David Luscombe

Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge

Grandson of the Emperor Henry IV, son of Leopold III the Margrave of Austria,
half-brother of the Emperor Conrad III, uncle of the Emperor Frederick Barba-
rossa, Otto belonged to the highest circles of the imperial nobility. Born in about
1111, named as a child by his father as provost of the community of regular
canons at Klosterneuburg, student or at least resident in Paris for eight years
from about 1125, Cistercian monk from 1133 and abbot from 1138 of the abbey
of Morimond in eastern France which sent Cistercian monks to Otto’s native
Austria with new abbeys being founded at Heiligenkreuz, Zwettl and Baumgar-
tenberg, bishop of Freising from 1138 – the choice of his half-brother Conrad,
now Emperor Conrad III. Otto loved Freising, “situated”, he wrote,

“in a very fair and pleasant spot, notable for its streams of limpid waters and parti-
cularly for that swiftly flowing river, the Isar. [...] From its southern slope it looks out
upon a broad and level plain [...]. But on the northern side there is still to be seen [...]
a forest [...] bounded [...] by the Amper [...]. At its farthest limit, where the rivers I
have mentioned flow together, there is (as everyone knows) a place called Moosburg,
very beautiful and delightful”1.

Otto took a full part in imperial policy making. He went on Crusade to Asia Mi-
nor and Jerusalem in 1147-1148 and he accompanied Barbarossa on his expe-
dition into Italy in 1154. And he was a historian, one of the most philosophical
historians to have put pen to parchment in the entire Middle Ages but also an
empirical chronicler of his own times. It was in Freising that Otto wrote his two
works of history, his Chronicle or History of the Two Cities written between 1143
and 1147, and, some ten years later, his account of the Gesta Friderici, the Deeds
of Frederick Barbarossa, written between 1156 and 1158 and covering events

1 Chronica V, 24, ed. Hofmeister, p. 251, l. 19 - p. 252, l. 6; trans. Mierow, pp. 348-349 (Mierow’s

translations of Otto’s Chronicle and Gesta have performed a lasting service in making the invaluable
editions by Hofmeister and Waitz available to several generations of readers of English. I have sometimes
adapted the translations in small ways).

«Quaestio», 15 (2015), 31-45 • 10.1484/j.quaestio.5.108588

32 David Luscumbe

between 1152 and 11562. Both works were dedicated to Barbarossa, duke of
Swabia from 1147 and emperor from 1152.
Otto lived at a time when more histories were being written than ever before3
and when some thinkers such as Hugh of St Victor, abbot of the Augustinian
canonry of St Victor in Paris, put a high value upon historical thought and histo-
rical perspective. Otto could hardly not have met Hugh in Paris. The movement
in the twelfth century towards the systematization of the teaching of theology led
to the production of many treatises which were arranged according to a historical
plan, a notable example being Hugh’s treatise on Sacraments, De sacramentis,
which begins with the creation of the world, of angels and of man, and works its
way forward past the Fall, to the Incarnation, the Redemption and the institution
of the sacraments4. One of Hugh’s successors in the abbey of St Victor, Andrew
of St Victor, took a strongly historical and literal approach to biblical study5,
as did his contemporary Peter Comestor, the author of the Historia scholastica6.
Both owed much to Hugh’s own approach to Scripture: in his Didascalicon, a
guide to the arts and their study, Hugh advised the student to learn history first
and the truth of events from beginning to end and to commit this to memory.
Examine the circumstances of events: persona – who did it; negotium – what
happened; tempus – the date, and loca – where it happened7. Further interpre-
tation of Scripture, on the level of allegory and tropology or morality, cannot
be safely undertaken unless the student first acquires a grounding in history.
History is the foundation.
And yet the place of historical knowledge within the overall schemes of know-
ledge or divisions of the sciences that medieval thinkers regularly produced was
very small. This is a bit of a puzzle: histories were written everywhere but history
was not a recognised branch of learning; it was rather a part of the process of
teaching and learning grammar, and an application of rhetoric which provided
techniques for telling stories. Isidore of Seville, in his very popular Etymologies,
written in about 600, placed historia among the parts of grammatica. He did so

2 Otto wrote only two of the four books which make up the Gesta. Death in 1158 prevented him from

continuing but his secretary Rahewin (about whom see especially Deutinger 1999) took the work over
and provided books 3 and 4 and some notes which take the account of Frederick’s reign forward to 1160.
3 The reign of Frederick Barbarossa was itself a stimulus to historical writing. Like Otto on whose work

he partly drew, Godfrey of Viterbo (c. 1120-1192/1200), who served in the royal court under Conrad III
and Frederick, wrote Gesta Friderici and a universal history called Pantheon. A Historia Frederici I was
produced by Otto Morena and his continuators. The Annales Mediolanenses Maiores also include Gesta
Federici I imperatoris in Lombardia.
4 Ed. Berndt 2008. Also PL 176, 173-618. See Southern 1971.
5 Cf. Berndt 1991.
6 PL 198, 1053-1722 (Peter of Poitiers provided the history of the Acts of the Apostles, PL 198,

1645-1722). Cf. Dahan (ed.) 2013.

