Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman and Gallican Martyrologies. Authority: — Notices collected by Mabillon in his Acta SS. O.S.B. ssec. i ▼. 2.] S. Ado was of honourable family. He was brought up in the abbey of Ferriferes, near Sens, under the abbot Lupus Servatus. He took the religious habit, and after some years went to Prum, in the Eifel, where Markward, formerly monk of Ferribres, was abbot.

The brethren were jealous of him, and, on the death of Markward, turned him out of the monastery. He then went to Rome, stayed five years there, and moved after that to Ravenna, where he found a copy of the old Roman Martyrology, which had been sent to Aquileja. This he copied and added to, and the Martyrology he published now goes by his name. He also compiled a chronicle. He then went to Lyons, and the bishop made him take charge of the church of S. Romanus, near Vienne. When the see of Vienne [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)] fell vacant in 860, Ado was elected, and in the following year received the pall from Pope Nicolas I.

Lothair II., king of Lorraine, second son of the Emperor Lothair, had married Theutberga, daughter of Boso, count of Burgundy. Soon after his marriage he dismissed her from his court, through disinclination, or a former attachment. Popular feeling obliged him to restore her for a while to conjugal honours; but he could not endure the yoke. He had fallen in love with Waldrada, niece of the archbishop of Trfeves. He lived in open concubinage with her, but he was impatient to seat her beside him on the throne as his legitimate wife.

He accused Theutberga, before his lords and great vassals in court assembled, of having been guilty of incest with her brother, Hubert, abbot of S. Maurice, a churchman of profligate character, who lived in oriental luxury, surrounded by a bevy of beautiful dancing-girls.1 This most revolting charge was made more loathsome by minute circumstances, contradictory and impossible. On this charge the obsequious nobility, with the consent of the clergy, uiged on by Gunther, archbishop of Cologne, to whom the king, it is said, had promised to marry his niece, summoned the unhappy queen • Ep. Benedicti III. 857; and Hincmar, De Divortio Hlotharii et Theutberg*. S. Ado.

to stand her trial. She demanded the ordeal of hot water; her champion passed through unhurt. She was restored as innocent to her position, but could not regain her husband’s affections, nor command even outward respect Gunther now (says the Chronicle of Regino) offered to manage the matter for the king, if he would promise to marry his niece. Theotgand, archbishop of Trfeves, according to some accounts an uncle of Waldrada, was anxious to see the union with his niece legitimatized, and a synod was assembled in the palace of Lothair, in January, 860, at Aix-laChapelle. Adventius of Metz, Franko of Tongem, and some abbots attended. Theutberga was brought before this packed assembly, and by threats or fraud a confession was wrung from the weary woman that " she had a fault on her conscience, but that it was involuntary. She had been forced to commit it, and she asked to be allowed to take the veil.”

Another synod was assembled in February at Aix-laChapelle, before which the wretched wife was brought to confess that she had been guilty of incest. She was condemned to an ecclesiastical penance, and to the seclusion of a convent But she fled to Charles the Bald, who had taken her brother Hubert under his protection, and given him the abbey of S. Martin of Tours. And Charles the Bald took up her cause with vigour. He had a reason for doing so. Theutberga was childless. Waldrada had already borne children to Lothair. If marriage with his concubine were permitted to Lothair, Charles would be debarred the hope of inheriting Lorraine, should Lothair die without legitimate offspring. Charles at once sent S. Ado of Vienne to the Pope to plead the cause of Theutberga. In 862 another synod assembled at Aix, in which the king asked to be allowed to marry Waldrada. He was deeply distressed at the crime of his wife. For his part, he had lived with women from childhood, he might even say from infancy, and he assured the bishops that if he was not given a wife, he should not remain without at least one concubine. It was a confession much like that of Philip of Hesse to Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer. The reformers allowed the landgrave two wives simultaneously.1 The bishops at Aix sanctioned the remarriage of the king, on the ground that he was entirely cut off from Theutberga. Two bishops in that assembly refused their sanction. Their names have, unfortunately, not been preserved. After the council had separated, Lothair sent for the niece of Gunther, outraged her, sent her back with contempt, and married Waldrada.* By order of Pope Nicolas I. a synod was convoked to meet at Metz to decide the matter. It assembled on February 5, 863. The papal legates were bribed by Lothair, and the council ratified the decrees of the synods of Aix. With this decree in their hands, the two archbishops Gunther and Theotgand were so imprudent as to proceed in person as the king’s ambassadors to Rome. They rushed blindly into the net, and that net closed round them. Nicolas summoned a synod and issued an edict, addressed to Hincmar of Rheims and Wanilo of Rouen. The Pope condemned the guilt of King Lothair, and Gunther and Theotgand as the abettors and accomplices in his guilt He annulled the acts of the synod of Metz, which he designated “ a brothel of adulterers,” and excommunicated and deposed Gunther and Theotgand. Ado of Vienne was commissioned, as legate [an official representative sent by the pope] of the Roman see, to bear these letters into France.

1 The concession of two wives was signed by Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Corvinus, Adam F, Lening, Justus Winther, and Melander. Wittenberg, “Die Mercurii post Fest. S. Nicolai, 1539.”

Gunther. But the story of the king playing on the ambition of both archbishops by promising each to marry his niece if his marriage with Theutberga were dissolved, is not improbable, and explains several difficulties. Dec x6.] S. Bean.

We need not follow further the sad and disgraceful story of Theutberga, as Ado has no further connection with it He spent the rest of his life in restoring discipline in his own diocese, and died on December 16, 874.