Adalhelm[1] (died c. 910) was the bishop of Séez for twenty-six years starting around 884.[2] He was a Benedictine monk and abbot at the abbey of Anisole.[3]
Adalhelm wrote a life and miracles of Saint Opportuna of Montreuil, Vita et miracula Sanctae Opportunae.[4] It includes an autobiographical account of how he was captured by Vikings in the year of his consecration and sold into slavery. It is the only first-hand account of a Viking slave. He escaped or was redeemed and returned to Séez, where he fulfilled a vow had made by writing the life of Opportuna. The Vita survives only in a 14th-century manuscript and an early modern edition.[5]
References
- 1.Also spelled Adelhelm, Hadelin, Adelelme, Adelin.
- 2.Jones, Terry. "Hadelin". Patron Saints Index. Archived from the original on 2007-02-06. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
- 3.The monastery of Anisole, Maine, was founded by the hermit Calevisus (Saint Calais, 460-541), to whom the monastery was later rededicated, and from whom the town of Saint-Calais took its name.
- 4.Goyau, Georges (1912). "Seez". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. Robert Appleton Company. Archived from the original on 14 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
- 5.Matthew C. Delvaux, Transregional Slave Networks of the Northern Arc, 700–900 C.E., PhD diss., Boston College (2019), pp. 25–29.