The
Assizes of Jerusalem are a collection of numerous medieval legal treatises containing the law of the crusader
Kingdom of JerusalemThe Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Christian kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. It lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks....
and
Kingdom of CyprusThe Kingdom of Cyprus was a Crusader kingdom on the island of Cyprus in the high and late Middle Ages, between 1192 and 1489. It was ruled by the French House of Lusignan.-History:...
. They were compiled in the thirteenth century, and are the largest collection of surviving medieval laws.
History
As Peter Edbury says: "one group of sources from the Latin East that have long excited the attention of scholars are the
legal treatiseA legal treatise is a scholarly legal publication containing all the law relating to a particular area, such as criminal law or trusts and estates...
s often known collectively, if somewhat misleadingly, as the
Assises of Jerusalem." (Peter W. Edbury,
John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, pref.)
The assizes, or
assises in
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, survive in written form only from the 13th century, at least a generation after the collapse of the
Kingdom of JerusalemThe Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Christian kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. It lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks....
. The earliest laws of the Kingdom were promulgated at the
Council of NablusThe Council of Nablus was a council of ecclesiastic and secular lords in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, held on January 16, 1120. It established the first written laws for the kingdom.-History:...
in 1120, but these laws seem to have fallen out of use and were replaced by the assizes by the 13th century and presumably even earlier.
Although no laws or court cases survive from the height of the kingdom in the 12th century, the kingdom obviously had laws and a well-developed legal structure. By the 13th century, the development of this structure was lost to memory, but jurists such as Philip and John recounted the legends that had grown up about the early kingdom. According to them, both the Haute Cour and the burgess court were established in 1099 by
Godfrey of BouillonGodfrey of Bouillon was a medieval knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087...
, who set himself up as judge of the high court. The laws of both were said to have been written down from the very beginning in 1099, and were simply lost when Jerusalem was captured by
SaladinṢalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Islamic opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
in 1187. These laws were kept in a chest in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and were thus known in Old French as the "
Letres dou Sepulcre." The chest supposedly could have only been opened by the king, the
Patriarch of JerusalemThe Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the title possessed by the Latin Rite Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. The Archdiocese of Jerusalem has jurisdiction for all Latin Rite Catholics in Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus. In Jerusalem, the Catholic community is the largest Christian community,...
, and the
viscount of JerusalemThere were six major officers of the kingdom of Jerusalem: the constable, the marshal, the seneschal, the chamberlain , the butler and the chancellor...
. Each law, according to Philip, was written on one page, beginning with a large initial illuminated in gold, and with a
rubricA rubric is a word or section of text which is written or printed in red ink to highlight it. The term derives from the , meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th century or earlier...
written in red ink. Philip claimed to have obtained his information from an old knight and jurist named
Ralph of TiberiasRalph of Tiberias was briefly Prince of Galilee and twice Seneschal of Jerusalem in the Crusader states in Palestine.He was exiled after an assassination attempt on Amalric II of Jerusalem...
, and John in turn probably got his information from Philip. Whether or not these legends were true (Edbury, for one, believes they were not), the 13th century jurists envisioned the legal structure of the kingdom to have existed continuously from the original conquest.
Texts
The surviving collections of laws are:
- The Livre au Roi. This is the earliest surviving text, dating from approximately 1200. It was written for Amalric II of Jerusalem
Amalric II of Jerusalem or Amalric I of Cyprus, born Amalric of Lusignan , King of Jerusalem 1197–1205, was an older brother of Guy of Lusignan....
(the "Roi" of the title) and has a decidedly royalist slant. It is the only text preserving the établissement of King Baldwin IIBaldwin II of Jerusalem, formerly Baldwin II of Edessa, also called Baldwin of Bourcq, born Baldwin of Rethel was the second count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and the third king of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death....
