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When the lord emperor was crossing by way of a certain shortcut a certain very rapid stream amidst the mountain gorges and the water had received him safely upon its opposite bank, he ate lunch there. After the innumerable and unbearable labors which he had endured now for a month, he wished to bathe in this water and to swim in order to cool himself off. He drowned by the hidden judgment of God in a lamentable and unexpected accident.
— account of Frederick's death in the Letter
The Letter on the Death of the Emperor Frederick is an anonymous Latin newsletter about the sudden death of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on 10 June 1190 during the Third Crusade. The letter was written by an eyewitness before the crusader army arrived at Antioch on 19 June. It begins with the reception of Frederick's crusade by Béla III of Hungary on 4 June 1189, followed by a brief account its progress through Hungary, Byzantium and Turkey. It ends with the army's arrival in Tarsus on 17 June 1190.
While the Letter is anonymous, there are indications that its author was a clergyman from the Rhineland. He compares the size of the Turkish capital, Iconium, to that of Cologne. The letter is addressed to "your holiness" , which may be a religious body, a bishop or perhaps the pope. The Latin text's most recent editor argued, on the basis of poor Latinity and unimpressive Biblical allusions, that the author was a low-ranking cleric. On the other hand, it has been argued that author may have been Bishop Godfrey of Würzburg, Frederick's former chancellor, who died at Antioch in July, only a month after the letter was written.