Frederick Barbarossa is arguably one of the most important German rulers of the Middle Ages, and certainly one of the best known. Still, English-speaking readers have had to wait a long time for a biography of this Holy Roman Emperor. Yale University Press has now published John B. Freed’s monumental and learned biography of the emperor.
For specialists of Barbarossa’s reign, particularly in Germany, the book does not offer many new interpretations, but to wish for more detail in a book of 700 pages may seem improper. Moreover, it is not a book aimed at these specialists. It is, rather, the first English-language biography of Frederick Barbarossa in several decades. It offers an excellent introduction to all relevant sources, which Freed commands in the fashion of a true master, and into most of the relevant scholarly debates, at least in German. Freed has written an erudite and immensely readable biography of Frederick that is very rich in historical detail and that – despite some problems – offers a reliable introduction into German history of the 12th century and into the debates among German scholars about this time. It will remain, for generations to come, and rightfully so, the standard work in English on Frederick Barbarossa and Germany in the 12th century.
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