John B. Freed

Frederick Barbarossa is a fascinating, mythical character from European history. Thus, a biography about his should be interesting. Unfortunately, since he lived in the 12th century, there are very few written records about him and those that are available are not always very believable. John Freed's biography conveys a frustration with this lack of a definitive written record and fills the text with qualifications and overly detailed comments on the sources.

The result is a very boring history of Barbarossa that will likely be used to torture poor college students who are forced to buy this book for their classes. It also leaves the reader less knowledgeable about Barbarossa that it should. Freed could have rescued the book by making a book about the life and times of Barbarossa explaining better the politics and other figures of that era. Barbara Tuchman did a much better job in this direction in her book The Distant Mirror.

The book also includes long lists of the names of the minor nobility that accompanied Barbarossa on his many expeditions. Since most of the names will be unknown to most readers, the result is an increase in the boredom factor with minimal contributions to elucidation. That said, after the twentieth list of this type, some of the names become familiar and warrant at least a further dip in Wikipedia to learn more about them.… (mer)

The German emperor Frederick Barbarossa is often ranked with the English king Henry II as the two great monarchs of 12th century Europe. Yet unlike his English counterpart, who has been the subject of numerous academic studies and popular works, the number of English-language biographies that have been written about Frederick have been surprisingly few. John Freed fills the void with this massive new study, a detailed look at Frederick's life based upon the available sources that seeks to address not just Frederick's long reign but how he emerged posthumously as a symbol of German nationalism.

Though born a member of the Staufen dynasty, Freed argues that Frederick's illiteracy indicates that his assumption of the imperial throne was unexpected. Though unprepared for such a role, Frederick assumed it upon the death in 1152 of his uncle Conrad III. The position he assumed was weak, with the main source of wealth being the communes of northern Italy. During the first two decades of his reign Frederick spent many years engaged in a series of campaigns designed to bring the recalcitrant communes to heel, only for his hopes to be dashed with his defeat at the battle of Legnano in 1174. Yet the failed efforts brought with them a silver lining, as the death of so many German nobles in his campaigns brought Frederick an opportunity to expand his power base in Germany, which he did with a measure of success. Dying while on the Third Crusade in 1190, Freed sees his demise abroad as key to his historical image, as Frederick was transformed in the centuries that followed into a legendary "sleeping hero" whose reemergence tied to the idea of a unified Germany.

Freed's book chronicles Frederick's life with considerable thoroughness. This is both a strength and weakness of the book, for while he leaves nothing out his text can often be a dense thicket of names into which the reader must wade to learn about the subject. For those who do, however, they are likely to be rewarded with a deeper understanding of a complicated monarch and his influential but misleading iconography. This is likely to serve as the standard by which future English-language biographies of the emperor are judged, and one unlikely to be surpassed for some time to come.… (mer)

Not very lively, but quite well-footnoted, this long book covers the diversity of the reign and the life. There's massive footnoting, too few maps and requires more guiding of the English oriented reader into the intricacy of German Medieval geography. Fred, doesn't seem to have been literate, and there's no commissioned biography or even much flattery datable to his later life time so, we are left with usually hostile critics and charters for the bulk of his long life. The author has found a good deal of value in the biography by Otto of Freising, but it ends far too soon for the scale of this work. This book gets a half-star for the daring of the attempt at all.… (mer)