St. Matilda of Ringelheim, Queen of Germany

Who was St. Matilda of Ringelheim?

St. Matilda of Ringelheim was a queen of Germany in the tenth century, the wife of King Henry I, called the Fowler, and the mother of the Emperor Otto the Great. Her own sons once accused her of draining the treasury with her alms. She gave up her property rather than quarrel, lived to see them ask her pardon, and spent her long widowhood founding monasteries and caring for the poor. She died at her abbey of Quedlinburg on March 14, 968.

She is sometimes called St. Maud, the old English form of her name, and she should not be confused with the mystic St. Mechtilde of Hackeborn, who lived three centuries later.

The life of St. Matilda

A girl raised in a convent

Matilda was the daughter of Count Dietrich, a Saxon noble descended from the old Saxon leader Widukind, and his wife Reinhild. She was born about 895. Her parents sent her as a child to the convent where her grandmother, also named Matilda, had become abbess after being widowed. The house was Herford in Westphalia, which Butler spells "Erford." There she learned to read and to pray the psalms, and to work with her hands.

Queen of Germany

In 909 she married Henry, the young Duke of Saxony, whose first marriage had been declared invalid. Henry was chosen king of Germany in 919. They had five children: Otto, later emperor; Henry, Duke of Bavaria; Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne and himself venerated as a saint; Gerberga, who married King Louis IV of France; and Hedwig, mother of Hugh Capet.

The two old lives of Matilda, written within about fifty years of her death, remember her as humble, prayerful and quick to help prisoners and the poor. Butler, following them, says she visited the sick and the afflicted and won the release of prisoners where justice allowed.

Widow and mother of quarreling sons

Henry died in 936. Butler writes that when she heard of his death she had Mass offered for his soul at once and gave the priest the jewels she was wearing, as a pledge that she was done with worldly pomp. She buried him at Quedlinburg and founded a community of women there the same year.

Then came the hard years. Matilda had favored her younger son Henry for the throne, but the nobles chose Otto. In time both brothers turned against her, accusing her of impoverishing the crown with her almsgiving. To satisfy them she gave up the lands Henry had left her and withdrew to Enger in Westphalia. When misfortune later fell on her sons, they called her back to court and begged her forgiveness.

Foundations and a holy death

With her lands restored, Matilda built churches and founded or supported monasteries at Quedlinburg, Nordhausen, Enger and Pöhlde. She loved Nordhausen especially. She spent her last years at Quedlinburg and in 966 handed its leadership to her granddaughter, also named Matilda, the abbey's first abbess.

In her final illness, Butler writes, she confessed to her grandson William, Archbishop of Mainz, who died twelve days before her. She received the last sacraments again, lay on sackcloth with ashes on her head, and died on March 14, 968. She was buried at Quedlinburg beside her husband and was honored as a saint almost at once.

Miracles and legends

The medieval lives of Matilda are mostly about her charity and her penance, not about wonders. Any marvels in them are traditional: they come from the two lives written for the Ottonian court. No miracle of hers was ever formally examined. As the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, she "was venerated as a saint immediately after her death," long before the modern canonization process.

Why St. Matilda is the patron of queens, widows and parents

She was a queen who used her place to serve the poor, a widow for more than thirty years, and the mother of five children whose rivalries broke her heart. Parents grieved by children who have turned against them find a friend in her. Her name is also given to churches and hospitals in Germany, among them St. Mathilde at Quedlinburg. See more on our patron saints page.

Symbols of St. Matilda in art

• Crown: she was a queen.
• Purse or alms: her generosity, the very thing her sons held against her.
• Model of a church: her foundations, above all Quedlinburg.
• Widow's veil: her long widowhood given to prayer.

Medieval chronicles show her beside King Henry, both crowned. Later prints show her handing alms to the poor, as in the etching below, which carries her feast day, March 14.

Feast day and where she is honored

We keep her memory on March 14. Her tomb is in the crypt of the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg, the abbey church on the castle hill, now a UNESCO World Heritage town. See other saints of March on our feast days page.

Praying with St. Matilda

We have not found a traditional prayer to St. Matilda in the standard prayer books. We can ask her intercession in our own words.

Let us ask St. Matilda to pray for mothers and fathers whose children are at odds with one another or with them, for widows, and for all who hold power, that they may use it for the poor.