Otto of Freising

thumb| Otto of Freising (Latin: Otto Frisingensis; c. 1111 or 1112 – 22 September 1158) was a German churchman of the Cistercian order and a chronicler. He was the bishop of Freising from 1138. Otto participated in the Second Crusade; he lived through the journey and reached Jerusalem, and later returned to Bavaria in the late 1140s, living for another decade back in Europe. Quotes Chronica de duabus civitatibus · Chronicle of the Two Cities For being transferred from the City to the Greeks, from the Greeks to the Franks, from the Franks to the Lombards, from the Lombards again to the German Franks, that empire not only became decrepit and senile through lapse of time, but also, like a once smooth pebble that has been rolled this way and that by the waters, contracted many a stain and developed many a defect. Prologue (tr. Mierow, p. 94) I thought it necessary, my dear brother Isingrim, to compose a history whereby, through God's favour, I might display the miseries of the citizens of Babylon and also the glory of the kingdom of Christ to which the citizens of Jerusalem are to look forward with hope, and of which they are to have a foretaste even in this life. I have undertaken therefore to bring down as far as our own time...the record of the conflict and miseries of the one city, Babylon; and furthermore, not to be silent concerning our hopes regarding that other city...but to make mention also of its citizens who are now sojourning in the worldly city. Prologue (tr. Mierow, p. 95) External links The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., tr. Charles Christopher Mierow, ed. Austin P. Evans and Charles Knapp (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928) Category:Chroniclers Category:Catholic bishops