Adaldag

Adaldag was a Benedictine monk and the seventh archbishop of Hamburg-⁠Bremen, from 937 until his death on 28 April 988. He was born around 900. He is also called Adelgis, Adelger or Adalgag.

He was of noble birth, a relative and pupil of Adalward, bishop of Verden, and became a canon of Hildesheim. Otto I made him his chancellor and notary at his very accession and, after the death of Archbishop Unni in 936, named him to the vacant see, giving him the rights of a count. None of his predecessors governed so long or did so much for the diocese. Under him the metropolitan see received its first suffragans, through the founding of the bishoprics of Ribe, Schleswig and Århus, and the Slavic see of Aldenburg was placed under Hamburg.

He successfully resisted a renewed attempt by Cologne to extend its authority over Bremen and obtained many privileges for his see through his close relations with the emperors, above all Otto I. He accompanied Otto to Rome and stayed with him from 961 to 965; he is named as the emperor's chief counselor at the coronation in Rome. Otto entrusted to him at Hamburg the deposed Pope Benedict V, and the archbishop kept him in great honor until his death a few months later. In his last years he suffered from the inroads of the Danes and Slavs from the north and rebuilt Hamburg after its sack in 983 by the Obotrites.

He is counted among the saints of the 10th century in some Western lists; our sources give no details of the cult, and no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.