7 Hugo de Sancto Victore, Didascalicon VI, 3, PL 176, 799BC. Cf. also Hugo de Sancto Victore, De

tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, ed. Green.

 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 33

on the ground that whatever is worth remembering belongs to letters (literature)8.

And historia – by which he meant historical writing – was also narrative, the
narrative of what happened in the past, narratio rei gestae9. It was therefore also
a part of rhetoric because narratio is one of the parts of speech, the part which
explains what happened10, unlike fabula which tells us something that never
happened and never could have happened, and unlike argumentum which tells
us what might have happened or could have happened but did not11.
Otto accepted that historical writing required the application of a training in
grammar and also in logic because (as he wrote)

“all teaching consists of two things: what to leave out and what to put in, avoidance
and selection (fuga and electio). To begin [...] with what comes first for those who are
approaching philosophy, namely grammar, this study [...] teaches us to select those
things which are in harmony with our purpose and to avoid such matters as are a
hindrance to our purpose. [...] Logic also [...] clears away and avoids the admixture of
propositions useless for the formation of syllogisms, but selects the useful and arranges
them properly [...] So also the art of the historians (cronographorum) has certain things
to clear away and to avoid and others to select and arrange properly, for it avoids lies
and selects the truth”12.

Otto’s purpose in writing the Chronicle was to show his nephew, Barbarossa,
how historical knowledge would help him to govern his kingdom: “you (Frederick)
desire to know what was done in ancient times by kings and emperors, and to
know this not only for the better protection of the state by arms, but also for its
better moulding by laws and statutes”13. “The knowledge of history [...] will be
proper and advantageous to Your Excellency, for thereby, considering the deeds
of brave men and the strength and power of God – who changes monarchs and
gives thrones to whomsoever he will, and suffers changes to come to pass – you
shall live ever in his fear”14. The point Otto makes about knowing the strength

8 “Haec disciplina ad Grammaticam pertinet, quia quidquid dignum memoria est litteris mandatur”,

Isidorus Hispalensis episcopus, Etymologiae I, 41, ed. Lindsay, I, p. 81, ll. 25-26.
9 “Historia est narratio rei gestae, per quam ea, quae in praeterito facta sunt, dinoscuntur”, Isidorus

Hispalensis episcopus, Etymologiae I, 41, ed. Lindsay, I, p. 81, ll. 18-19.

10 “Partes orationis in Rhetorica arte quattuor sunt: exordium, narratio, argumentatio, conclusio [...]

Harum [...] secunda res gestas explicat”, Isidorus Hispalensis episcopus, Etymologiae, II, 7, ed. Lindsay,
I, p. 87, ll. 20-23.
11 “Item inter historiam et argumentum et fabulam interesse. Nam historiae sunt res verae quae factae

sunt; argumenta sunt quae etsi facta non sunt, fieri tamen possunt; fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae
sunt nec fieri possunt, quia contra naturam sunt”, Isidorus Hispalensis episcopus, Etymologiae, I, 44, ed.
Lindsay, I, p. 82, ll. 27-31.
12 Chronica, dedication, ed. Hofmeister, p. 4, l. 12 - p. 5, l. 10; trans. Mierow, p. 90.
13 “Regiae excellentiae convenientius esse considero ob rei publicae non solum armis tutandae, sed et

legibus et iudiciis informandae incrementum antiqua regum seu imperatorum gesta vos velle cognoscere”,
Chronica, dedication, ed. Hofmeister, p. 1, ll. 9-13; trans. Mierow, p. 87.
14 “Honesta ergo eris et utilis excellentiae vestrae historiarum cognitio, qua et virorum fortium gesta
34 David Luscumbe

and power of God as well as the deeds of brave men was fundamental for, as Otto
makes clear in his dedication of the Chronicle to Barbarossa , “kings alone [...]
are not held in restraint by the laws of this world” – as the Digest of Roman law
makes clear: Princeps legibus solutus est. But kings “should take all possible care
not to fall into God’s hands” for, as St Paul wrote: it is “a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the living God”, and it is from a “knowledge of history” that kings
can learn “the strength and power of God, who changes kings and thrones”. Otto
cites the Book of Wisdom:

“Listen, kings, and understand, rulers of remotest lands, take warning; hear this, you
who have thousands under your rule, who boast of your hordes of subjects. For power
is a gift to you from the Lord, sovereignty is from the Most High; he himself will probe
your acts and scrutinise your intentions. If, as administrators of his kingdom, you have
not governed justly [...] nor behaved as God would have you behave, he will fall on
you swiftly and terribly. Ruthless judgement is reserved for the high and mighty”15.

