Saint Adelaide

Adelaide was born around 931, the daughter of Rudolph II, king of Burgundy, and Bertha of Swabia. Her life is the novel of tenth-century Europe. At sixteen she was given in marriage to Lothair II, king of Italy. He died three years later, perhaps poisoned. Berengar of Ivrea took the throne and demanded that Adelaide marry his son; she refused, and he had her imprisoned in the fortress of Garda. She managed to escape — tradition says through a tunnel, with the help of a priest — and took refuge at Canossa. From there she asked for help from Otto I of Saxony, who came down into Italy, freed her and married her in 951. In 962 they were crowned emperor and empress in Rome: Adelaide was the first woman who can be said with certainty to have received the imperial dignity in the West. She was then empress for twenty-two years, and after the death of her son Otto II, regent of the empire for her grandson Otto III, between 991 and 995 — a woman who in practice governed Germany and Italy. She founded and endowed monasteries all over Europe, and was close to Cluny and to Abbot Odilo, who wrote her life after her death. She died at Seltz, in Alsace, on December 16, 999, in the monastery she herself had founded, a few weeks before the year 1000. If your name is Adelaide, today is your name day.