The Feudal Nobility and The Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 PDF
Preview The Feudal Nobility and The Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277
THE FEUDAL NOBILITY AND THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM, 1174-1277 By the same a11thor The Knights of StJohn in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 105o-I3IO THE FEUDAL NOBILITY AND THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM, 1174-1277 JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH 'Clad like women in soft robes • • • they have learned .ro to qualify what they .ray with well-ordered words, like barren willow-trees covered and bedecked with beautiful leaves but with no fruit, that those who do not by experience fully k11ow them can scarcely see through the dissimulation in their hearts and in their speech and avoid being deceived by them.' }AMES OF VITRY, BISHOP OF ACRE, 1216-1228 palgrave a 'Tltllan * © jonathan Riley-Smith 1974 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1974 978-0-333-06379-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-0616-8 ISBN 978-1-349-15498-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15498-2 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-11359 Transferred to digital printing 2002 For Afy Wife CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Maps page viii Preface ix I Lords and Lordships I I Feudalism in Palestine ; z Lords, Lordships and Vavasours 2.1 ; The Domain in the Countryside 40 4 The Domain in the Towns 62. II Constitutional Conflict 99 5 The Fathers of the Baronial Movement I01 6 A School of Feudal Jurists I2.1 7 The Assise sur la Ligece 145 8 The Bailliage I85 Conclusion List of Abbreviations 2. 3 I Notes z;z Appendixes ; 10 A Chronological Table 310 B Genealogical Tree - The Royal House of Jerusalem 3 I 5 C Genealogical Tree - The Ibelins and the Lords of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 31 6 D The Regents of Jerusalem, 1174-12.77 ;t8 E Lieutenants in the Kingdom, II74-12.77 319 Bibliography 32.2. Index 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Arsur facing page s 2. Photographer Richard Clea11e Caesarea 66 Photographer Richard Cleave The Seal of 1o hn II, Lord of Beirut 2.16 Archivio di S tato, Venice MAPS I The Near East page 5 I II The Kingdom of 1e rusalem 169 PREFACE THIs book is far from being a comprehensive history of the Latin I<ingdom of Jerusalem. I wrote it because I wanted to investigate the constitutional ideas of certain learned and politically active Palestinian lords in the thirteenth century and to find out how they tried to put their theories into practice. But by limiting myself in one way I have been able to extend myself in another, because in order to understand my subject I have had to look closely at the feudatories themselves and the way they ran their estates and so I have been led step by step into a study of aspects of government and society in Latin Palestine. There is little direct evidence for the legislation of the Kings of Jerusalem before II87, but there survive seven law-books written in Palestine and Cyprus in the course of the thirteenth century.1 Five of these, composed by members of the knightly class after 2 5o, described with remarkable consistency a feudal system that I seemed to have ossified since its introduction in the late eleventh century at the time of the First Crusade. The milieu responsible for such a prolific output of legal treatises has its own interest, but the work of scholars in the last fifty years has given the law-books an even greater importance than was first supposed. The historians who took them at their face-value imagined the Kingdom of Jerusalem to have been an extraordinary example of pure feudal ism in action, a state which throughout the two centuries of its existence continued to be run on archaic principles,2 but in the 1920s a revolution in attitudes was made possible by the work of M. Grandclaude, who identified those laws referred to in the treatises that could definite! y be attributed to the period between 1099 and 1187.3 Since the Second World War a group of historians led by Professors Jean Richard and Joshua Prawer have worked on the foundations laid by Grandclaude and have shown that, far from being the faineant rulers of a static feudal state, the Kings of Jerusalem before I I 87 were vigorous and aggressive, governing a kingdom the institutions of which were developing and changing like any other. 4 It is possible to wonder whether the pendulum has now swung too far in another direction and suggest that the twelfth-century monarchy was never as strong as it is some times said to have been, but one must also recognise that the Preface X picture drawn of it in the thirteenth-century law-books was a caricature. It is in the nature of historical discoveries that they pose new problems. If before u87 the crown was comparatively strong, how was it possible for it to be described seventy years later as being weak? And if part of the answer is that the jurists were theorists as much as observers, what were the political ideas that conditioned their approach to the constitution? It is obvious that answers to these questions can only be found in a study of the vassals in the kingdom, for the jurists were themselves lords or the dependants of lords. One of the leading historians of Latin Syria has seen the weakening of the monarchy, already apparent before II87, as in some way linked to the growing power of the nobility: in the early years, he has argued, chronic warfare and continual waves of migration resulted in lordships quickly changing hands; stability and with it the growth of privilege came only after I I 30 - with this, it will be seen, I disagree - and at the same time royal lands, always more extensive than those of the vassals, were reduced by the creation of new lordships.5 But neither he nor his colleagues have studied in depth the crucial period between I I70 and I z.6o: they have only turned to the thirteenth century to examine particular problems 6 or in the large-scale narrative his tories to describe the general course of events. 7 It was the absence of any satisfactory description of the political ideas of the jurists or the constitutional crises in which they were involved that led me to this work. I could never claim that I have here dealt with all the facets of my subject, but I have tried to con sider it in the context of economics and government in Latin Palestine, having some regard for the institutions which gave Palestinian society its own particular features. In many cases the mechanics of administration can be described and the legal status of individuals defined; and this approach is necessary not only because it is impossible to discuss a matter like the wealth of the lords without some knowledge of the means by which they raised revenues, but also, I believe, because it helps one to comprehend their motives and ideals. When making any decision, I myself will take into account certain assumptions that are based on my know ledge of my environment: that trains run on time, that I am un likely to be robbed in the streets, that I can rely on the telephone or electricity or stable government at a national and local level,
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