And it would seem that Barbarossa wanted to learn from History for when
he thanked Otto for writing the Chronicle, Barbarossa wrote: “We have received
with great joy the Chronicle, dispatched to us by your love. After the sweat of
war we ardently desire from time to time to delight ourselves therein and to be
instructed in the virtues by the magnificent achievements of the emperors”16.
The Chronicle or History of the Two Cities is a history of the world in eight
books extending from the world’s creation to the year 1146 but ending in book
8 with a description of the end of the world and of the imminent coming of the
Kingdom of God. It is a truism that world histories written in the Middle Ages
were not universal. They were restricted spatially to Europe and the Middle
East. As Otto’s Chronicle proceeds, its range becomes still more restricted: from
book three onwards Otto is only concerned with the Roman Empire and with its
translationes from Rome itself to the Greeks under Constantine the Great, to the
Franks under Charlemagne, then the Lombards and then the Germans. Unbelie-
ving Jews and Gentiles still exist, he wrote, but “are unimportant not only before
God but also according to the world, since we find hardly any deed of theirs worth
being mentioned and handed down for posterity”17.

Deique regna mutantis et cui voluerit dantis rerumque mutationem patientis virtutem ac potentiam con-
siderando sub eius metu semper degatis ac prospere procedendo per multa temporum curricula regnetis”,
Chronica, dedication, ed. Hofmeister, p. 2, ll. 25-30; trans. Mierow, pp. 88-89.
15 Chronica, dedication, ed. Hofmeister, pp. 1-2; trans. Mierow, pp. 87-89. Wisdom 6: 1-5.
16 “Cronica, quae tua sapientia digessit vel desuetudine inumbrata in luculentam erexit consonantiam

(Iustinianus, Institutiones, proem. 2.5), a dilectione tua nobis transmissa cum ingenti gaudio suscepimus,
et post bellicos sudores interdum in his delectari et per magnifica gesta imperatorum ad virtutes informari
preoptamus”, Letter of Frederick to Otto at the opening of the Gesta, ed. Waitz-von Simson, p. 1, ll. 7-12;
trans. Mierow, p. 17.
17 Chronica V, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 228, ll. 25-28; trans. Mierow, p. 324.
 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 35

The earliest models in Christian times of universal histories include the Chron-
icle written in Greek in about 300 by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea. About a hun-
dred years later this was translated into Latin and continued by St Jerome. These
works had attempted to align biblical history and chronology with other histories
of other civilisations with their differing chronologies and differing calculations of
time. Otto used the History written by an eleventh-century German monk, Frutolf
of Michelsberg, who had presented world history in a series of parallel columns,
with the periods of rule by Hebrew leaders in the left hand column, and corre-
sponding periods of rule in other civilizations in the columns to the right. Frutolf’s
work was revised by Ekkehard of Aura c. 1100. Ekkehard divided the History into
five books which defined what he thought were the most important turning points
in history: the foundation of Rome, the birth of Christ, the reign of Charlemagne,
and the accession of Henry V to the German throne in 1099. Being a German,
like Frutolf and Ekkehard, Otto used the continuing history of the Roman Empire,
Reichsgeschichte, to provide a framework for more recent history.
Frutolf had also been guided – as was Otto after him – by the massively in-
fluential and widely read work of Orosius, namely, the seven books of his Histo-
ries against the Pagans which Orosius wrote at the request of Augustine of Hippo
and which he completed in 417. He did this after the sack of Rome by Alaric and
the Goths in 410, and in doing so he provided a historical addition to Augustine’s
De civitate Dei, especially books 3 and 4.18 Like Augustine, Orosius wrote in
order to refute the criticisms made by some pagans that the fall of Rome had been
brought about by the popularity of Christianity and the neglect of the traditional
pagan, civic rituals. On the contrary, Orosius contended, Roman history before
the birth of Christ had also known disasters and misery; the Roman past was
not as glorious as pagans believed. This was Augustine’s argument too but what
Orosius did was assemble further historical examples of suffering and setbacks
in the pagan past, with an emphasis on the enormity of earlier catastrophes in
comparison with recent disasters. According to Orosius, the Christian era was
the most stable time in human history. The coincidence of the coming of Christ
and the start of the pax romana or pax Augusta under the Emperor Augustus
Caesar was providential and not an accident. This coincidence marked not the
end of ancient history but the climax of the history of the ancient empires, for
it opened the way to the spread of Christ’s message throughout the world. The
Incarnation of Christ marked the beginning of a new age of prosperity. The histo-
rian Eusebius provided Orosius with encouragement to celebrate the conversion
of the Empire to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine in the earlier part of
the fourth century. Completion of the Christian empire was achieved in the later

