General Notes

ADELAIDE (ADELHEID) German ADELHEID DIE HEILIGE, French SAINTE ADÉLAÏDE, Italian SANTA ADELAIDE (b. 931--d. Dec. 16, 999, Seltz, Alsace [now in France]; feast day December 16), was the daughter of Rudolph II of Burgundy, and married, in 947, Lothair, who succeeded his father Hugh as king of Italy. Lothair died in 950 and Adelaide was imprisoned at Como by his successor, Berengar II, marquis of Ivrea, who wished to compel her to marry his son Adalbert. After four months (Aug. 951) she escaped and took refuge at Canossa with Atto, count of Modena-Reggio. Meanwhile Otto I, the German king, whose English wife, Edgitha, had died in 946, came to Italy. Adelaide met him at Pavia, asked him to help her regain the throne. Otto marched into Lombardy (September 951), declared himself king, and married her (December 951). On Feb. 2, 962, she was crowned empress at Rome by Pope John XXII immediately after her husband, and she accompanied Otto in 966 on his third expedition to Italy, where she remained with him for six years. She devoted her time to promoting Cluniac monasticism and to strengthening the allegiance of the German church to the emperor.
After Otto I's death (May 7, 973), Adelaide exercised for some years a controlling influence over her son, the new emperor, Otto II, until their estrangement in 978. The causes of their estrangement are obscure, but it was possibly due to the empress' lavish expenditure in charity and church building, which was a serious drain on the imperial finances. In 978 she left the court and lived partly in Italy, partly with her brother Conrad, king of Burgundy, by whose mediation she was ultimately reconciled to her son. In 983, shortly before his death, Otto appointed her his regent in Italy, and, in concert with the Empress Theophano, widow of Otto II, and Archbishop Wiligis of Mainz, defended the right of her infant grandson, Otto III, to the German crown against the pretensions of Henry the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria.
In June 984 the infant king was handed over by Henry to the care of the two empresses; but the masterful will of Theophano the Greek empress soon obtained the upper hand. Adelaide lived in Lombardy from 985 to 991and had no voice in German affairs. After the death of Theophano on June 15, 991, Adelaide returned to Germany to serve as sole regent, in concert with Archbishop Willigis and a council of princes of the empire, and held it until Otto was declared of age in 995. In 996 the young king went to Italy to receive the imperial crown, and from this date Adelaide retired from court life, devoting herself to pious exercises, to correspondence with the abbots Majolus and Odilo of Cluny, and to the foundation of churches and religious houses. She died on Dec. 17, 999, and was buried in the convent of Saints Peter and Paul, her favorite foundation, at Salz in Alsace. By the emperor Otto I she had four children: Otto II (d. 983); Mathilda, abbess of Quedlinburg (d. 999); Adelheid (Adelaide), abbess of Essen (d. 974); and Liutgard