinus slipped through the castle siege and fled to Germany with a letter from Adelaide to Otto the Great of Germany, who was the most powerful man in Europe. The letter begged Otto to rescue Adelaide. In return, she offered to marry him, thus uniting her lands with his.

He arrived in Italy in 951 with Berengar fleeing before him. His brothers were equally willing to save the heiress of Italy, but Otto got an army into the field: they subsequently met at the old Lombard capital of Pavia and were married in 951 when she was twenty years old; he was crowned Emperor in Rome, 2 February 962 by Pope John XII, and, most unusually, she was crowned Empress at the same ceremony. Among their five children, four lived to maturity: Henry, born in 952; Bruno, born 953; Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg, born about 954; and Otto II, later Holy Roman Emperor, born 955. Adelaide and Otto mainly ruled from Saxony (Northern Germany). They were reported to have liked each other immediately and had a happy marriage despite the twenty years of age difference.

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 and some others he added. She accompanied Otto in 966 on his third expedition to Italy, where she remained with him for six years.

Adelaide and her second husband Otto I the Great

When her husband Otto I died in 973 he was succeeded by their son Otto II, and Adelaide for some years exercised a powerful influence at court, until he married Theophano, who was only sixteen and Otto seventeen. She came from the glorious court of Byzantium. Theophano had learned much about court intrigue and treachery at the court of her parents. Otto began to listen to her more, and his mother less. Adelaide and her son and daughter-in-law grew apart.

Later, Theophano turned her husband Otto II against his mother, and she was driven from court in 978; she lived partly in Italy, and partly with her brother Conrad, king of Burgundy, by whose mediation she was ultimately reconciled to her son; in 983 Otto appointed her his viceroy in Italy. However, Otto died the same year, and the women joined ranks to protect the three-year-old king, but although both mother and grandmother were appointed as co-regents for the child-king, Otto III, eventually Theophano forced Adelaide to abdicate and exiled her. She lived in Lombardy from 985 to 991 when Theophano died and Adelaide was restored to the regency of her grandson. She was assisted by Willigis, bishop of Mainz. In 995 Otto III came of age and established his independence from his grandmother and Adelaide was free to devote herself exclusively to works of charity, notably the foundation or restoration of religious houses.

Religious life

The Holy Roman Empire of Otto I in the tenth century

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 monastery she had founded in c. 991 at Selz in Alsace. She took her final title: "Adelheida, by God's gift empress, by herself a poor sinner and God's maidservant."

Though she never became a nun, she spent the rest of her days there in prayer. 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 religious culture of western Europe. Her feast day, December 16, is still kept in many German dioceses.

Adelaide believed that in the year 1,000 the end of the world, or apocalypse, would occur. From the book of Revelation in the Bible, she believed that Satan would be released from his imprisonment and Christ would come again to defeat him. She told the abbot of Cluny, "As the thousandth year of our Lord's becoming flesh approaches, I yearn to behold this day, which knows no evening, in the forecourt of our Lord."[2]

Death

On her way to Burgundy to support her nephew Rudolf III against a rebellion, she died at Selz Abbey on December 16, 999, just sixteen days short of the millennium she thought would bring the Second Coming of Christ.

Preceded by:
Edith of Wessex
German Queen
951–961
Succeeded by: Theophanu
Preceded by:
Vacant
Title last held by
Bertila of Spoleto
Empress of the Holy Roman Empire
962–973

Notes

  1. Women in World History womeninworldhistory.com Retrieved October 30, 2008.
  2. Ibid.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
  • Coulson, John ed. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary. Hawthorn Books, 1960. OCLC 222552141
  • Erdoes, Richard. A.D. 1000: Europe on the Brink of the Apocalypse, Harper & Row, 1988. ISBN 9780062502957
  • This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

All links retrieved October 30, 2008.

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