Skip to main content
There's a Saint for That! Search

St. Adelaide, Abbess of Vilich

Feast 02-05

Patron of

About

Saint Adelaide, also called Adelheid, was abbess of the convent at Vilich and later of St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne. She was descended from the German king Henry the Fowler, and her noble parents founded the convent at Vilich on the Rhine, entrusting its first leadership to their daughter.

Under Adelaide's guidance Vilich grew into a center of prayer and learning for the women of the region. When the abbacy of the great convent of St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne fell to her as well, she governed both houses with wisdom and holiness, and miracles were ascribed to her both in life and after her death around the year 1015.

Adelaide is remembered as one of the noble women who, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, shaped the religious life of the Rhineland. Her feast is kept on February 5.

nuns, nun, sisters, religious sisters, women religious, consecrated women, convents, cloistered nuns, nuns life, sisterhood, religious women, nobility, nobles, aristocracy, noble class, lords, ladies, royal court, noble birth, aristocrats, germany, german, german catholics, germany catholics, germans, german christians, deutschland, german nation, german church, german bishops, german cathedrals

Suggested prayer

O God, who called St. Adelaide to govern the convents of Vilich and Cologne with holiness and wisdom, grant through her intercession that all women religious may flourish in prayer and charity. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sources

Other saints to pray to

For nuns

For nobility