18 For a valuable introduction see Orosius, Historiae, ed. Arnaud-Lindet, 1, introduction.

36 David Luscumbe

part of the fourth century under Theodosius. The final book of Orosius’ Histo-
ries, book 7, traced the ups and downs of the history of the Roman empire from
the happy time of peace, when Christ chose to enter human history in the flesh,
to its high point in Orosius’ own lifetime, at the beginning of the fifth century.
Augustine, in De civitate Dei, went no further than to argue that the Gothic sack
of Rome in 410 was not unprecedented; there had been disasters before and
under the pagans too. Nor did Augustine, by the time he wrote De civitate Dei,
see the Empire as the essential sacral means by which Christianity was helped
in its mission. The Empire was not essential to Christianity. But Orosius, in the
tradition of Eusebius, was much more up-beat about the providential role of the
Empire. A high point of history was reached when a Visigothic king, Athaulf,
planned to unite the Goths with the Romans in a renewed Christian, Roman and
Gothic Empire. So the sack of Rome in 410 was not another disaster for Rome
but the prelude to a historical triumph which was the work of God.
Like Frutolf and like Orosius, Otto of Freising saw world history as God’s hi-
story, the record of God’s numerous interventions in history, interventions which
are datable facts and actual historical events. But in one vital respect Otto and
Orosius disagreed. Otto’s recent ancestors, especially his grandfather the Empe-
ror Henry IV (Emperor from 1053 to 1106 but excommunicated by Pope Gregory
VII in 1076), had witnessed, indeed had helped to cause, the terrible breakdown
in eleventh-century Germany of the harmonious cooperation between Church
and Empire that had been the central theme of the triumphal close of Orosius’s
Histories. Otto’s answer, incidentally, to the perennial question that is the subject
of so many student exercises – when did the Roman empire fall? – was that it was
falling all around him now. We call the eleventh-century breakdown of relations
between the Papacy and Empire the Investiture Contest. But it was much more
than a contest over how and by whom prelates of the Church should be invested
with their office. For over a century and until the 1150s Germany was racked by
intensively destructive regional rivalries, including the great and long drawn out
Saxon rebellion from 1073. And, as bishop of Freising in the 1140s, Otto himself
experienced warfare and destruction in his own bishopric and in Bavaria more
generally. But the great upheaval in relationships between Papacy and Empire
provoked critical soul-searching and numerous reassessments of the sources of
church law, and, like the Norman Conquest of England, it was also the cause of
much historical writing in which attempts were made to find and to justify or to
reject a new world order. Otto saw the Investiture Contest as a contest between a
Church that had been able to grow big and strong and an Empire which had now
become weak – and he saw this as a historical tragedy. As Otto told his nephew
Barbarossa in the dedication to him of his Chronicle: “I have written this history
in bitterness of spirit, led thereto by the turbulence of that unsettled time which
 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 37

preceded your reign, and therefore I did not merely give events in their chrono-
logical order, but rather wove together, in the manner of a tragedy, their sadder
aspects, and so ended with a picture of unhappiness”19.
Otto believed that he lived in “the closing days” of the empire and he expected
“that what we have yet to fear will soon take place”20. His belief rested upon
biblical exegesis, an interpretation of the prophecy of Daniel found in the Old
Testament. Daniel explained to Nabuchodonosor, the king of Babylon, what was
meant by a dream which the king had had and in which he had seen a great
statue, with a head of fine gold, a chest and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of
brass, legs of iron, and feet part of iron and part of clay. But this statue had been
broken into pieces by a stone cut out of the mountain without the help of human
hands. The significance of the king’s dream was revealed to Daniel in a vision.
The king’s dream meant this: there will be four kingdoms, the first made of gold
which is the kingdom of Nabuchodonosor himself, and after that a second but
inferior kingdom of silver, then a third of brass which will rule the world, then
a fourth of iron which will destroy all other kingdoms but, having feet of clay as
well as iron, it will be partly strong but partly weak. Without hands God will cut
stone out of the mountain that shall break in pieces the clay, the iron, the brass,
the silver and the gold. The God of heaven makes and takes away these kingdoms
and changes times and ages. But the God of heaven will also set up a kingdom
that shall never be destroyed (Daniel 2).
Universal histories before Otto had identified all the kingdoms that figure in
Daniel’s vision. Otto himself mapped on to Daniel’s vision of the four kingdoms,
first that of the Assyrians, then that of the Medes and Persians, and then the
Greeks and finally the Romans21. The fourth kingdom, that of Rome and made of
iron, had subjected the whole world to itself by war. Otto acknowledged that dif-
fering views had arisen as to the identity of the two kingdoms of silver and brass.
Some say they are the empires of the Persians and then the Greeks. Others that
the first kingdom included the Persians as well as the Babylonians in the East,
and that the African kingdom (Carthage) was in the second place in the South,
the Greek or Macedonian empire in the third place in the North and finally the
Roman empire in the West, an empire that (Otto thought at the time of writing

