medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
A daughter of Rudolf II of Jurane Burgundy, Adelaide (d. 999; in Latin, Adalhaida, Adalheida, _vel sim._; in German, Adelheid, Adalhaid) was betrothed in infancy to Lothar, the son of her father's successor as king of Italy, Hugh of Arles. When she was sixteen and Lothar was Lothar II of Italy they married. Three years later Lothar was dead, said to have been poisoned by his successor, Berengar II. When Berengar failed to persuade Adelaide to marry his son he shut her up in a castle where, it was later said, she was treated very badly. In the following year Berengar was overthrown by Otto I. Otto and Adelaide were married on 25. December 951 in the kingdom's capital of Pavia. In 962 the royal pair was crowned emperor and empress in Rome.
In addition to taking part in Otto's foundation of the diocese of Meissen (968) the very pious Adelaide founded or restored several monasteries on her own initiative and patronized others, notably Cluny. She had a series of notable spiritual advisors including St. Adalbert of Prague and, after Otto's death in 973 and her subsequent retirement to Burgundy, the abbots of Cluny St. Maiolus and St. Odilo. Adelaide had a major falling out with her son Otto II which was patched up with Maiolus' assistance. She also did not get along at all well with Otto's wife, the empress Theophanu, with whom she served as co-regent for her grandson, the minor Otto III, until Theophanu's death in 991. Adelaide continued as sole regent until Otto III's majority in 995). She died at her monastery at today's Seltz (Bas-Rhin) in Alsace and was buried there. St. Odilo of Cluny wrote a memorial of her (BHL 63-65), focusing on her later years, lauding her virtues, calling her _sancta_, and recounting her miracles. (Odilo had a low opinion of Theophanu, whom he consistently refers to simply as _Graeca_ ["the Greek woman"]. Did this distaste come from Adelaide?)
Urban II is supposed to have canonized Adelaide in about 1097. Today (16. December) is her feast day in the diocese of Einsiedeln and her day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Adelaide of Burgundy:
a) as depicted (roundel at bottom; roundel at left: Theophanu; roundel at right: Otto III) in the late tenth-century St. Gereon Gospels (after 984; Köln, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Hs. W 312, fol. 22r):
http://tinyurl.com/zuowa4h
b) as portrayed in relief (at far right, after Sts. Sigismund, Constantine, and Helena) on the earlier eleventh-century portable altar of countess Gertrude of Braunschweig (ca. 1045) now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (photograph courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/GertrudeAltar3.jpg
Genevra's page of views of this object (which contains a relic of A.):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/GertrudisAltar.html
c) as portrayed (at left; at right, Otto I) in a mid- or slightly later thirteenth-century statue (repainted probably in the eighteenth century) in Meissen's cathedral of St. John and St. Donatus (rebuilt between 1240 and 1260):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28064651@N05/3330882187/lightbox/
Detail views (Adelaide):
http://tinyurl.com/2hzju7
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7094/7287774930_29d9dab071_b.jpg
d) as portrayed (at right; at left, Otto I) in a mid-fifteenth-century statue on the Altstadtrathaus in Braunschweig:
http://tinyurl.com/jposp59
e) as portrayed in relief (at far right; from the left, the others are Sts. Catherine of Alexandria, Anne Trinitiarian [Anna Selbdritt], Mary Magdalene, and Elizabeth of Hungary) in the early sixteenth-century altar of the Rosary (1510; detail view) in the Liebfrauenmünster in Wolframs-Eschenbach (Lkr. Ansbach) in Bavaria:
http://tinyurl.com/jpsbfs9
Best,
John Dillon
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