The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts (review)

In the latest volume of Ashgate's 'Crusade Texts in Translation' series, Graham Loud collects and translates what he rightly labels the 'principal accounts' of the German crusade that set out in 1189. As Loud notes, this expedition, launched in response to the loss of much of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem to Saladin, is often somewhat neglected by Anglophone historians. The latter are often more interested in the slightly later venture led by the English king Richard the Lionheart and his French counterpart, Philippe II. The neglect of the German contribution to the Third Crusade is owed, perhaps, to its somewhat anticlimactic ending: following a lengthy journey through Hungary, Byzantium, and Asia Minor, its leader, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, drowned somewhat ignominiously in a river without actually reaching the Holy Land. Although the crusaders struggled on to Antioch, the army was decimated by disease and subsequently dispersed. The expedition can be summed up in a remark by the anonymous author of the Historia de Expeditione Friderici Imperatoris: 'For day after day, good things and happiness, and the abundance of a good market, were promised to us, but it all turned out very differently' (p. 115). And yet Barbarossa's crusade is, as Loud frequently highlights, worth remembering, not least because it possesses particularly rich and detailed sources.

The centrepiece of Loud's collection, and the work that occupies most of the volume, is a full translation of the Historia de Expeditione. This offers a near-contemporary account of preparations preceding the German crusade and of its progress. As Loud notes, the level of detail relating to this expedition's participants is far in excess of that which appears in sources for earlier crusades. Further information on the majority of these participants is helpfully provided in the footnotes, although it is unclear why certain figures, such as Gaubert of Aspremont and Adalbert of Wisselberg, are excluded from this treatment.

Alongside the Historia de Expeditione, the volume includes material from two closely related texts. The second item is a translation of the Historia Peregrinorum from its prologue up until the crusaders' arrival at Vienna. As the remainder of this chronicle is very similar to the Historia de Expeditione and seems to have drawn upon a version of it, Loud does not translate the remainder of the text. He does, however, include significant variations in the Historia Peregrinorum's account in the footnotes to the Historia de Expeditione.

A third related text is the chronicle of Magnus of Reichersberg. This latter is significant for its use of the 'diary' of one of the participants, Tageno, dean of the cathedral of Passau, which was also a source for the Historia de Expeditione. The font size of Loud's translation of Magnus's chronicle is varied to indicate which parts are Magnus's own and which are taken directly from Tageno.

Alongside these three key sources for Frederick's crusade, Loud includes four additional texts. One of these is an anonymous letter, possibly addressed to a German cleric, concerning the emperor's death. It is followed by excerpts from the chronicle of Otto of St Blasien, a text which gives some sense of how Frederick's crusade came to be regarded by the next generation. Loud also includes a short account of a group of German crusaders who did not take the land route but who decided to sail to the Holy Land by ship. On the way, they became involved with a Portuguese army in the conquest of the town of Silves. The volume is rounded off by an example of Frederick's pre-crusade preparations, the land peace issued at Nuremberg in 1188.

This collection of seven sources is preceded by two maps, three genealogical tables, and a 30-page introduction. The latter begins...