St Adelaide is among other things the patron saint of princesses. She was born in 932, the daughter of Rudolf II of Burgundy, who just two years later betrothed her to marry Lothair, son of Hugh of Provence, as part of a peace treaty.
The contract was fulfilled when Adelaide reached the age of 16. Lothair had by then been crowned King of Italy. The couple had a daughter, Emma, but Lothair died in 950, possibly poisoned by his rival, Berengarius, who succeeded him.
Berengarius tried to force Adelaide to marry his son and when she refused treated her brutally and jailed her in a castle on Lake Garda.
At this time the German king, Otto the Great, was invading Italy from the north and defeated Berengarius, and Adelaide joined him after she either escaped (legend speaks of her flight to Canossa, where she appealed directly to Otto for help) or was released from prison. In an attempt to consolidate his grip on northern of Italy, Otto married Adelaide, who was 20 years his junior, on Christmas Day 951 and they went on to have five children together.
St Adelaide proved popular among the German people even though Ludolf, Otto’s son from his first marriage to the English Athelstan, became jealous of the influence of his stepmother and a focus of discontent and rebellion.
In 962 Otto was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome and St Adelaide became Empress. Butler’s Lives of the Saints tells us that nothing is heard of Adelaide until her husband died 10 years later and he was succeeded by their eldest son, Otto II.
The new emperor was turned against his mother by his wife, the Byzantine Theophano, so Adelaide left the court and joined her brother, Conrad of Burgundy at Vienna. She later asked St Majolus, the Abbot of Cluny, who she wanted to be elected as pope when Benedict VI was murdered in 974, to intervene in the dispute and finally Otto was reconciled with his mother at Pavia, dropping to his knees to ask her forgiveness.
Trouble erupted again when Otto died while his son and heir, Otto III, was just a baby. His wife became regent and Adelaide again left the court only to return herself as regent in 991 following the sudden death of Theophano, exercising her political duties with the advice of St Willigis of Mainz.
St Adelaide was a woman who was repeatedly and generously forgiving to her enemies. She had a great interest in evangelisation and was amenable to the wise counsel of St Majolus, St Adalbert of Magdeberg and St Odilo of Cluny, establishing and restoring many monasteries and churches. In particular, she urged the conversion of the Slavs, whose movements on her eastern borders troubled her closing years.
In the twilight of her life St Adelaide returned to her native Burgundy. She died in Selz, on the Rhine near Strasbourg, on 16 December 999 in a monastery she had founded.
Besides princesses, St Adelaide is also a patron of abuse victims, brides, empresses, exiles, people who have problems with in-laws, parenthood, the parents of large families, prisoners, step-mothers, second marriages and widows.