The Assizes of Jerusalem are a collection of numerous medieval legal treatises written in Old French containing the law of the crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus. They were compiled in the thirteenth century, and are the largest collection of surviving medieval laws.
As Peter Edbury says: "one group of sources from the Latin East that have long excited the attention of scholars are the legal treatises 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 French, survive in written form only from the 13th century, at least a generation after the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The earliest laws of the Kingdom were promulgated at the Council of Nablus 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 of Novara and John of Ibelin 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 Bouillon, 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 Saladin 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 Jerusalem, and the viscount of Jerusalem. Each law, according to Philip, was written on one page, beginning with a large initial illuminated in gold, and with a rubric written in red ink. Philip claimed to have obtained his information from an old knight and jurist named Ralph of Tiberias, 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.
Some of the treatises are said to represent Western feudal law, as interpreted by baronial jurists to weaken royal power, but later scholarship argues that the works present an idealized legal model rather than proof of an existing feudal structure. [1] [2]
The surviving collections of laws are:
Also important on its own, although found in the Livre au Roi, Philip, and John, is the Assise sur la ligece , a law promulgated by Amalric I 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-vassals as much as the greater barons.
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 Croisades by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, in two volumes designated "Lois." Also included in the RHC are the 13th- and 14th-century ordinances of the Kingdom of Cyprus; a document concerning succession and regency, written by (or attributed to) John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem; and a document concerning military service, written by (or attributed to) Hugh III of Cyprus. There are also a number of charters, although a far more complete collection of charters was collected in the late 19th and early 20th century by Reinhold Röhricht.
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 Greek, 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 feudalism. 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, 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.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Latin Kingdom, was a Crusader state that was established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the siege of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after the siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192.
William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler. As archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from his predecessor, William I, the Englishman, a former prior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who was Archbishop of Tyre from 1127 to 1135. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade, and he spent twenty years studying the liberal arts and canon law in the universities of Europe.
Hugh III, also called Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan and the Great, was the king of Cyprus from 1267 and king of Jerusalem from 1268. Born into the family of the princes of Antioch, he effectively ruled as regent for underage kings Hugh II of Cyprus and Conrad III of Jerusalem for several years. Prevailing over the claims of his cousin Hugh of Brienne, he succeeded both young monarchs upon their deaths and appeared poised to be an effective political and military leader.
The 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.
The House of Ibelin was a noble family in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century. They rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most important families in the kingdom, holding various high offices and with extensive holdings in the Holy Land and Cyprus. The family disappeared after the fall of the Kingdom of Cyprus in the 15th century.
John of Ibelin, called the Old Lord of Beirut, was a powerful crusader noble in the 13th century, one of the best known representatives of the influential Ibelin family. The son of Balian of Ibelin and the dowager queen Maria Comnena, he had close ties with the nobility of both Cyprus and Jerusalem, since he was the half-brother of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem. Before he was 20, he was appointed constable of Jerusalem, and a few years later became lord of Beirut. John rebuilt Beirut after Saladin's conquest, and established the grand Ibelin family palace. He served as regent of Jerusalem on behalf of his niece Maria of Montferrat from 1205 to 1210 after her mother, Queen Isabella, died. He was also regent for Isabella's grandson Henry I of Cyprus from 1228 until Henry came of age in 1232. John was known as a principled man, and was seen as the natural leader of the Christian barons in the Holy Land. He resisted the power-seeking of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in Cyprus, and opposed the imperial forces until King Henry came of age.
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". To distinguish him from his uncle and other members of the Ibelin family named John, he is sometimes called John of Jaffa.
The principality of Galilee was one of the four major seigneuries of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, according to 13th-century commentator John of Ibelin, grandson of Balian. The direct holdings of the principality centred around Tiberias, in Galilee proper, but with all its vassals, the lordship covered all Galilee and southern Phoenicia. The independent Lordship of Sidon was located between Galilee's holdings. The principality also had its own vassals: the Lordships of Beirut, Nazareth, and Haifa.
The 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.
Ernoul was a squire of Balian of Ibelin who wrote an eyewitness account of the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. This was later incorporated into an Old French history of Crusader Palestine now known as the Chronicle of Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer, often abbreviated Ernoul-Bernard. The chronicle covers the years from 1100 until 1228. A few manuscripts copied for Bernard, treasurer of Corbie Abbey, extend the narrative down to 1232.
Philip of Novara was a medieval historian, 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 Cyprus. He chronicled the War of the Lombards, the dispute between the Ibelin family and Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.
Guy of Ibelin, of the Ibelin family, was count of Jaffa and Ascalon during the latter part of the Crusades. He was the son of John of Ibelin and Maria of Barbaron. He was count in name only. His father, John of Jaffa, had died in 1266, after which the fragile truce with the Muslims collapsed, and Jaffa was captured by Baibars in 1268. John was probably succeeded by Guy's older brother James, who held the title of Count of Jaffa until his death in 1276, at which point the title passed to Guy.
The 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 19th century, and include documents in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Old French, and Armenian. The documents cover the entire period of the Crusades, and are frequently cited in scholarly works, as a way of locating a specific document. When being quoted in citations, the collection is often abbreviated as RHC or R.H.C..
Sempad the Constable was a noble Cilician Armenia. He was an older brother of King Hetoum I. He was an important figure in Cilicia, acting as a diplomat, judge, and military officer, holding the title of Constable or Sparapet, supreme commander of the Armenian armed forces. He was also a writer and translator, especially known for providing translations of various legal codes, and the creation of an important account of Cilician history, called in French the Chronique du Royaume de Petite Armenie. He fought in multiple battles, such as the Battle of Mari, and was trusted by his brother King Hetoum to be a key negotiator with the Mongol Empire.
Isabella of Ibelin (1252–1282) was lady of Beirut from 1264 until her death in 1282, and also held the title of Queen of Cyprus. She was the daughter of John II of Beirut, lord of Beirut, and of Alice de la Roche sur Ognon.
Isabella of Ibelin (1241–1324) was queen of Cyprus and Jerusalem by marriage to Hugh III of Cyprus.
The Lignages d'Outremer describe the pedigrees of the most important Crusader families.
John Aleman was the Lord of Caesarea in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, exercising this right through his wife, Margaret, from at least 1243 until his death. John was active politically and militarily, although less influential than the previous lords of Caesarea had been.
Baldwin of Ibelin was a nobleman of the Kingdom of Cyprus. A member of the House of Ibelin, he was a son of Guy, constable of Cyprus, and a brother of Queen Isabella. He was thus the maternal uncle of King Henry II of Cyprus, whom he served as constable of Cyprus.
James of Ibelin was count of Jaffa and, titularly, of Ascalon too as well as a noted jurist in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
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