Otto of Freising

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Otto of Freising died at the Cistercian monastery of Morimond on the 22nd of September 1158, in the same habit he had worn as a monk decades before he became a bishop. He was the fifth son of Leopold III, margrave of Austria, born around 1111 in Klosterneuburg. Through his mother Agnes of Waiblingen, he was related to the German king Conrad III and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa. That family web placed him at the center of the most turbulent dynastic struggles in twelfth-century Germany. Yet what lasted was not his bloodline or his bishopric, but the books he wrote. The questions worth asking about Otto are not just who he was, but what he believed history meant, why a man of his rank chose to live and die in a monk's robe, and what a tale told to him by a Syrian bishop about a mysterious Eastern king eventually set in motion across all of medieval Christendom.

• 2. A Bishop Born to Power

  ›

  Agnes of Waiblingen was the daughter of Emperor Henry IV, and it was through her first marriage, to Frederick I of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, that she became the mother of Conrad III and the grandmother of Frederick Barbarossa. Her second husband, Leopold III, was margrave of Austria, and their fifth son was Otto. That parentage meant Otto grew up inside the orbit of two of the most powerful dynasties in Germany. His sister Judith of Babenberg married William V, Marquis of Montferrat, extending the family's reach into northern Italy. Otto's connections were not peripheral. They were structural, linking him directly to the people who shaped the politics and wars he would later chronicle. He studied in Paris, where he developed a particular interest in philosophy, and he is described as one of the first people to carry the philosophy of Aristotle back into Germany. He also served as provost of a new foundation in Austria before his life took a monastic turn.

• 3. Cistercian Roots

  ›

  When Otto entered the Cistercian order, one of his first significant acts was persuading his father Leopold III to found Heiligenkreuz Abbey in 1133. That foundation brought literacy and sophisticated agriculture, including wine making, to the region that would eventually become Vienna. Around 1136, Otto himself became abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Morimond in Burgundy. The transition from abbot to bishop came quickly. He was elected bishop of Freising shortly after, taking charge of a diocese and a broader Bavaria that were both in poor shape, torn by the feud between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen families. His contemporaries credited him with meaningful improvement in both ecclesiastical and secular affairs in the region. Despite his episcopal rank, he never shed the Cistercian habit, wearing it until his death at Morimond, the same house where he had once been abbot.

• 4. Jerusalem and Back

  ›

  In 1147, Otto joined the Second Crusade. The portion of the crusading army he led was decimated along the way. He reached Jerusalem nonetheless, and returned to Bavaria in 1148 or 1149. That journey gave him firsthand experience of one of the signal military catastrophes of his century, and it colored his historical thinking. Back in Europe, he continued to operate near the heights of German power. He enjoyed the favor of Frederick I, who succeeded Conrad III, and he was probably instrumental in settling the dispute over the duchy of Bavaria in 1156. He was present at the diet of Besançon in 1157, one of the defining political confrontations of Frederick Barbarossa's reign. In his own writing, Otto notes that Frederick I brought a new age of peace following years of instability and civil war, a judgment that says something both about the times and about Otto's loyalties.

• 5. The Two Cities

  ›

  Otto's first major historical work, the Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus, is an eight-book treatise written during the German Civil War of 1143-1145. It draws on the intellectual framework of Augustine of Hippo and Paul Orosius, tracing a parallel between Jerusalem and Babel as stand-ins for the Heavenly City and the Earthly City. The chronicle covers events up to the year 1146, after which it was continued to 1209 by Saint Blasius of Blaubeuren Abbey in the Black Forest, who died in 1223. Otto's framework placed Rome as the fourth and final world empire, with power having passed successively to the Greeks (the Byzantines), the Franks, and then to the Germans. He counted Conrad III of Germany as the 93rd emperor since Augustus, and Frederick I as the 94th. The rupture in this providential order, as Otto saw it, came when Pope Gregory VII unexpectedly excommunicated Emperor Henry IV during the Investiture Controversy of 1075. That event, in Otto's reckoning, ushered in the seventh and final age of human history, a period of constant crises preceding the arrival of the Antichrist. This apocalyptic interpretation forms the entire subject of the eighth and final book of the Chronica.

• 6. Prester John's First Appearance

  ›

  Buried inside the Chronica is the earliest documented reference to Prester John. Otto recounts a meeting with Bishop Hugh of Jabala, who told him of a Nestorian Christian king living somewhere in the East. The hope attached to this account was specific: that such a monarch might bring relief to the Crusader states. The story Hugh of Jabala told was heard, recorded, and passed on by Otto. From that single passage, the legend of Prester John spread across medieval Europe and well beyond. Later generations would seek him in Central Asia, in India, and in Ethiopia. Diplomatic missions were sent. Letters purportedly written by Prester John himself circulated widely for centuries. All of it traces back to a conversation Bishop Hugh had with Otto of Freising and which Otto chose to preserve in his chronicle.

• 7. Gesta Friderici

  ›

  Frederick I commissioned Otto to write the Gesta Friderici imperatoris, the Deeds of Emperor Frederick. The book opens with a letter from the emperor to Otto. Of the four books that make up the Gesta, Otto wrote the first two himself. The remaining volumes, or parts of them, are attributed to his pupil Ragewin, also written as Rahewin, though some scholars argue Otto also wrote the earlier sections of the third and fourth books. The first book begins with the conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV and traces events through the death of Conrad III in 1152. Its scope extends beyond Germany, taking in Bernard of Clairvaux's preaching, his campaign against heresy, and the condemnation of Pierre Abélard. The second book opens with Frederick I's election in 1152 and covers the first five years of his reign, with particular attention to his Italian campaigns. Ragewin took over the narrative from 1156 onward. Otto's command of Latin was judged exceptional by later historians, and despite a noticeable bias toward the Hohenstaufens and some minor inaccuracies, the Gesta has been described as a model of historical composition. In 1857, nearly seven centuries after his death, a statue of Otto was erected at Freising, Bavaria.