St. Adelaide was an empress of the Holy Roman Empire. She was born in the year 931 in Upper Burgundy—what is now present-day Switzerland—to the king of Burgundy, Rudolf II. Adelaide’s first marriage was a strategic political alliance to the son of Lothair II of Italy, her father’s rival. Adelaide and her first husband had one daughter, Emma, born in 948 when Adelaide was only seventeen.

Her husband’s rival, Berengar II, in a devious political move, poisoned Adelaide’s husband and attempted to force Adelaide to marry his son, Adalbert. Adelaide definitively refused and fled Italy. Berengar’s men pursued her and imprisoned her in a fortress at Lake Como for four months.

In the Middle Ages, young queens were important political assets. If they had any interest in playing the political games of their time, they had to quickly become skilled navigators of the political dynamics of the many entangled kingdoms of Europe. If a queen had any interest in becoming a formidable political player, not a pawn, it was sometimes necessary for her to master the art of escaping from a castle fortress.

Adelaide proved adept in this respect and escaped from captivity into the countryside of Italy’s northern lakes. Adelaide was rescued from the marshes by allies and taken to a secure fortress. From there, she petitioned Otto I, the Frankish King, for his aid and protection.

A plea for help may not seem like the most romantic marriage proposal, but it ended up working to Adelaide’s advantage. Otto and Adelaide were married in 951. Ten years later, Pope John XII crowned Otto I Holy Roman Emperor and, breaking with the previous tradition, also crowned Adelaide concurrently as Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.

For a time, Adelaide lived in Rome while Otto managed the empire from other strategic locations. Around 972, Adelaide and Otto returned to Italy, where Otto died in May 973. Thus began Adelaide’s long streak of outliving her successors and relations. Adelaide’s son, Otto II, began to rule as emperor upon the death of his father before he himself died in 983. Upon Otto II’s death, Adelaide’s grandson, Otto III, began to rule with his mother, Empress Theophanu as regent. When Theophanu died in 990, Adelaide took her daughter-in-law’s place as regent. In 995, Otto III came of legal age to rule, and Adelaide finally retired to a convent she had helped to found, in the Alsace region between France and Germany.

Adelaide had long been involved in ecclesial reforms that were centered around Cluny and worked for the conversion of Eastern Europe. She was a powerful religious as well as political ruler, and she is responsible in many ways for embedding Christianity in the culture of Central Europe.

Adelaide died on December 16, 999, just short of the millennial year. Her adventurous life was fictionalized and memorialized in operas by Handel and Rossini. Adelaide is the patron saint of, unsurprisingly, brides and empresses. She is also the patron saint of women and men who have experienced hardship in relationships or in marriages, which is a tender acknowledgment of the difficulties and pains a mother must have experienced in raising a family in the rough-and-tumble political atmosphere of medieval Europe. She is the patron saint of abuse victims, second marriages, step-parents, and widows. Some of her relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.

St. Adelaide, holy empress and brave mother—pray for us!

Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Adelaide is in the public domain. Last accessed November 1, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.