Saint Mathilda (or Matilda, c. 895 – 14 March 968) was the wife of King Henry I of Germany, the first ruler of the Saxon Ottonian (or Liudolfing) dynasty, thereby Duchess (consort) of Saxony from 912 and Queen (consort) of Germany (East Francia) from 919 until her husband's death in 936. Their eldest son Otto succeeded his father as King of Germany (East Francia) and years later was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962, thus ending the vacancy of this office begun in 924 with the death of Holy Roman Emperor Berengar I of Italy. Matilda lived to see the imperial crown restored under her son. Matilda's surname refers to Ringelheim, where her comital Immedinger relatives established a convent about 940.
The details of St. Matilda's life come largely from brief mentions in the Res gestae saxonicae of the monastic historian Widukind of Corvey (c. 925 – 973), and from two sacred biographies: the Vita antiquior and Vita posterior), written, respectively, circa 974 and circa 1003.
Matilda was born circa 895 in the region of Engern (Angria or Angaria), Westphalia, Duchy of Saxony, East Francia, presently divided between the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, as the daughter of Count Dietrich of Westphalia and his wife Reinhild of Denmark,[1] and her biographers traced her ancestry back to the legendarySaxon leader Widukind (c. 730 – 807). One of her sisters married Count Wichmann the Elder, a member of the House of Billung.
As a young girl she was sent to Herford Abbey, where her grandmother Matilda was abbess and where her reputation for beauty and virtue (and possibly also her Westphalian dowry) is said to have attracted the attention of Duke Otto I of Saxony, who betrothed her to his son and heir, Henry, whose previous "marriage" was annulled.[2] They were married atWallhausen, Saxony-Anhalt, in present day Germany in 909 or 913.[3] As the eldest surviving son, Henry succeeded his father as Duke of Saxony in 912 and upon the death of King Conrad I was elected King of East Francia (later Germany) in 919. He and Matilda had three sons and two daughters:
Stift Quedlinburg, drawing, about 956
After her husband died in 936 at Memleben, Matilda and her son, now King Otto of East Francia, established Quedlinburg Abbey in Quedlinburg, Saxony, East Francia, in present dayQuedlinburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in his memory, as a convent of noble canonesses, where in 966 her granddaughter, also named Matilda, became the first abbess. At first the Queen Mother remained at the court of her son; however in the quarrels between the young king and his rivaling brother, Henry a cabal of royal advisors is reported to have accused her of decreasing the royal treasury in order to pay for her charitable activities. After a brief exile at her Westphalian manors in Enger, where she established a college of canons in 947, Matilda was brought back to court at the urging of King Otto's first wife, the Anglo-Saxon princess Edith of Wessex.
Matilda died on 14 March 968 in Quedlinburg Abbey, Quedlinburg, Saxony, East Francia, Holy Roman Empire, in present day Quedlinburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany,[4] outliving her husband by 32 years and having seen the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. Her and Henry's mortal remains are buried in the crypt of St. Servatius Church within Quedlinburg Abbey.
Veneration
Saint Matilda was celebrated for her devotion to prayer and almsgiving; her first biographer depicted her (in a passage indebted[citation needed] to the sixth-century vita of the Frankish queenRadegund by Venantius Fortunatus) leaving her husband's side in the middle of the night and sneaking off to church to pray. St. Matilda founded many religious institutions, including the canonry of Quedlinburg, which became a center of ecclesiastical and secular life in Germany under the rule of the Ottonian dynasty, as well as the convents of St. Wigbert in Quedlinburg, in Pöhlde, Enger, and Nordhausen in Thuringia, likely the source of at least one of her vitae.
She was later canonized, with her cult largely confined to Saxony and Bavaria. St. Matilda's feast day according to the regional German calendar of saints is on 14 March.