ADELAIDE OF TURIN. - Daughter of Olderico Manfredi, marquis of Turin, and of Berta of the Obertenga house, b. ca. 1020, d. 1091.
Since the only male son of Olderico Manfredi had died at a young age, A., with her sisters Immilla and Berta, had to divide the paternal domains. She, however, as firstborn, replaced her father in the representation of the Arduinic dynasty of Turin, when Olderico Manfredi came to his death in 1035.
The emperor Conrad II the Salic then assigned the march of Turin to his stepson, Hermann duke of Swabia, and he married the young A., while her sister Immilla was given in marriage to another German prince, Otto of Schweinfurt. After the death of Hermann (1038), A. was given in marriage to an Aleramic of Montferrat, Henry, but this marriage too was short-lived. In 1045 the marquis Henry was dead and the emperor Henry III, having descended into Italy in 1046, assigned the march of Turin to Otto, son of Humbert count of Savoy (called Biancamano); the new marquis too, in order to secure a solid patrimonial base in the march, married A. of Turin. The three marriages of A. have given rise to much discussion among scholars, and some have asserted that these were two contemporary princesses of the same name and not the only daughter of Olderico Manfredi. The splitting in two, however, is arbitrary, because it is not based on probative arguments. In favor of the uniqueness of the princess is the letter of St. Peter Damian to A. exhorting her to take up the moral reform of the Church; in it the saint alludes to the «multivirae» who can hope for the kingdom of Heaven: «and this I say not to give boldness to future multivirae, but not to take away the medicine of hope and of penance from those who find themselves in such a condition». The allusion is evident.
The third marriage of A. was fruitful: Peter, Amadeus, Otto, Berta and Adelaide the younger were born.
Ca. 1057-58, when Otto of Savoy came to his death, it fell to A. to govern the march of Turin on behalf of her son Peter, who was able to obtain from the empress Agnes, regent for Henry IV, the recognition of the march. A. knew how to govern there with uncommon good sense, succeeding in winning the praise of contemporary sources, both of the papal and of the imperial party.
The policy of A. was naturally one of strict adherence to imperial policy. Already around 1055 her daughter Berta had been promised in marriage to the young Henry IV, while Adelaide was destined to marry the rector of Burgundy Rudolph of Rheinfelden. Once the conflict between the imperialists and the reformers had taken shape, A. had to follow a difficult policy of balance between the two parties. Closely bound to the imperial house, desirous of preserving the predominance in the bishoprics and the abbeys of her states, she could not, however, favor the imperialist clergy, concubinous and simoniacal. It seems possible to glimpse in her attitude a policy of some independence, since, seeking to favor the reconciliation of the two parties, she remained bound to neither of them. Thus when in 1061 against the Pope of the reform movement, Alexander II, the imperialist Honorius II was elected at Basel by many Italian and German bishops, countess A. had to recognize the latter, but did not abandon her ties with the former. The praises bestowed on A. by St. Peter Damian and by others for her respect for religious property and the protection of monasteries do not mean that she bound the fortunes of the churches of her territories to the total predominance of the papacy. At Asti around 1070 she supported bishop Ingo, consecrated by the Milanese metropolitan Guido in disfavor with the Pope: A. received lively reproaches from Alexander II and it seems she went to Rome to humble herself before the Pope, from whom she obtained absolution. Likewise shortly afterward at Turin, A. supported the imperialist bishop Cumbert in conflict with the new abbot of S. Michele della Chiesa supported by Alexander II. On the other hand, she did not always have cordial relations with the imperial court: when in 1069 Henry IV seemed determined to repudiate Berta of Savoy, countess A. knew how to compel the emperor to renounce his intentions, with the support of St. Peter Damian.
The policy of balance between papacy and empire led A. to intervene in 1077 at Canossa between Henry IV and Gregory VII together with countess Matilda; also in the following years A. remained faithful to the imperial party, yet in such a way as to assume the defense of countess Matilda and of the Pope. When her son Peter I died in 1078, the march of Turin passed to Peter's son-in-law, Frederick of Montbéliard, but A. continued to govern it until her death. It seems she died at Canischio on 29 June 1091.