For another Saint Adelaide, see Adelaide of Italy

Adelaide of Italy

Saint Adelaide of Italy , also called Adelaide of Burgundy, was the second wife of Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor...

Adelaide, Abbess of Villich (Adelheid of Villich) (c. 970–February 5 O.S., 1015) was a daughter of Megingoz des Brunharingen, Count of Guelders

Guelders

Guelders or Gueldres is the name of a historical county, later duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the Low Countries.-Geography:...

 http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cousin/html/p359.htm#i22027, and Gerberga of Metzgau, a granddaughter of Charles the Simple

Charles the Simple

Charles III , called the Simple or the Straightforward , was the undisputed King of France from 898 until 922 and the King of Lotharingia from 911 until 919/23...

, king of the West Franks.

When still very young she entered the convent of St Ursula, Our Lady of the Capitol, founded by her parents in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, where the Rule of St Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...

 was followed. About 980, her parents founded the convent of Villich, supported by a manor at the confluence of the Rhine and the Sieg

Sieg

The Sieg is a river in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany named after the Sigambrer. It is a right tributary of the Rhine and 153 kilometres in length....

, opposite the city of Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

, on the site of a Frankish cemetery and what appears to have been a proprietary church, modern archeology has revealed. Adelaide was "redeemed" from the convent by exchange with a parcel of land http://monasticmatrix.usc.edu/monasticon/?function=detail&id=2576 and became abbess of this new convent, initially established as an unusually late example of a community of canonesses

Canon (priest)

A canon is a priest or minister who is a member of certain bodies of the Christian clergy subject to an ecclesiastical rule ....

. Canons were attached to the convent in order that Mass might be said. After the death of Gerberga, Adelaide introduced the stricter Benedictine rule. She insisted that the nuns under her care learn to read Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, that they might understand the Mass.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia "the fame of her sanctity and of her gift of working miracles

Gift of miracles

In Christian theology, the gift of miracles is among the spiritual gifts mentioned by St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. As a charism, the gift is imparted to individuals by the power of the Holy Spirit...

 soon attracted the attention of Saint Heribert

Heribert of Cologne

Saint Heribert was Archbishop of Cologne and Chancellor of Emperor Otto III, and was canonized c. 1074.-Life:He was born in Worms, the son of Hugo, count of Worms. He was educated in the school of Worms Cathedral and at the Benedictine Gorze Abbey in Lorraine...

, Archbishop of Cologne", who could scarcely have ignored an abbess of her high Carolingian

Carolingian

The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...

 and Ottonian

Ottonian

The Ottonian dynasty was a dynasty of Germanic Kings , named after its first emperor but also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin. The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Liudolf and one of its primary leading-names...

 connections. He appointed her abbess of the convent of St. Maria im Kapitol

St. Maria im Kapitol

St. Maria im Kapitol is an 11th century Romanesque church located in the Kapitol-Viertel in the old town of Cologne, Germany. The Roman Catholic church is based on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, was dedicated to St. Mary and built between 1040 and 1065...

, Cologne, to succeed her sister Bertha, who died about 1000. Emperor Otto III reaffirmed Vilich's immunities from ecclesiastical interference and the right to appoint its own abbess, a title that remained only briefly in the founding family. She died at her convent in Cologne in the year 1015, but was buried at Vilich, where her feast was solemnly celebrated on February 5 and rapidly attracted pilgrims.

A hagiography, Vita Adelheidis, provides some information regarding her family.

External links

• Matrix Monasticon: Adelheid and Vilich
• Saint Adelaide of Guelders