March 14 — Saint Mathilde of Ringelheim, born around 896 and died on March 14, 968 in Quedlinburg, was the wife of Henri l'Oiseleur, the future king of East Francia (Germania). She is the mother of Otto I, founder of the Holy Roman Empire.

Mathilde is the daughter of Saxon Count Dietrich and de Reinhild of Dano-Friesian origin. She was educated at Herford Abbey by her grandmother, Abbess Mathilde I. Renowned for her beauty and virtue, she attracted the attention of the Saxon Duke Otto the Illustrious who engaged her to his son Henry as soon as he divorced his first wife, Hateburge.Mathilde was married to Henri l'Oiseleur, who is 20 years older, in 909 in Royal Palace of Wallhausen; they had three sons and two daughters.

Widow of Henry after twenty-three years of a happy marriage, she remained at the court of her son King Otto I. Mathilde was soon accused by royal counsellors of squandering the royal treasury with her numerous alms. She also sided with her youngest son, Duke Henry I of Bavaria and her son-in-law Gislebert during the serious Lotharing-era revolt against Otto in 939. Stripped of all her royal possessions but retaining her personal inheritance in West Saxony, she had to retire to the monastery of Enger in Westphalia.

At the request of Queen Edith, Otto's wife, the two princes then reconciled with their mother, restoring her to the court in her first fortune. Having founded numerous religious institutions, such as a theological centre and four Benedictine monasteries, including the Abbey of Quedlinburg in memory of her late husband, with a community of lay canonesses on the castle hill, where the daughters of the high nobility were educated. It was in this abbey that she died during one of her many spiritual retreats. She was buried there with her husband Henri.

Mathilde devoted the rest of her life to charity and prayer; her first biographer describes her sneaking out of her husband's bed in the middle of the night to recite the entire psalter before the crowing of the cock. Tradition also tells that during her agony, she was laid on a cilice and poured ashes on the head herself.

His great devotion led to his canonization, his cult being especially widespread in Saxony and Bavaria. The Catholic Church celebrates his canonization on March 14. She is the patron saint of large families and is invoked to help parents in conflict with their children.