| History |
Mathilde was born about 890/895 at Engern in Westphalia, daughter of Dietrich, Graf von Ingelheim, and his wife Reginhild Ludmilla. Chroniclers say that Mathilde was a descendant of Wittekind, duke of Saxony. In 909 she married Heinrich, duke of Saxony, and they had five children, of whom four would have progeny. In 919 her husband was elected as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and became known as Heinrich \'the Fowler\'. She was a widow for thirty-two years, during which she suffered ill treatment from her son Otto, provoked by her favouring another son, Heinrich, called \'the Quarrelsome\'. However Heinrich too showed himself ungrateful to her. Both complained among other things of their mother\'s liberality to the poor and to the Church but she bore their complaints patiently. She died on 14 March 968, having built a great reputation for goodness among the people. [1] |
| History |
Medieval chroniclers like Liutprand of Cremona and Thietmar of Merseburg celebrated Matilda for her devotion to prayer and almsgiving. Her first biographer depicted her (in a passage attributed[citation needed] to the sixth-century vita of the Frankish queen Radegund 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. She also founded the convents of St. Wigbert in Quedlinburg, in Pöhlde, Enger, and Nordhausen, 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 14 March. In 1856–58 the Neo-Gothic St. Matilda\'s Church was erected in Quedlinburg, according to plans designed by the Austrian architect Friedrich Schmidt. Another St. Matilda\'s Church was consecrated in Laatzen, Lower Saxony in 1938. The Melkite Greek Catholic community of Aleppo built a church dedicated to Saint Matilda in 1964. There is a stained glass window dedicated to Saint Matilda in the parish church (built 1838–41) of Coole, Ireland. [2] |
Ellie Wood Keith Genealogy
Abt 895 - 968 (~ 73 years)