19 Chronica, dedication, ed. Hofmeister, p. 2, l. 31 - p. 3, l. 5; trans. Mierow, p. 89. After writing

about the fall of the Babylonian empire in book 1 of the Chronica, Otto writes in the Prologue to book 2:
“I promised that I would write about the instability and the sorrows of the world” (ed. Hofmeister, p. 67,
ll. 19-20; trans. Mierow, p. 153).
20 Chronica II, 13, ed. Hofmeister, p. 82, ll. 20-23; trans. Mierow, pp. 167-168.
21 “I shall briefly explain the order in which this history proceeds [...] there were from the beginning of

the world four principal kingdoms [...] succeeding one another in accordance with the law of the universe
[...] (as) can be gathered in various ways, in particular from the vision of Daniel (Daniel 7) [...] first the
Assyrians, next [...] the Medes and the Persians, finally the Greeks and the Romans”, Chronica, dedica-
tion, ed. Hofmeister, p. 5, ll. 17-26; trans. Mierow, p. 91.
38 David Luscumbe

the Chronicle) was now coming to an end22. The Roman Empire, Otto wrote, had
now become like the kingdom which the prophet Daniel said “had feet ‘part of
iron and part of clay’ (Daniel 2: 42) till (that) it was struck and broken to pieces
by a stone cut out of the mountain without hands”.

“How – Otto continued – can I interpret ‘the stone cut out without hands’ (Daniel 2:
34) as anything other than the Church? [...] It was clearly the Church that smote the
kingdom near its end [...] The kingdom was of iron on account of its wars and of clay
on account of its fragile condition. And the Church smote the kingdom in its weak
spot when the Church decided not to reverence the King (of Rome) as lord of the earth
but to strike him with the sword of excommunication [...] All can now see to what a
mountainous height the Church, at one time small and lowly, has grown. What great
calamities [...] followed in consequence of the weakness of the kingdom”23.

In reference to the excommunication in 1076 of the Emperor Henry IV by

Pope Gregory VII Otto wrote: “I read and I re-read the deeds of Roman kings
and emperors and never do I find any of them before now to have been excom-
municated or deprived of his kingdom by a Roman pontiff”24.
Otto recognised that he had a pessimistic view of historical knowledge. Mi-
sery and change had accompanied each other throughout all of history, as Oro-
sius had shown very fully. Otto had organised his Chronicle in the light of the two
cities which Augustine of Hippo had portrayed in his De civitate Dei – one city
being of the devil and the other of Christ; one of change, the other of rest; one in
time, the other eternal; one on earth, the other in heaven; one Babylon, the other
Jerusalem. The evil city passes from the time before grace – a wretched time
before the coming of Christ – through the time of grace which is now and which is
more wretched, and finally to the third time in the next life which will be the most
wretched. On the other hand, the city of Christ or the Church, lived at first under
pagan rulers – a lowly and abject time – then it lived under Christian rulers – a
time of blessings and also of outward prosperity but still an intermediate time in
which the good and the bad, the wheat and the chaff, were found together – but
in the third stage, in the future and perfect time, only the blessed will remain
in the heavenly city. And in his eighth book Otto sets out to tell his readers how
one of the two cities will arrive at its eternal happiness.
Otto defended himself against possible criticism that he should not have
sought to bring together historical narratives of so many misfortunes, on the

