despaired of getting any further. Creeping, climbing, scrambling, rolling, came the men, cutting their hands on the ice. The women were dragged along in sledges made of ox-hides, the guides holding on to the ice by grappling-irons. At last they arrived at a hospitable monastery in the Val d'Aosta. They were well received in Italy, where there seemed more favour for the king, and less for the Pope, than in Germany; but even now all would be lost if Henry did not receive the Holy Father's absolution, so, leaving his wife and child at Reggio, he hurried on, accompanied by his heroic old mother-in-law, to Canossa, where Gregory was resting in the impregnable castle of his devoted partisan, the countess Matilda. These two famous women had so much power in the affairs of Italy that the king's fate was, to a considerable degree, in their hands. Matilda, though devoted to Gregory, pitied the humiliations and sufferings to which the Emperor was subjected, and it was she who at length prevailed on her guest to put an end to the cruel delays and abasement of his unfortunate penitent, so that after days of miserable entreaty, during which he shivered outside the gate in the garb of the humblest penitent, on Jan. 28, 1027, he was admitted to the Pope's presence, and threw himself at his feet Gregory gave him absolution, but made his own hard terms, to which Henry was obliged to agree.
Adelaide's other son-in-law, Rudolph of Suabia, who still had a large party on his side, did not at once give up the struggle for the crown. He won a battle against Henry, but died of his wounds the next day. Adelaide lived fourteen years after the melancholy expedition to Canossa. She was still alive when, in 1084, Henry led an avenging army to Rome, and compelled Gregory to take flight to Salerno.
In her old age her conscience was troubled, not apparently by the slaughter of her rebellious subjects, but because she had had three husbands. She tried to atone for her sins by works of beneficence, and gave bountifully to religious institutions. Fructuaria and other monasteries throve under her patronage. She died very old, Dec. 19, 1091, at Canischio, where the remains of her tomb are still to be seen. By her third marriage she left five children—Peter, to whom she bequeathed the marquisate of Italy; Amadeus, called by the Italians Adelaö; Odo, bishop of Asti; Bertha, the empress; and Adelaide, who married, as his second wife, Rudolph of Suabia, the rival Emperor. He was unkind to his wife, and this circumstance was, perhaps, not without weight in Adelaide's ardent espousal of the fortunes of Henry and Bertha.
Her life is promised by the Bollandists when their calendar comes down to her day. She appears in Ferrarius' Catalogue of the Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, She occupies an important place in every history of the house of Savoy. Frézet, Histoire de la Maison de Savoie. Costa do Beauregard, Mémoire Historique de la Maison royale de Savoie. Saint-Genis, Savoie. Paradin, Chronique de Savoie, Sismondi, Histoire des Français, iii. 161. Stephen, Hildebrand and his Times, Giesebrecht, Deutschlands Kaiserzeit, iii. Biographie Universelle.
Ven. Adelaide (6) Dec. 15. 11th and perhaps the beginning of the 12th century. Countess of Mispilingen. With her husband, Aewic, or Alwic, count of Sultz, she built the convent of Alberspac, O.S.B., in Wittemberg, dedicated in honour of the Holy Cross, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and All Saints. In 1096, at her husband's death, she became a nun. She is venerated in the monastery of Zwifalt, on the Danube, three miles above Ulm, This abbey, in 1482, was joined to the congregation of Bursfeld. Gal. Christ., v., 1064, "La série de douze abbés." Migne, Dic. Bucelinus, Men. Ben.
B. Adelaide (7), April 4, Sept. 1; translation. May 3 (Alaysia, Alice, Aleydis, Elisabeth, etc.), c. 1105 or 1110. Mother of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Called by Husenbeth "Saint." Represented in a window on the north side of Cossey Hall Chapel, standing behind her son, St. Bernard. Daughter of Bernard, lord of Mombard. Wife of
