ADALBERT or ADELBERT (c. 1000-1072), German archbishop, was the son of Frederick, count of Goseck, a member of a noble Saxon family. Adalbert stood high in the favour of Henry III., whom he accompanied on many expeditions into Hun gary, Italy, Slavonia and elsewhere. It is said that he might have been made Pope but that he saw greater possibilities of power and influence in northern Germany. In 1045 he was appointed arch bishop of Hamburg-Bremen, his province including the Scandi navian countries, as well as the larger part of North Germany. He moved the seat of the bishopric from Bremen to Hamburg, sent missionaries to Finland, Greenland and the Orkney Islands, and aimed at making Bremen a patriarchal see for northern Europe, with 12 suffragan bishoprics.
He consolidated and increased the estates of the church, exer cised the powers of a count, denounced simony, and initiated financial reforms. The presence of this powerful and active per sonality was greatly resulted by the Saxon duke of the north, Bernard II., who regarded him as a spy sent by Henry. Adalbert gave substantial help to the emperor in the struggle with Baldwin, count of Flanders, by concluding a treaty (1049) with Sweyn of Norway and Denmark, who sent a fleet to the Netherlands coast. The archbishop's ambition to secure ecclesiastical control of northern Europe was furthered in 1052 by a papal brief which put all the Christians of the north, from the Icelanders in the west to the Finns in the east, under the see of Bremen. Adalbert himself became papal legate for the north. For a time his ecclesi astical pretensions estranged Sweyn, but in the end the Norwegian king acquiesced.
Adalbert, who wished to free his lands entirely from the au thority of the duke, Bernard II., aroused hostility by an attack on the privileges of the great abbeys, and after the emperor's death in 1056 his lands were ravaged by Bernard. He took a leading part in the government of Germany during the minority of Henry IV., and was styled patronus of the young king, over whom he exercised considerable influence. Having accompanied him on a campaign into Hungary in 1063, he received large gifts of crown estates and obtained the office of count palatine in Sax ony. His power aroused so much opposition that in 1066 the king was compelled to assent to his removal from court. In 1069 he was recalled by Henry, when he made a further attempt to con solidate a northern patriarchate, which failed owing to the hos tility of the papacy and the condition of affairs in the Scandi navian kingdoms. He died at Goslar, and was buried in the cathe dral which he had built at Bremen. Adalbert was a man of large ideas and a strong, energetic character. He fortified and improved Bremen, and it was called the New Rome by his biographer, Adam of Bremen.
See Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, edited by J. M. Lappenberg, in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, Band vii. (1826-92) ; C. Gruenhagen, Adalbert Erzbischof von Hamburg and die Idee eines Nordischen Patriarchats (1854).