OT TO’S NAN - WordPress.com · part of Otto’s empire, and there the churches were newly built of wood. There is an irony in this because before these OT TO’S NAN Empress Adelaide

THE city of Adelaide was named afterthe wife of William IV (1830 – 1837),and she in turn would have been namedafter the wife of Otto I, the Holy RomanEmperor (962 – 973). How many citizensof Adelaide know that the Empress Adel-aide was a saint canonized by Pope UrbanII in 1097? How many remember her onher feast day, which is the 16th December?In the collection of St John’s Cathedral

in Brisbane there is a small silver cointhat bears Adelaide’s name and evokesthe time when she ruled a large part ofEurope as the regent for her young grand-son, Otto III. (Figures 1 and 2) On theobverse of the coin the letters ODDOappear in the quadrants of a cross. Thewords ODDO and OTTO sound verysimilar, especially if spoken quickly, andhis name might actually have been pro-nounced, ODDO, in his native Germaniclanguage. The cross, of course, indicatedthat he and his grandmother were Christ-

ians. The surrounding inscription (notapparent on this coin) is in Latin: D’IGRA+REX, which stands for DEI GRATIAREX (king, by the grace of God). Thesewords first appeared on the coins ofCharles the Bald (840 – 977), the grand-

son of Charlemagne. (Figure 3) The ideaof the divine right of kings had been pro-moted by Saint Paul (Romans 13: 1-7),and DEI GRATIA or D.G. appeared withthe monarch’s image on Australian coinsuntil decimalization in 1966. (Figure 4)On the reverse of the coin there is a

holzkirche (wooden church). The woodplanks in the door are clearly shown.This design was based on coins of Louisthe Pious (813 – 840), the son of Charle-magne. On his coins there is a churchwith four columns in its façade and theinscription CHRISTIANA RELIGIO, theChristian religion. (Figure 5) In thepart of Louis’ empire that is now knownas France, many of the churches wereconverted Roman temples, hence thecolumns. But the Romans never con-quered Germany, which was the mainpart of Otto’s empire, and there thechurches were newly built of wood. Thereis an irony in this because before these

OTTO’S NANEmpress Adelaide and the Otto-Adelaide Pennyby Peter E. Lewis

Figure 10 – View of Orbe, where Adelaide was born.(Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 1 – Otto-Adelaide Penny. Obverse and reverse. (Collection of St John’s Cathedral)

Figure 2a – Drawing showing all the letters in Figure 1.

Germanic people were converted toChristianity they worshiped Woden andother gods at special trees in the forest,and now their Christian places of wor-ship were built of wood. A rare variant has an Alpha to the left

of the holzkirche and an Omega to theright. (Figure 6) These Greek letters makeit quite clear that it is a Christian churchthat is depicted because in the Book ofRevelation (Rev. 1: 8) Jesus says that he

is the Alpha and the Omega. The Alphaand Omega on this coin were probablycopied from coins issued in about 353AD by Magnentius and Constantius II.(Figure 7) The inscription surrounding the holz-

kirche is ATEAHLHT (German: Adelheid,English: Adelaide). It looks like awfulspelling, but the spelling of Germanicwords in Latin was not standardized inthe 10th century, and variant spellings ofAdelaide’s name are frequent on thesecoins. To make matters worse the coinsare nearly always poorly struck, withparts of the design and the inscriptionfailing to appear. These coins are known as Otto-Adel-

aide pennies, and they were previouslythought to have been issued by Otto I.Identification of Ottonian coins is noteasy because the number of the Otto,whether I, II or III, does not appear onthe coin, and Adelaide was the wife of I,the mother of II, and the grandmotherand regent of III. In his book, Coins ofMedieval Europe (Seaby, 1991), PhilipGrierson states that these Otto-Adelaidepennies are now dated from 991 onwards,when Adelaide was the regent of OttoIII. Those coins not bearing a specificmint name were probably minted atGoslar in Saxony since silver had been

discovered earlier in the 10th centuryat nearby Rammelsberg in the Harzmountains. On 9th September 2012, a sixteen year-

old lad, Michael Stokbro Larsen (Figure8), with his brother, Peter (Figure 9),was using a metal detector in a field atStrandby, a town on the coast of Den-mark, just east of its northern tip. Thedetector started making beeps, and therest is history. So far 365 items, includ-ing 200 coins, have been found, andmore are being found. It was a Vikinghoard that had been buried in about995 AD. A lot of the coins are Otto-Adel-aide pennies, and a number are coins ofHarald Bluetooth who is very importantin the history of Denmark. He united theDanes, converted them to Christianity andconquered much of Scandinavia. It isamazing to think that these Danish ladshave discovered coins and other objectsfrom that exciting time. On your com-puter go to www.strandbyskatten.dkand you will see images of the coins aswell as photos and videos of Michael andPeter working at the site with Danisharchaeologists. In an email Peter told methat he and Michael were “so proud”,and so they should be. Well done, lads!Adelaide’s life was full of adventures.

She was born in about 931 in the pictur-esque town of Orbe (Figure 10) in what is

Figure 3a – Obverse of a silver denier of Charlesthe Bald. In the centre there is a monogramof KRLS for Karolus (Charles). The phraseGRATIA DEI REX occurs for the first time onthis coin. (Collection of St John’s Cathedral)

Figure 3b – Reverse of a silver denier ofCharles the Bald. The name of the mintQVVENTOVVICI (Quentovic) is on the reverse.(Collection of St John’s Cathedral)

Figure 4 – An Australian florin before deci-malization with DEI GRATIA (by the graceof God) in the legend.

