This biography, written by Catherine Capel, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Born: 931, Switzerland
Died: 16 December 999
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: Adelaide of Italy
Adelheid was born around 931 to King Rudolph II of Burgundy and Italy and Queen Bertha of Swabia. Rudolph died in 937 and her mother remarried King Hugh of Italy.
A match was arranged between Adelheid and her stepbrother Lothar when she was only sixteen and after Hugh died in 948, the two became King and Queen of Italy. Their daughter, Emma, would go on to marry King Lothair of France.
Lothar died in 950 and Berengar of Ivrea abducted Adelheid to use her to strengthen his own claim as King of Italy and imprisoned her at Garda in Northern Italy. Adelheid escaped and married Otto I, Duke of Saxony and King of Germany, in 951.
The couple extended their power to Italy and were also anointed as Holy Roman Emperor and Empress by Pope John XII in 962.
They ruled for twenty-two years until Otto I died in 973. Adelheid would serve as regent twice in the kingdom.
She was first for her son Otto II and his wife Theophanu until 974 and again for her grandson Otto III in 983 alongside his mother Empress Theophanu and his aunt Abbess Mathilda of Quedlinburg.
After her grandson had reached his majority in 994, Adelheid devoted herself to acts of charity and religious patronage. She died in 999 and was canonized by Pope Urban II in the late eleventh century.
Recommended Reading
Eckgard Müller-Mertens, “The Ottonians as kings and emperors,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 3, c.900-c.1024, ed. Timothy Reuter, 233-266 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Giussepi Sergi, “The kingdom of Italy,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 3, c.900-c.1024, ed. Timothy Reuter, 346-371 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999)
Penelope Nash, Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Phyliss G. Jestice, Imperial Ladies of the Ottonian Dynasty: Women and Rule in Tenth-Century Germany (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Saint Adelaide (933-999) – She was a daughter of Rudolph II, King of Burgundy. In 947 she married Lothaire II, King of Italy, after whose violent death in 950 she was imprisoned by his successor Berenger II, for declining to marry his deformed son Adalbert. She escaped from prison and solicited the protection of Otho I the Great, who, captivated by her beauty and character, married her in 951. She was crowned Empress of the West in 962, and exerted much influence during the reign of her son Otho II and as regent during the minority of her grandson Otho III She was called “the mother of Kingdoms.” The latter part of her life was consecrated to works of piety and charity and she was honored as a saint.