Chronica II,13, ed. Hofmeister, p. 82, ll. 8-14; trans. Mierow, p. 167.
22

Chronica VI, 36, ed. Hofmeister, pp. 305, l. 3 - p. 306, l. 1; trans. Mierow, pp. 400-401.
23
24 Chronica VI, 35, ed. Hofmeister, p. 304, ll. 21-24; trans. Mierow, p. 400. Otto mentions penances

imposed on the Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus in the year 247 and the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) in
Chronica III, 33 and IV, 18, ed . Hofmeister, pp. 170-171 and 207; trans. Mierow, pp. 261 and 300-301.
 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 39

one hand, and deep and mystic visions narrated in the Bible, on the other25. He
said that all he had done was to follow the example of St Augustine in his De
civitate Dei. The Scriptures themselves, as Augustine demonstrated, tell stories
of human misery and wars, of changing events and of impiety, but nevertheless
they also convey mystical meanings and mysterious prophecies and profound
secrets and visions. The book of Daniel itself begins with a historical narrative
and ends with a profound vision. So in his final book Otto offers his own vision
of the eternal rest of the saints, a vision of the light that comes after darkness.
In one essential respect Otto abandoned a key element in Augustine’s idea of
the two cities. The City of God, Otto wrote, has made progress: “one (of the two
cities) made progress first by remaining hidden in the other until the coming of
Christ, after that by advancing gradually to the time of Constantine [...] But after
Constantine [...] it began to be grievously troubled [...] by internal strife” brou-
ght about by Arius – Arius being the author of the great heresy about the divine
Trinity that so agitated the Roman world in the early-fourth century – and, Otto
continues, “from that time on, since not only all the people but also the emperors
(except a few) were catholics, I seem to myself to have composed a history not of
two cities but virtually of one only which I call Christendom (ecclesia)”26. “The
elect and the reprobate are in one household, yet I cannot call these cities two
as I did above. I must call them properly one – composite, however, as the grain
is mixed with the chaff. Wherefore in the books that follow”, he wrote, “let us
pursue the course of history which we have begun [...] our history is a history
of the City of Christ, but that city, so long as it is in the land of sojourn, is ‘like
unto a net, that was cast into the sea’, containing the good and the bad”27. Otto
abandons Augustine by merging the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, and
making them one, and thereby (in a sense) making the Christian at home in the
world – unlike Augustine to whom being at home in the world was impossible
for a Christian.
Otto also rejected Orosius’ euphoria about Christian Rome. He wrote:

“We are compelled [...] to ponder upon the judgements of God and the instability of
the world [...] we see earthly pomp and power departing with time [...] earthly honours
come and go [...] earthly power passed from Babylon to the Medes, from them to the
Persians, afterwards to the Greeks, finally to the Romans, and under the Roman name
was transferred to the Franks. And when it appeared that it would continue there [...]

25 Chronica VIII, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 392, l. 5 - p. 393, l. 17; trans. Mierow, p. 455.
26 Chronica V, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 228, ll. 3-8, 9-13; trans. Mierow, pp. 323-324. Cf. Markus
1989, p. 164.
27 Chronica V, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 228, ll. 14-23 ; trans. Mierow, p. 324. Cf. Chronica VII, Prol.,

ed. Hofmeister, p. 309, ll. 28-31; trans. Mierow, p. 404: “The net of the Lord contains both good and bad.
For the good and the bad cannot be separated at present, inasmuch as the Church judges only the things
which are on the surface”.
40 David Luscumbe

it began to be subject to so many woes [...] that one might well say with Job, ‘When I
come to the dawn [...] I wait for the darkness; and when I have obtained it I [...] long
again for the daylight’ ”28.

On the other hand, Otto intended to write not only about “the varying expe-
riences of the citizens of Babylon and their sufferings” but also about “the pro-
gress and achievements of the citizens of Christ, their progress through and
beyond those sufferings”29. Otto writes that, without passing judgements or offe-
ring moral reflections, he will relate the history, with no polemics, of the course
of events in which the vicissitudes and sufferings of the citizens of Babylon
and the progress and achievements of the citizens who belong to Christ are in-
terwoven30. In the Prologue to the last book of the Chronicle Otto reflects on the
present strength of the Church and the present weakness of the Empire which
had been pierced and destroyed by two swords, the spiritual sword which does
indeed belong to the Church but also the material sword which does not31. But
Otto expressed himself cautiously on questions about the relationship between
spiritual and temporal power: “men are not lacking who say that God desired
the state to be brought low that he might exalt the Church [...] (But) to settle this
point or even to discuss it is beyond our strength”32.
As well as seeing progress among citizens who belong to Christ, even amid
the ups and downs and the sufferings of the past, Otto also believed in the pro-
gress of knowledge through the passage of time. Mankind had come a long way
since the time of Ninus, the first Persian king:

“Ninus, the first, it is said, who in his lust to extend his sway did not shrink from staining
the human race with blood [...] (and he) could do this the more readily because men
were as yet simple and rustic [...] they were not yet equipped with knowledge of military
matters because they had not yet united under any laws [...] but, as Eusebius says, ‘Ro-
aming about more in the fashion of wild animals and beasts, they possessed no cities as
the basis of society, no traditions to serve as standards of honour, no laws to bring about
uprightness of life. Not even the mere name of the arts and sciences and of philosophy
was known among them – but they wandered about [...] with no fixed abode’ ”33.

