Adelaide of Maurienne

Adelaide of Maurienne
Queen consort of the Franks
Tenure 1115–1137
Born 18 November 1092
Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, France
Died 18 November 1154 (aged 61–62)
Burial Saint-Pierre de Montmartre
Spouse Louis VI of France
Matthieu I of Montmorency
Issue Philip of France
Louis VII of France
Henry, Archbishop of Reims
Robert I of Dreux
Constance, Countess of Toulouse
Philip, Bishop of Paris
Peter of Courtenay
House Savoy
Father Humbert II of Savoy
Mother Gisela of Burgundy
Religion Roman Catholicism

Adelaide of Savoy (or Adelaide of Maurienne) (Italian: Adelaide di Savoia or Adelasia di Moriana, French: Adélaïde or Adèle de Maurienne) (1092 – 18 November 1154) was the second spouse but first Queen consort of Louis VI of France. Adelaide was the daughter of Humbert II of Savoy and Gisela of Burgundy,[1] and niece of Pope Callixtus II, who once visited her court in France.

Queen of France

She became the second wife of Louis VI of France, whom she married on 3 August 1113/14 in Paris, France.[2] They had eight children, the second of whom became Louis VII of France. Adelaide was one of the most politically active of all France's medieval queens. Her name appears on 45 royal charters from the reign of Louis VI. During her tenure as queen, royal charters were dated with both her regnal year and that of the king. Among many other religious benefactions, she and Louis founded the monastery of St Peter's (Ste Pierre) at Montmartre, in the northern suburbs of Paris.

Louis and Adelaide had seven sons and one daughter:

  1. Philip of France (1116–1131)
  2. Louis VII (1120–18 November 1180), King of France
  3. Henry (1121–1175), Archbishop of Reims
  4. Hugues (b. c. 1122)
  5. Robert (c. 1123–11 October 1188), Count of Dreux
  6. Constance (c. 1124–16 August 1176), married first Eustace IV, Count of Boulogne and then Raymond V of Toulouse.
  7. Philip (1125–1161), Bishop of Paris. not to be confused with his elder brother.
  8. Peter (c. 1125–1183), married Elizabeth, Lady of Courtenay

Queen dowager

After Louis VI's death, Adélaide did not immediately retire to conventual life, as did most widowed queens of the time. Instead she married Matthieu I of Montmorency,[3] with whom she had one child. She remained active in the French court and in religious activities.

Adélaide is one of two queens in a legend related by William Dugdale. As the story goes, Queen Adélaide of France became enamoured of a young knight, William d'Albini, at a joust. But he was already engaged to Adeliza of Louvain and refused to become her lover. The jealous Adélaide lured him into the clutches of a hungry lion, but William ripped out the beast's tongue with his bare hands and thus killed it. This story is almost without a doubt apocryphal.

In 1153 she retired to the abbey of Montmartre, which she had founded with Louis VII. She died there on 18 November 1154.[3] She was buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Pierre at Montmartre, but her tomb was destroyed during the Revolution.

Ancestry

Notes

  1. ↑ C.W. Previte-Orton, The Early History of the House of Savoy, (Cambridge University Press, 1912), 276-277.
  2. ↑ Mary Stroll, Calixtus the Second, 1119-1124, (Brill, 2004), 192.
  3. 1 2 Adelaide of Savoy, John Bell Henneman, Jr., Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn, (Routledge, 1995), 7.

Sources

Adelaide of Maurienne
Born: 1097 Died: 18 November 1154
French royalty
Preceded by
Bertrade de Montfort		 Queen consort of France
1115–1137 		Succeeded by
Eleanor of Aquitaine
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