she acquired relics in Koblenz (St Florinus) and Lyons (St Marsus) and transferred land which had belonged to her mother to Einsiedeln Abbey. There she was recorded as a benefactrix and honoured with the title of ducissa (duchess). She corresponded with the Anglo-Saxon Earl Æthelweard, who translated his chronicle into Latin for her (see below). All these activities of Mathilde functioned, above all, to fulfill the interests of her abbey and to ensure the salvation of her deceased family members. This is especially clear in Æthelweard's Chronicle, in which Æthelweard places particularly emphasis on genealogical relationships, noting in the introduction the common descent of Mathilde and himself from King Æthelwulf of Wessex. Politician Essen Abbey was an Imperial abbey like Gandersheim and Quedlinburg and the abbess herself came from the Imperial family. Documentation that she took part in the Italian campaign of her young uncle, Otto II, like her eponymous aunt Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg, and her younger brother Otto is lacking. However, her involvement in the burial of her brother in the collegiate church of St Peter and Alexander, which had been founded in Aschaffenburg by her father, after he died in Italy in 982, is documented by an entry in a manuscript at St Peter and Alexander. Her uncle Otto II died in Rome a year later. Otto II's fatal Italian campaign was a turning point in Mathilde's life. As a result of her brother's death, she became the last member of the Swabian branch of the Liudolfing dynasty and therefore the manager of the possessions of the family. Furthermore, the death of her brother and her uncle Otto II on the campaign catapulted her to the centre of Imperial politics, since her cousin Henry the Wrangler, who had lost the Duchy of Bavaria to Mathilde's brother Otto in 976, kidnapped Otto II's heir, the three-year-old Otto III and claimed the regency. Based on the absence of written evidence of Mathilde's activities at this time it was traditionally assumed that Mathilde had no further political influence after the death of her brother. However, These argued that Mathilde certainly did not enjoy Henry the Wrangler's favour and that Henry's victory would have led to a reduction of Imperial patronage to Essen Abbey and therefore a loss of significance for the Abbey. In the donor portrait of the Cross of Otto and Mathilde, created at Mathilde's order possibly during the