Saint Adelaide, an Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, was born in Burgandy in 931AD. She was married at the age of 15 or 16, to Lothair of Italy to whom she had been engaged to at the age of two. After Lothair passed away three years later, his successor and usurper Berengar of Ivrea imprisoned Adelaide and attempted to force her to marry his son.
Adelaide escaped to Canossa, where she appealed to Otto of Germany for help. He conquered Italy and married Adelaide 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. Her son Otto II took over the empire following his father’s death. In 995, her grandson Otto III started ruling the empire. Adelaide finally retired to a convent she had helped to found, in the Alsace region between France and Germany.
Adelaide established many monasteries, churches and convents. She was 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 was 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 presented in operas by Handel and Rossini. Adelaide is the patron saint of 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.
Other Saints of the Day
1. Saint Ado of Vienne
2. Saint Albina of Caesarea
3. Saint Nicholas Chrysoberges
4. Saint Adelard of Cysoing
5. Saint Macarius of Collesano
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