Lifestyles of the Rich and (In?)Animate: Object Biography and the Reliquary Cross of Queen Adelaide of Hungary

Abstract

Adelaide of Rheinfelden (d. 1090) was married to one of Hungary’s most famous kings, St László (r. 1077–1095) but she herself has been something of a mystery. There is very little information on her in written sources, including hagiographies of her husband, and her memory has largely been kept alive because of the reliquary cross commissioned by her as a memorial for her mother, Adelaide of Savoy, donated to the Abbey of St. Blaise, and which still bears her name. This chapter is a material culture analysis of the Adelaide Cross by means of agency theory and object biography. The life course of the cross is traced, in its inception as well as in the centuries following its creation, and it will be argued that, while a queen may be absent from the written record, she could still manipulate material culture to her advantage and use it as a medium for expressing her own power, however real or imagined.