Adalrich, Duke of Alsace

Adalrich (Latin: Adalricus; reconstructed Frankish: *Adalrik; died after c. 683 AD), also known as Eticho,[a] was the Duke of Alsace, the founder of the family of the Etichonids and an important and influential figure in the power politic of late-seventh-century Austrasia.

Adalrich first enters history as a member of the faction of nobles which invited Childeric II to take the kingship of Neustria and Burgundy in 673 after the death of Chlothar III.

He married Berswinda, a relative of Leodegar, the famous Bishop of Autun, whose party he supported in the civil war which followed Childeric's assassination two years later (675).

Adalrich was duke by March 675, when Childeric had granted him honores in Alsace with the title of dux and asked him to transfer some land to the recently founded (c. 662) abbey at Gregoriental[5] on behalf of Abbot Valedio.

In Alsace, however, the civil war had resulted in a curtailed royal power and Adalrich's influence and authority, though restricted in territory, was augmented in practical scope.

After the war, parts of the Frankish kingdom saw a more powerful viceregal hand under the exercise of the mayors of the palaces, while other regions were even less directly affected by the royal prerogative.

According to the Life of Germanus of Grandval, Adalrich "wickedly began oppressing the people in the vicinity [Sornegau] of the monastery and to allege that they had always been rebels against his predecessors."

The duke granted a wadium,[7] a device of recompense or promise, and offered thus to spare the valley devastation, but for unknown reasons Germanus refused it.

Perhaps as penance for his relationship to the deaths of two future saints, Leodegar and Germanus of Grandval, or perhaps out of a secret desire—disclosed it is said to his intimate friends—to found a place to the service of God and take up the religious life, Adalrich founded two monasteries in north central Alsace between 680 and 700: Ebersheim in honour of Saint Maurice and Hohenburg on the site of an old Roman fort (of the emperor Maximian) discovered by his huntsmen and which he appropriated for his own military uses.

According to the Life of Odilia, a bishop named Erhard baptised the adolescent girl and smeared a chrism on her eyes, which miraculously restored her sight.

Fresco of Adalrich and Bereswinde, by Charles Spindler , located at Mont Sainte-Odile