But later came the prophets, such as Jeremiah who “made many predictions

Chronica V, 36, ed. Hofmeister, p. 260, ll. 1-24; trans. Mierow, pp. 357-358.
28

Chronica II, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 68, ll. 25-26; trans. Mierow, p. 154.
29
30 “Nemo autem a nobis sententias aut moralitates expectet. Hystoriam enim, in qua civium Babylo-

niae vicissitudines ac labores civiumque Christi inter eos progressus et profectus texantur, non disputantis
more, sed disserentis ordine prosequi intendimus”, Chronica II, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 68, ll. 23-28;
trans. Mierow, p. 154.
31 Chronica VII, Prol., ed. Hofmeister p. 308, l. 25 - p.309, l. 10; trans. Mierow, p. 404.
32 Chronica VII, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 308, l. 25 - p. 309, l. 5; trans. Mierow, p. 404.
33 Chronica, I, 6, ed. Hofmeister, p. 44, ll. 3-16; trans. Mierow, p. 130.
 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 41

concerning the state of the Church and the coming of Christ” and the “philo-
sophers, ‘lovers of wisdom’, the first of these being Pythagoras [...] after him
Socrates (who) trained Plato and Aristotle [...] all things that could be disco-
vered by human wisdom regarding the nature of God they found out, all except
those matters on which ultimate salvation depends”34. And “after mastering for
ourselves the things that were discovered before us, we can devise new things
with the same inspiration as those of old [...] That is why, though our ancestors
were men renowned for wisdom [...] the causes of many things lay hidden from
them which have begun to be revealed to us through the passage of time and the
course of events [...] all human power or wisdom, originating in the East, began
to reach its limits in the West”35.
Josephus is Otto’s main source for the idea of a translatio sapientiae, a tran-
sfer of wisdom, wisdom having been found first in Babylon and then brought
from there by Abraham westward to Egypt and from Egypt to the Greeks, and
then to the Romans and finally to the Franks and to the extreme west – that is,
to the Gauls and the Spains. But there it stops for – Otto continued – the world
is now failing, and, “so to speak, drawing the last breath of extremest old age”36
before – and here Otto strikes a positive note – before God’s kingdom comes.
Otto was also quite positive about the growth of religious orders in his own
day: “Whereas they dwelt once in greatest numbers in Egypt they are most nu-
merous now in the regions of Gaul and Germany, so that one need not wonder
at the transfer of power or of wisdom from the East to the West (potentiae seu
sapientiae ab oriente ad occidentem translationem), since it is evident that the
same transfer has been effected in matters of religion”37.
All students of Otto’s two works of history have had to face the question: are
there not, so to say, two Ottos, the pessimist who wrote the Chronicle, and the
optimist who wrote the Gesta Friderici? Otto himself wrote in the Gesta Friderici
that he was not now writing tragedy but a joyful history38. But why was Otto so
positive about the deeds of Frederick Barbarossa when in his earlier work on the
Chronicle he had thought that the Roman Empire was coming to a close and that
the world was in extreme old age? In the Gesta Friderici, unlike the Chronicle,
Otto found that Frederick, on his accession to the German kingship in 1152,

34 Chronica II, 7-8, ed. Hofmeister, p. 74, l. 30 - p. 75, ll. 4, 12-21, p. 78, ll. 3-6; trans. Mierow, pp.

161-163.
35 Chronica V, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 226, l. 20 - p. 227, l. 2; trans. Mierow, p. 322. Lerner 2011,

p. 16, writes of Otto’s use of Daniel 12:4 that “Otto is not referring to growth in knowledge of the faith but
rather to the growth of human science” but that “he quickly vitiates his initial announcement” because
he thought that “we live in a time of decline and the world’s senility”.
36 Chronica V, Prol., ed. Hofmeister, p. 227, l. 27 - p. 228, l. 2; trans. Mierow, p. 323.
37 Chronica VII, 35, ed. Hofmeister, p. 372, ll. 29-34; trans. Mierow, p. 448.
38 “Non hac vice tragediam, sed iocundam scribere proposuimus hystoriam”, Gesta I, 47, ed. Waitz /

von Simson, p. 65, ll. 3-4; trans. Mierow, p. 79.

