It is determined that the child Adeleide disappearedfrom the historical record,
both from the official documents in Constantinople and those in Europe. Her
disappearance apparently came about because an anathema (Church taboo) which was pronounced by "Papa"1 Stephen. As Bishop of the Byzantine Church in Europe, he wrote a strongly worded letter to Charlemagne when he was to marry a Lombard princess named Desiderata:
Saint Peter's anathema upon the impious union and all who may be consenting to it.
Charles, as a young man, although he was aware of the ramifications of an anathema married the princess anyway. Sparse information found in the manuscript of Nokator, the Monk of St. Gall, claimed that the cause of their subsequent divorce was the constant illness of the bride. This probably was considered "the wrath of God" coming down upon the union made in spite of the anathema. It stands to reason that if this child, Adeleide, was the daughter of Charlemagne, the illness of Desiderata was no more than the early signs of a first pregnancy.2 Since she was his first wife, and he was still very young, Charlemagne may have been naive enough to believe the priests and monks admonitions that God's wrath had come upon him through the "illness" of his wife and she would never be healthy enough to be a strong ruler's wife.
Stephen, being a holy man of God, often in conflict with Charlemagne, could not condemn the family of Desiderata with foul language, so he did the next best thing. He called the Lombards lepers.3 Leprosy, one of the foulest diseases contracted by man, was the perfect verbal insult that Stephen could use for the Lombards. By using the word leper as a symbolic term, he laid the ground work for the political inuendos by Charlemagne regarding Byzantine envoys that were soon to follow.
Thus, the symbol "leper" as used in manuscripts of the Carolingian period may not imply an illness but instead could indicate an approved insult to any Lombard person, male or female. All that is clear at the present time, is that the girl-child Adeleide, may have existed and because her mother was the Lombard princess officially condemned by the Byzantine Church, the child too, not only would carry the official Church anathema of her mother but also the unofficial stigma Leper. On this basis, if political negotiations that included her marriage to Emperor Constantine had fallen through, her name would have been removed from the official record.
Before the birth, her mother, Desiderata, had returned to her family in Pavia. Alcuin appears on the scene at Pavia and reports that he heard Paul the Deacon's refutation of a Jewish rabbi, read by daughter of King Didier (or Desiderius), Desiderata's father.4 Did Alcuin pass through the Court of Charlemagne on his way to York and tell the king about a pretty little girl-child who called Desiderata, mother?
The next occurrence was Charlemagne's attack on Pavia. He conquered it, spending the Christmas holidays there, then he went on to Rome for Easter. Adeleide would have been about one or two years old at this time. Did Charlemagne take her with him back to the villa of Quierzy? It would seem so. The poem implys that she was far from her mother when she died.
When Pavia was conquered by Charlemagne, King Didier and his wife were sent to different monastic retreats in France. Of his three daughters, one was sent to Areghis of Beneventan.5 It was this city that enraged Constantine was said to have attacked in 788 after he had refused Charlemagne's daughter Hroutrude. By reconstructing the prior information, one can guess Constantine's intention may have been to find the mother, Desiderata, and the daughter, Adeleide, together in the city.
The Emperor probably had been offended by the bride-switch not aware that the child Adelaide had already succombed in the Byzantine convent where she was to have been trained. However, his information network was slow and very faulty. It is also possible that the "ambassadors" who came to take the child into the convent were actually sent by "Papa" Stephen, who had pronounced the original anathema. against the mother.6 An assuption based on his reaction (the anathema) to the marriage of Desiderata and Charlemagne. Thwarted when Charlemagne discovered that his daughter was the reason the for his wife's illness, and his subsequent placement of her as a bride offering to Constantine, the erstwhile "Papa" wcould have been planned a punishment fit for "lepers". The politics of that day and age can not be easily traced since written records were not common.
In the poem, Adeleide is on her way to the River Rhone (or to Rhodes, depending who is translating). It was on the way there that she died.
1 Folz, p. 9, In VI century, then only in the West, the title 'papa' was originally used to express "a fatherly person" are bestowed by ANY and every Bishop. It began to be reserved for BISHOP of ROME as late as 1075. Gregory VII had to insist there was only one Pope in the world.
2 A first pregnancy usually has strong symptoms of "morning sickness," whereas during subsequent pregnancies this phase is almost negligent.
33 Davis, p. 65
4 Davis, p. 68.
5 Davis, p. 81.
6 Folz, p. 89.