 The Near East in 1135. Muslim states are in greens, other colours indicate Christian states. | |
| Signed | 1123 |
|---|---|
| Negotiators | |
The Pactum Warmundi was a treaty of alliance established in 1123 between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Republic of Venice.
In 1123, King Baldwin II was taken prisoner by the Artuqids, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was subsequently invaded by the Fatimids of Egypt. The Doge of Venice, Domenico Michele, set sail with a large fleet, which defeated the Egyptian fleet off the coast of Syria and captured many ships. The Venetians then landed at Acre; the Doge completed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he celebrated Christmas, and met with Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Constable William Buris, governing Jerusalem in place of Baldwin II. It was agreed that the Venetian fleet would help the crusaders attack either Tyre or Ascalon, the only two cities on the coast still under Muslim control; the barons from the south of the Kingdom wanted to attack Ascalon, while those in the north preferred to direct the fleet against Tyre, which was larger and wealthier and a valuable port for enemy Damascus further inland. According to William of Tyre, "The matter came near resulting in a dangerous quarrel." Tyre was chosen by lot.
A treaty of alliance was established between Jerusalem and the Venetians prior to the beginning of the siege of Tyre in February 1124 (the city capitulated to the crusaders later that year). The treaty was negotiated by Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and thus it is known as the Pactum Warmundi (Warmundus being the Latin form of his name). Earlier treaties had been negotiated between Jerusalem and the Venetians and other Italian city-states, and the Venetians themselves had been granted privileges in 1100 and 1110 in return for military assistance, but this treaty was far more extensive. The Pactum granted the Venetians their own church, street, square, baths, market, scales, mill, and oven in every city controlled by the King of Jerusalem, except in Jerusalem itself, where their autonomy was more limited. In the other cities, they were permitted to use their own Venetian scales to conduct business and trade when trading with other Venetians, but otherwise they were to use the scales and prices established by the King. In Acre, they were granted a quarter of the city, where every Venetian "may be as free as in Venice itself." In Tyre and Ascalon (though neither had yet been captured), they were granted one-third of the city and one-third of the surrounding countryside, possibly as many as 21 villages in the case of Tyre. These privileges were entirely free from taxation, but Venetian ships would be taxed if they were carrying pilgrims, and in this case the King would personally be entitled to one-third of the tax. For their help in the siege of Tyre, the Venetians were entitled to 300 "Saracen besants" per year from the revenue of that city. They were permitted to use their own laws in civil suits between Venetians or in cases in which a Venetian was the defendant, but if a Venetian was the plaintiff the matter would be decided in the courts of the Kingdom. If a Venetian was shipwrecked or died in the kingdom, his property would be sent back to Venice rather than being confiscated by the King. Anyone living in the Venetian quarter in Acre or the Venetian districts in other cities would be subject to Venetian law.
The Pactum was signed by Patriarch Warmund; Ehremar, Archbishop of Caesarea; Bernard, Bishop of Nazareth; Aschetinus, Bishop of Bethlehem; Roger, Bishop of Lydda; Guildin, abbot of St. Mary of Josaphat; Gerard, prior of the Holy Sepulchre; Aicard, prior of the Templum Domini; Arnold, Prior of Mount Sion; William Buris; and the chancellor, Pagan. Aside from William and Pagan, no secular authorities witnessed the treaty, perhaps indicating that the Venetians considered Jerusalem a papal fief.
Baldwin II ratified the Pactum upon his release from captivity in 1125, although he refused to recognize the Venetian communes as fully autonomous entities within the Kingdom; he asserted his feudal rights by asking for the service of three Venetian knights. The treaty seems to have been in force up to the fall of the kingdom in 1291, and the Venetian communes in Acre and Tyre were particularly powerful and influential in the 13th century after the kingdom lost Jerusalem and was reduced to a coastal state. They resisted Emperor Frederick II's attempts to claim the Kingdom, and virtually ignored the authority of the Lord of Tyre. Instead, they conducted their affairs as if they controlled their own independent lordship — which, essentially, they did, thanks to the terms of the Pactum.
Other Italian and Provençal city-states demanded and were granted similar commercial treaties by the King of Jerusalem throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, notably the Genoese and Pisans. The communes established by these treaties were in a sense an early form of European colonialism, and were an important step in the commercial development of the Italian city-states that culminated in the Italian Renaissance in the following centuries.
The text of the treaty is preserved in the chronicle of William of Tyre, who must have taken it from a surviving copy in Tyre; Fulcher of Chartres, a contemporary, barely mentions the treaty at all. The text was also published in Urkunden zur ältern Handels und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig by G.L.F. Tafel and G.M. Thomas in 1856.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Crusader Kingdom, was one of the Crusader states 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 fall 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.