, which allowed the king to disinherit his vassalA vassal in the terminology that both preceded and accompanied the feudalism of medieval Europe, is one who enters into mutual obligations with a monarch, usually of military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain guarantees, which came to include the terrain held as a fief. By...
s, bypassing the normal judgement of the Haute CourThe Haute Cour was the feudal council of the kingdom of Jerusalem. It was sometimes also called the curia generalis, the curia regis, or, rarely, the parlement.-Composition of the court:...
. Otherwise its contents are very similar to the other authors.
- Philip of Novara
Philip of Novara was a medieval warrior, musician, diplomat, poet, and lawyer born at Novara, Italy, into a noble house, who spent his entire adult life in the Middle East. He primarily served the Ibelin family, and featured in a number of prominent battles and negotiations involving Jerusalem and...
. Philip's treatise, written from a more aristocraticAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
viewpoint, was written in the 1250s. He also wrote a history of the conflict between the IbelinIbelin was a castle in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century , which gave its name to an important family of nobles.-The castle:...
s (his patrons) and the HohenstaufenThe House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufen also became Kings of Sicily...
s on CyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey and west of Syria and Lebanon....
and in Acre.
- John of Ibelin
John of Ibelin , count of Jaffa and Ascalon, was a noted jurist and the author of the longest legal treatise from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was the son of Philip of Ibelin, bailli of the Kingdom of Cyprus, and Alice of Montbéliard, and was the nephew of John of Ibelin, the "Old Lord of Beirut"...
. John, count of Jaffa and Ascalon and regent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Acre, was a participant in the struggle that Philip recorded elsewhere. From 1264 to 1266 he wrote the longest legal treatise from the Latin East, and indeed from anywhere in medieval Europe.
- Geoffrey La Tor or Geoffrey le Tort, and James of Ibelin, John's son, independently wrote very small treatises, much less important than the larger works of Philip and John.
- The Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois. This is a lengthy work detailing the assizes the lower court of the kingdom, the burgess court, established for the non-noble class. Their author is anonymous, but they were also written in the mid-13th century. According to Joshua Prawer
Joshua Prawer was a notable Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem.His work often attempted to portray Crusader society as a forerunner to later European colonialist expansion...
they derive from Lo Codi, a ProvencalProvence is a region of southeastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
law code itself based on Roman lawThe term Roman law denotes the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the seventh century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the official lingua franca. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence —...
.
Also important on its own, although found in the
Livre au Roi, Philip, and John, is the
Assise sur la ligeceThe Assise sur la ligece is an important piece of legislation passed by the Haute Cour of Jerusalem, the feudal court of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, in an unknown year, but probably in the 1170s under Amalric I of Jerusalem.The Assise formally prohibited the illegal confiscation of fiefs...
, a law promulgated by
Amalric I of JerusalemAmalric I of Jerusalem was King of Jerusalem 1162–1174, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. Amalric was the second son of Melisende of Jerusalem and Fulk of Jerusalem...
in the 1170s, which effectively made every lord in the kingdom a direct vassal of the king and gave equal voting rights to
rear-vassalsA vavasour, is a term in Feudal law. A vavasour was the vassal or tenant of a baron, one who held their tenancy under a baron, and who also had tenants under him...
as much as the greater barons.
Modern editions
All of these works were edited in the mid- to late-19th century by Auguste Arthur, comte de Beugnot, and published in the
Recueil des Historiens des CroisadesThe Recueil des Historiens des Croisades is a major collection of several thousand medieval documents written during the Crusades. The documents were collected and published in Paris in the late 19th century, and include documents in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Old French, and Armenian...
by the
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-LettresThe Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:The Académie originated as a small council of humanists,...
, in two volumes designated "
Lois." Also included in the RHC are the 13th- and 14th-century ordinances of the
Kingdom of CyprusThe Kingdom of Cyprus was a Crusader kingdom on the island of Cyprus in the high and late Middle Ages, between 1192 and 1489. It was ruled by the French House of Lusignan.-History:...