Figure 5 – Obverse and reverse of a silver denier of Louis the Pious. The obverse Latin legend,HLVDOVVICVS IMP, means ‘Emperor Louis’. The H at the beginning indicates a breath(aspirate) before pronouncing the L. ‘Ludovicus’ becomes ‘Ludwig’ in German, ‘Louis’ in French,and ‘Lewis’ in Welsh. (Collection of St John’s Cathedral)

Figure 6a – Obverse and reverse of a variantof the Otto-Adelaide penny. This coin is dif-ferent because there is an Alpha to the left ofthe holzkirche, and an Omega to the right.There are no examples of this coin in theStrandby Hoard. (Collection of St John’sCathedral)

now the western part of Switzerland. Herfather, Rudolf II, was king of Burgundy.In 947, when she was 15, she marriedLothair, who succeeded his father asking of Italy in the same year. They hada daughter, Emma, who married the kingof Western Francia (France). In 950 Loth-air died having allegedly been poisonedby his rival in Italy, Berengar, who thentried to marry Adelaide to his son, Adal-bert. Berengar was a tyrant and hispeople turned against him and appealedto Adelaide. Berengar imprisoned Adel-aide in one of his castles on an island inLake Garda. A priest, named Warinus,saved Adelaide by digging a hole throughthe castle wall, and she fled to the castleof Count Azzo in Canossa, near Reggio inItaly. Berengar chased her and laid seigeto the castle, but Warinus was able toslip through the siege and make his wayto Otto I in Germany. Otto was the HolyRoman Emperor and Warinus gave hima letter in which Adelaide begged himto rescue her. She offered to marry himand join her lands to his empire. Like astory from the legend of King Arthur,Otto rode with his knights to save thisdamsel in distress. Berengar fled.

Otto married Adelaide, and in 962 theywere crowned emperor and empress inRome by the pope. Their son, Otto II,married a Byzantine princess, Theo-phano, in 971. She was 16, and he 17.

When his father died in 973 Otto suc-ceeded him as Holy Roman Emperor,but Adelaide continued to exert consid-erable influence over him. In makingdecisions he stated that he did so “with

Figure 7 – A double cententionalis of Mag-nentius (350 - 353 AD). It shows the Chi-Rhomonogram of Christ between Alpha andOmega. Sear 4017. (Collection of St John’sCathedral)

Figure 8 – Michael Stokbro Larsen.

Figure 9 – Peter Stokbro Larsen.

Figure 11 – Picture of Otto III crowned. This is a miniature in a book (Codex MonacensisGraecus 4453) in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. It was made by the ReichenauSchool in about 998 AD. (Wikimedia Commons)

the advice of my pious and dearestmother.” After a few years Otto began totake more notice of Theophano, who wasa clever girl knowledgeable about thepolitical life of the Byzantine court atConstantinople, and Adelaide grew apartfrom her son and daughter-in-law. In 978she left them to live in Burgundy with herbrother, King Conrad. Otto II died unexpectedly in 983 leaving

Theophano with their three year-old son,Otto III. Soon after his coronation atAachen in the same year, he was seizedby Henry the Quarrelsome, the deposedduke of Bavaria, in an attempt to claimthe regency for himself, but the ImperialDiet forced him to return the child to hismother. Theophano ruled the empire asregent until her early death in 991. Ade-laide, the dowager empress and Otto’sgrandmother, then assumed the regency.

The coin in Figure 1 was issued at thistime. When Otto was 14 he declared thathe could rule on his own, and two yearslater he became the Holy Roman Em-peror. (Figure 11) He was a devoutChristian and he saw himself as theleader of Christianity in the world. Thereis a touching story of how he cameacross an old man called Nilus, a well-known Christian ascetic who lived as ahermit, and how Otto knelt down beforehim and offered him his crown. Nilusblessed him and returned the crown.Unfortunately Otto died in 1002 whenhe was only 22 years old. Adelaide retired from court life when

Otto III became Holy Roman Emperorand devoted herself to religious causes,founding churches, monasteries and con-vents. She was attracted to the greatmonastery at Cluny, which had beenfounded in 910 by the pious duke ofAquitaine. It was a centre of church re-form and it must have been a very spir-itual place. (Figure 12) She was friendlywith the abbot, Odilo, who wrote a mem-oir of her in which he stated that shewas “a marvel of beauty and goodness.” The great concern of Christians at the

end of the tenth century was whetherthe millennium that is mentioned in theBook of Revelation (Rev. 20:2) wouldbegin in the year 1000. The millenniumwas a thousand-year period of peace,and many expected the Second Comingof Christ in that year. Adelaide wouldhave been caught up in this religiousexcitement, but she died on the 16th

December 999, only two weeks beforethe expected event. Anyway, in 1097 shewas canonized by Pope Urban II, who hadbeen a prior at Cluny. According to ThePenguin Dictionary of Saints, she was a“conscientious and generous-heartedwoman.” She described herself as “God’smaidservant”.

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Figure 12 – View of the abbey church atCluny. It was built in about 1100 AD. Most ofthe monastery was demolished during theFrench Revolution.

Figure 14 – Map of the Holy Roman Empire in about 1000 AD. The empire is in pink.

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