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Otto of Freising Otto of Freising Otto episcopus Frisingensis, Otto von Freising, Otton de Freising Date of Birth Between 1111 and 1115 Place of Birth Probably Klosterneuburg near Vienna Date of Death 22 September 1158 Place of Death Morimond, Haute Marne, France Biography The fifth son of the Margrave Leopold III of Austria and of Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Henry IV, Otto was destined for an eccle- siastical career. He received his first education from the Augustinian canons of Klosterneuburg, where he was appointed prior in 1126. From about 1127 he continued his studies in France, where he was probably taught by Hugh of St Victor, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres, and maybe also Abelard. In 1132 he became a monk in the Cistercian Abbey of Morimond, with 15 fellow students, and was elected abbot there in 1138. The same year, he became bishop of Freising in Bavaria. In this capacity, he participated actively in the political life of the empire (diets, expeditions to Italy), secured the temporal possessions of his see, and strove to raise the moral and intellectual standard of the clergy, as well as to promote harmony between opposing parties in the ecclesiastical and political field. He took a serious interest in the philosophical debates of his time and is considered to have promoted the study of the new Aristotle in the Germanic lands, but his extant literary works – the Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus and the first two books of theGesta Friderici I imperatoris (two more books were added after Otto’s death by his secretary Rahewin) – belong to the field of historiography. The Historia (written between 1143 and 1147, extant only in a sec- ond recension dedicated to Frederick Barbarossa in 1157) is usually considered the highest achievement of Latin medieval chronicle writ- ing. It is placed under the auspices of St Augustine and relates the vicissitudes of the ‘two cities’ from Adam to the last judgment. From the time of Constantine the Great, Otto sees the worldly and heavenly otto of freising 559 cities united in the ciuitas permixta of the Christian empire; he sees the investiture crisis menacing this union as a foreboding of the end of the world which can only be delayed by the merits of the monastic orders. In the Gesta Friderici (1157-58) Otto changes from this eschato- logical and monastic point of view to a philosophical one (Morrison, ‘Otto of Freising’s quest’, and Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux’, differing from Goetz, Das Geschichtsbild) and presents imperial history from 1076 to 1156 as a gradual progress from conflict: the second excommunica- tion of Henry IV by the pope – to concord: the agreement promoted by Frederick I between the Guelfs and the Babenberger reestablishes peace in the empire. Otto considers that in this ‘joyous history’ there is no room for a report on the Second Crusade (1146-47), in which he himself partici- pated. The disastrous experience of the crusade probably caused or reinforced his critical attitude towards Bernard of Clairvaux (Gesta Friderici, I, 50 and 66, Schmale, pp. 224-25 and 270-71; Waitz and Simson, pp. 68 and 93) and aggravated the tensions, visible in his work as a whole, between his commitment to the Roman Empire (on his mother’s side, he was respectively the grandson, half-brother and uncle of three emperors), to the Cistercian order, and to the new learning of the French schools. He died on his way to the general chapter of the Cistercians, report- edly uneasy about his favorable representation in the Gesta Friderici of Gilbert of Poitiers’ theological position, which had been attacked by Bernard. MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATION Primary Imperial charters mentioning Otto: ‘Die Urkunden der Deutschen Könige und Kaiser 9’, in Die Urkunden Konrads III und seines Sohnes Heinrich, ed. F. Hausmann, Vienna, 1969, and 10/1: Die Urkunden Friedrichs I 1152-1158, ed. H. Appelt, Hanover, 1975 [see ‘Otto Frisingensis episco- pus’ in the name index].
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