Year 1123 (MCXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
Baldwin II, also known as Baldwin of Bourcq, was Count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and King of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death. He accompanied Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne to the Holy Land during the First Crusade. He succeeded Baldwin of Boulogne as the second count of Edessa when he left the county for Jerusalem following his brother's death. He was captured at the Battle of Harran in 1104. He was held first by Sökmen of Mardin, then by Jikirmish of Mosul, and finally by Jawali Saqawa. During his captivity, Tancred, the ruler of the Principality of Antioch, and Tancred's cousin, Richard of Salerno, governed Edessa as Baldwin's regents.
The Crusader states, or Outremer, were four Catholic polities that existed in the Levant from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism, the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Muslim conquest. Situated on the Eastern Mediterranean, the four states were, in order from north to south: the County of Edessa (1098–1150), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291).
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the Crusader states that was created in 1099, was divided into a number of smaller seigneuries. According to the 13th-century jurist John of Ibelin, the four highest crown vassals in the kingdom proper were the count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the prince of Galilee, the lord of Sidon, and the lord of Oultrejordain.
The siege of Ascalon took place from 25 January to 22 August 1153, in the time period between the Second and Third Crusades, and resulted in the capture of the Fatimid Egyptian fortress by the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Ascalon was an important castle that was used by the Fatimids to launch raids into the Crusader kingdom's territory, and by 1153 it was the last coastal city in Palestine that was not controlled by the Crusaders.
The Council of Nablus was a council of ecclesiastic and secular lords in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, held on January 16, 1120.
The War of Saint Sabas (1256–1270) was a conflict between the rival Italian maritime republics of Genoa and Venice over control of Acre, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Warmund, also Garmond, Gormond, Germond, Guarmond or Waremond, was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death at Sidon in 1128.
William of Bures was Prince of Galilee from 1119 or 1120 to his death. He was descended from a French noble family which held estates near Paris. William and his brother, Godfrey, were listed among the chief vassals of Joscelin of Courtenay, Prince of Galilee, when their presence in the Holy Land was first recorded in 1115. After Joscelin received the County of Edessa from Baldwin II of Jerusalem in 1119, the king granted the Principality of Galilee to William. He succeeded Eustace Grenier as constable and bailiff in 1123. In his latter capacity, he administered the kingdom during the Baldwin II's captivity for more than a year, but his authority was limited.
Domenico Michiel was the 35th Doge of Venice from 1116 or 1117 to his resignation in late 1129 or early 1130.
The siege of Sidon was an event in the aftermath of the First Crusade. The coastal city of Sidon was captured by the forces of Baldwin I of Jerusalem and Sigurd I of Norway, with assistance from the Ordelafo Faliero, Doge of Venice.
Ehremar or Ebramar or Evremar was Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1102 to 1105 or 1107, and then Archbishop of Caesarea.
The Venetian Crusade of 1122–1124 was an expedition to the Holy Land launched by the Republic of Venice that succeeded in capturing Tyre. It was an important victory at the start of a period when the Kingdom of Jerusalem would expand to its greatest extent under Baldwin II of Jerusalem. The Venetians gained valuable trading concessions in Tyre. Through raids on Byzantine territory both on the way to the Holy Land and on the return journey, the Venetians forced the Byzantines to confirm, as well as extend, their trading privileges with the empire.
The Lordship of Tyre was a semi-independent domain in the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1246 to 1291.
The timeline of the Kingdom of Jerusalem presents important events in the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—a Crusader state in modern-day Israel and Jordan—in chronological order. The kingdom was established after the First Crusade in 1099. Its first ruler Godfrey of Bouillon did not take the title of king and swore fealty to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Daimbert. Godfrey's brother and successor Baldwin I was crowned the first king of Jerusalem without doing homage to the patriarch in 1100. By 1153, Baldwin I and his successors captured all towns on the Palestinian coast with the support of Pisan, Genoese and Venetian fleets and also took control of the caravan routes between Egypt and Syria. The kings regularly administered other crusader states—the Counties of Edessa and Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch—on behalf of their absent or underage rulers.
Pagan was the first chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from around 1115. He was made archbishop of Caesarea before September 1129.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tyre was an archbishopric in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
William I was the second Latin archbishop of Tyre from 1128 until 1134 or 1135. He was originally from England and served as prior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before his appointment as archbishop.
Aschetinus or Anschetin was the first Roman Catholic bishop of Bethlehem in the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1108 until his death.