; a document concerning succession and regency, written by (or attributed to)
John of BrienneJohn of Brienne was a French nobleman who became John I King of Jerusalem by marriage, and was later invited to become John I Latin Emperor of Constantinople....
, king of Jerusalem; and a document concerning military service, written by (or attributed to)
Hugh III of CyprusHugh III of Cyprus , born Hughues de Poitiers, later Hughues de Lusignan , called the Great, was the King of Cyprus from 1267 and King of Jerusalem from 1268 . He was the son of Henry of Antioch and Isabella of Cyprus, the daughter of Hugh I...
. There are also a number of
charterA charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...
s, although a far more complete collection of charters was collected in the late 19th and early 20th century by
Reinhold RöhrichtGustav Reinhold Röhricht was a German historian of the crusades.-Biography:He was born in Bunzlau in Silesia , the third son of a miller. He studied at the Gymnasium in Sagan from 1852 to 1862, and then attended the Berlin Theological School, where he obtained his licentiate in 1866...
.
In the judgement of all later editors, from Maurice Grandclaude in the early 20th century to Edbury today, Beugnot was a very poor editor; fortunately, some, but not all, of these works have been edited separately. A French critical edition of the
Livre au Roi was published by Myriam Greilshammer in 1995, and in 2003 Edbury published a critical edition of John of Ibelin's text. No new edition of the Old French assizes of the burgess court has been published since Beugnot's publication in 1843, but in the 15th century they were translated into
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
, and from the Greek manuscripts an English translation has recently been made by Nicholas Coureas.
Modern historians generally recognize the dangers in attributing 13th-century laws to the 12th-century kingdom, although earlier it was believed that these assizes represented the purest form of medieval European
feudalismFeudalism is a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders...
. In reality the laws probably reflect the practise of neither the 12th or the 13th century, as they were written from scratch in the 13th and were consciously designed to harken back to the less-troubled days of the 12th century, despite the important legal changes that had occurred in the meantime (
trial by ordeal Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful task. In some cases, the accused was considered innocent if they survived the test, or if their injuries healed; in others, only death was considered proof of innocence...
, for example, was outlawed in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215).
As mentioned above, it is somewhat misleading to call all of these texts the "Assizes of Jerusalem" as if they were written together at the same time; they often contradict one another or omit information that another text has. Together, however, they are the largest collection of laws written in a medieval European state for this period.
Sources and further reading
- M. Le Comte Beugnot
Count Auguste-Arthur Beugnot was a French historian and statesman. He was a son of Jacques-Claude Beugnot...
, ed., Livre de Philippe de Navarre. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Lois, tome premier. Paris: Académie Royal des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1841.
- M. Le Comte Beugnot, ed., Livre des Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Lois, tome deuxième. Paris: Académie Royal des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1843.
- Nicholas Coureas, trans., The Assizes of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2002.
- Peter W. Edbury, ed., Le Livre des Assises of John of Ibelin. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
- Peter W. Edbury, "Law and Custom in the Latin East: Les Letres dou Sepulcre," Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995).
- Peter W. Edbury, "Feudal Obligation in the Latin East," Byzantion 47 (1977).
- Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1997.
- Maurice Grandclaude, "Liste des assises remontant au premier royaume de Jérusalem (1099-1187)," in Mélanges Paul Fournier. Paris: Société d'Histoire du Droit, 1929.
- Myriam Greilsammer, ed., Le Livre au Roi. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1995.
- Joshua Prawer
Joshua Prawer was a notable Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem.His work often attempted to portray Crusader society as a forerunner to later European colonialist expansion...
, Crusader Institutions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
- Reinhold Röhricht
Gustav Reinhold Röhricht was a German historian of the crusades.-Biography:He was born in Bunzlau in Silesia , the third son of a miller. He studied at the Gymnasium in Sagan from 1852 to 1862, and then attended the Berlin Theological School, where he obtained his licentiate in 1866...
, ed., Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (MXCVII-MCCXCI), with Additamentum. New York: 1893-1904.