42 David Luscumbe

had opened up a bright new future full of hope; he quickly put an end to the in-
tensively destructive rivalries in the German duchies, settled conflicts in Otto’s
Bavaria, launched a successful military expedition into Italy in 1154 – Otto went
with him – and was crowned emperor in Rome in 1155.
But the contrast between Otto’s pessimism in the Chronicle and his opti-
mism in the Gesta, real enough as it is, should not be overstated. Although
Otto thought in the Chronicle that the world was approaching its end, he never
thought that the end would be disastrous in all respects. The City of God had
made progress throughout history and was continuing to do so. The first stage
of its progress was from the creation of the world to the reign of the Emperor
Theodosius; the second from Theodosius would run till the end of time but as
a civitas permixta, including both good people and bad. But in the third stage
the City of God would enjoy heavenly glory in its fullness, and Otto saw his
own time as a turning point where the second stage would soon give way to the
third stage. But the Chronicle was finished in 1148. By the time Otto began his
Gesta in 1156 the world had changed and for the better. I have already drawn
attention to some positive features in the Chronicle – the idea of the advance of
wisdom and its transfer to the west, the growth of the religious orders in Gaul
and Germany. And on the flip side there are dark features in the Gesta, for the
Gesta begin not with Barbarossa but with Otto’s grandfather, the unfortunate
Emperor Henry IV, in about the year 1074. The first book of the Gesta covers
the period from Henry IV to Conrad III (c. 1074-1152), that is, roughly the same
miserable period as is covered in Book 7 of the Chronicle, and I do not think that
there is a great change of emphasis or an improvement of mood in Otto’s writing
about this miserable period between book 7 of the Chronicle and book 1 of the
Gesta. Otto’s purpose in writing the Gesta was still broadly similar to that which
led him to write the Chronicle: he wrote to instruct the young ruler and to show
him that history teaches lessons. Thus, in accounting in the Gesta for the great
Saxon revolt of 1073 against their arrogant prince, Otto seizes on the moral and
exemplary aspect, and underlines God’s punishment. His narrative is written as
a warning to Barbarossa. Otto writes:

“let the princes of the earth...learn to observe moderation by holding before their
minds their Creator [...] so that, as Cicero says, the greater they are, the more humbly
they may conduct themselves. For we know the excellent saying of the physicians
concerning the instability of the human constitution: ‘Better on the upgrade than at the
peak’ [...] For since man [...] with a nature tending toward dissolution because made
up of many elements, can never continue in the same state, if he is at the top, he must
soon decline”39.

39 Gesta I, 4, ed. Waitz / von Simson, pp. 15, l. 32-16, l. 8; trans. Mierow, p. 31.
 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 43

Otto shows here his habitual awareness that all human history, like the human
body, is unstable and will eventually go into decline and be dissolved.
This is also the theme of a philosophical excursus which is found in chapter 5
of the first book of the Gesta. Here Otto sets out to show that all created things are
composite. They are generated by something else, and they are not eternal40. And
among created things nothing may be found that is more composite than man who
is easily subject to dissolution. Humans tend towards dissolution as they consist
of opposing parts. For example, the body is made up of four elements, fire pulling
it upward, earth downward; the parts are at variance with each other and the body
is not at rest. Good health is dissolved when it reaches a climax. “Better on the
upgrade than at the peak” because when one no longer has the means of growth,
one must decline. “In the day of good fortune be not unmindful of bad fortune”
(Ecclesiasticus 11: 25)41. Here is a further indication that in writing about Bar-
barossa in the Gesta in an exuberant, confident way, celebrating Barbarossa’s
successes, Otto was not unfaithful to the belief that is the dominant note in the
Chronicle, namely that all history is unstable and ultimately leads to misery.
Book 2 of the Gesta covers the first five years of Frederick’s reign, from 1152 to
1156. Here Otto overplays Frederick’s successes in Italy, though he had good
reason to write positively about them. But, as the philosophical excursus shows,
decline will come in the end. But before this happens, good fortune may also
come. And it did come to Frederick, and Otto duly recorded it and celebrated it.
That he did not record decline – and there was no reason to do this in the years
up to 1158 when Otto died – does not show that Otto had changed his principles.

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44 David Luscumbe

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 Otto of Freising and Historical Knowledge 45

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Abstract: Otto of Freising (c. 1111-1158) was one of the most philosophical historians of
the Middle Ages who reflected on the position of historical knowledge among the arts. His
History of the Two Cities adjusts earlier models of universal history to show, in the light of
his interpretation of Daniel’s prophecy in the Old Testament (Daniel 2), how far the Roman
Empire had declined, a tragedy that nonetheless carried within it signs of progress and
divine interventions. His Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa further illustrate Otto’s belief that
history teaches philosophical lessons.
Key words: Two cities; St Victor; The Arts; The Book of Daniel; Universal Histories;
Augustine’s De civitate Dei; Empires; Progress; Translatio sapientiae.

David Luscombe
Department of History, The University of Sheffield
Sheffield - S3 7RA, England
[email protected]