Birth. (No date or place found).

Education. (No information found).

Cardinalate. Bishop cardinalis of Ostia in May 946. Consecrated (no information found).

Death. Before 960, (no place found). Buried (no information found).

Bibliography. Cristofori, Francesco. Cronotasi dei cardinali di Santa Romana Chiesa. Rome : Tipografia de Propaganda Fide, 1888, p. 1; "Essai de liste générale des cardinaux. Les cardinaux des 10 premiers siècles". Annuaire Pontifical Catholique 1926. Paris : Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1927, p. 157, no. 1; Gams, Pius Bonifatius. Series episcoporum Ecclesiae catholicae. 3 v. in 1. Graz : Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1957, p. IV.

Birth. (No date found), Germany. He is also listed as Hadamaro Fuldensi; as Adhemar; as Ademaro; as Adimaro; as Hadamaro; and as Hadamarus.

Education. Entered the Order of Saint Benedict (Benedictines).

Sacred order. He received the diaconate and remained a deacon even after having been elected abbot of his monastery. He is attested for the first time as a monk of the monastery of Sankt Benedikt of Fulda, Germany, in 919. He was abbot of the monastery from December 927 until his death in 956. With him began the most political activity of the abbots and the decline of monastic life. He founded an art and craft school in the monastery. The monastery possession increased considerably by donations. When he participated in the Synod of Erfurt in 932, the abbot exchanged with King Heinrich I royal properties in Abenheim im Wormsgau for possessions in Thuringia and Saxonia. On October 14, 936, King Otto I confirmed the privileges of the monastery and the possession of Northeim im Salzgau. In the spring of 936 Abbot Hadamar traveled to Rome, where he was on May 13; the same year, Pope Leo VII confirmed the privileges of his monastery. At the end of March 943, he was in Rome for the second time; he received confirmation of the privileges of his monastery by Pope Marinus II, by the bull "Quoniam semper sunt", date the 27th of that month. This journey to Rome does not only seem to have served the interests of his monastery because after his return, he went immediately to Balgstädt, in order to give the king a report over private royal order and to bring letters from the pope; at that time, King Otto I of Germany confirmed again older privileges of the monastery. Abbot Hadamar fully supported the expansion of the imperial church system planned by King otto I. The monarch wanted to make the ecclesiastical princes his allies in his fight against the secular ones. One of the prelates who did not agree with this close link between church and empire was Archbishop Friedrich of Mainz. Because of his opposition, King Otto in 939 placed him for one year under supervision of Abbot Hadamar for safekeeping. The abbot first held the archbishop in honorable detention. Later, the conditions intensified after a forbidden exchange of letters was discovered. Archbishop Friedrich later never forgot the treatment, which he experienced under the abbot.

Cardinalate. Presbyter cardinalis of an unknown title in 946 (?). In the autumn 947, Abbot Hadamar, again on behalf of the king, traveled a third time to Rome. The monarch wanted to establish new mission dioceses, under imperial control, which should be subordinated to the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen. The abbot also brought up the need for papal mediation on the dispute over the archbishopric of Reims. On this occasion, the abbot obtained on January 2, 948 from Pope Agapitus II the confirmation of the privileges of his monastery. In the late summer 955, he traveled for the fourth time to Rome. The journey took place on behalf the king and Archbishop Brun of Cologne, a brother of the king, who postulated his pallium. He brought the pallium to the archbishop as well as a relic of S. Pantaleon when he returned in late autumn 955. He also conveyed the papal permission requested by the king for establishing dioceses. King Otto I pursued the plan he had had for a long time of moving the seat of the diocese of Halberstadt to Magdeburg and to raise Magdeburg to an independent archdiocese, to which the future mission dioceses in the east should be subordinated. The plan of the king went against the interests of Wilhelm, archbishop of Mainz, his natural son, who did not want to lose the his suffragan see of Halberstadt, but also the possibility of expansion to the east for his ecclesiastical province. The archbishop refused to accept the planned project despite papal agreement and brought its implementation to a stop at least for the time being. Abbot Hadamar, as mediators of the arrangement struck behind Archbishop Wilhelm's back, received the whole anger of the prelate. In a letter to Pope Agapitus II, the archbishop characterized the abbot as false prophet, who should be considered as a ravenous wolf in sheep's clothing who had covered himself with gold and pearls who had publicly boasted that he could have bought in Rome for 100 pounds as many palliums as he had wished. The abbot did not have to endure the attacks of the archbishop long because he died soon after they had begun.

Death. May 25, 956, of the plague, in Fulda. Buried in the western choir of the church of the monastery of Fulda, next to the vault of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany. On February 20, 1728, his bones were transferred to the chapel of Our Lady in the cathedral of Fulda. Above the left entrance on the eastern part of the monastery church, which served as the main entrance, there was an inscription calling on the new-comers to bow the knee before Christ, and pray for Abbot Hadamar.

Bibliography. Cardella, Lorenzo. Memorie storiche de' cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa. Rome : Stamperia Pagliarini, 1792, I, pt. 1, 77-78; Chacón, Alfonso. Vitæ, et res gestæ Pontificum Romanorum : et S.R.E. Cardinalium ab initio nascentis Ecclesiae usque ad Clementem IX P. O. M. Alphonsi Ciaconii Ord. Praed. & aliorum opera descriptæ : cum uberrimis notis. Ab Augustino Oldoino, Soc. Jesu recognitae, et ad quatuor tomos ingenti ubique rerum accessione productae. Additis Pontificum recentiorum imaginibus, & Cardinalium insignibus, plurimisque aeneis figuris, cum indicibus locupletissimis. Romæ : P. et A. De Rubeis, 1677, I, col. 714; Cristofori, Francesco. Cronotasi dei cardinali di Santa Romana Chiesa. Rome : Tipografia de Propaganda Fide, 1888, p. 265; Eggs, Georgius Josephus. Purpura docta, seu, Vitæ, legationes, res gestæ, obitus, aliaque scitu, ac memoratu digna, &c. S.R.E. Cardinalium. Six books in three vols. Farnborough, Hants., England : Gregg International, 1970. Originally published : Francofurti : Prostant & veneunt apud Joannem Georgium König, 1714, I, col. 11-12; "Essai de liste générale des cardinaux. Les cardinaux des 10 premiers siècles". Annuaire Pontifical Catholique 1926. Paris : Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1927, p. 157, no. 2; Leinweber, Josef. Die Fuldaer Äbte und Bischöfe. Frankfurt am Main : Knecht, 1989, p. 30-32.