As Peter Edbury says, "one group of sources from the Latin East that have long excited the attention of scholars are the legal treaties 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 Courts of Assize, or Assizes, were periodic criminal courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the Quarter Sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. ... French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... (12th century - 13th century - 14th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. ... The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a short-lived country established in the 12th century by the First Crusade. ...

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 (the "Roi" of the title) and has a decidedly royalist slant. It is the only text preserving the établissement of King Baldwin II, which allowed the king to disinherit his vassals, bypassing the normal judgement of the Haute Cour. Otherwise its contents are very similar to the other authors.
• Philip of Novara. Philip's treatise, written from a more aristocratic viewpoint, was written in the 1250s. He also wrote a history of the conflict between the Ibelins (his patrons) and the Hohenstaufens on Cyprus and in Acre.
• John of Ibelin. 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.

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. Amalric II, king of Jerusalem from 1197 to 1205, was the brother of Guy of Lusignan. ... Baldwin of Bourcq was the cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne. ... A vassal, in European medieval feudalism terminology, is one who through a commendation ceremony (composed of homage and fealty) enters into mutual obligations with a lord, usually military conscription and mutual protection, in exchange for a fief. ... The Haute Cour (High Court) was the feudal council of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. ... Aristocracy is a form of government in which rulership is in the hands of an upper class known as aristocrats. ... Centuries: 12th century - 13th century - 14th century Decades: 1200s 1210s 1220s 1230s 1240s - 1250s - 1260s 1270s 1280s 1290s 1300s Years: 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 Events and Trends The great mathematician Fibonacci dies Categories: 1250s ... Ibelin was a castle in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century, the namesake of an important family of nobles. ... Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of Kings of Germany, many of whom were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor and Dukes of Swabia. ... Cyprus (in Greek Kypros Κύπρος and in Turkish Kıbrıs) is an island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, 113 kilometres (70 miles) south of Turkey and around 120 km west of the Syrian coast. ... Akko (Hebrew עכו; Arabic عكّا ʿAkkā; also, Acre, Accho, Acco, and St. ... The Crusader state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, created in 1099, was divided into a number of smaller seigneuries. ... Events May 12 - The Battle of Lewes begins (ends May 14). ... Events February 26 - French defeat Germans and Sicilians at Battle of Benevento. ... Amalric I (also Amaury or Aimery) (1136-1174) was king of Jerusalem from 1162 to 1174. ... Centuries: 11th century - 12th century - 13th century Decades: 1120s 1130s 1140s 1150s 1160s - 1170s - 1180s 1190s 1200s 1210s 1220s Years: 1170 1171 1172 1173 1174 1175 1176 1177 1178 1179 Events and Trends 1170 - Thomas à Becket assassinated 1171 - Saladin abolishes the Fatimid caliphate, restoring Sunni rule in Egypt. ... A vavasour, (also vavasor, Old French vavassor, vavassour, French vavasseur, LL. vavassor, probably from vassus vassorum vassal of the vassals) is a term in Feudal law. ...

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 Bouillon, who set himself up as judge of the high court. The laws of both were written down from the very beginning in 1099, and were simply lost when Jerusalem was captured by Saladin in 1187. The 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 could be opened only 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. (11th century - 12th century - 13th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. ... Events Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade: July 8 - 15,000 starving Christian soldiers march around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders mock them. ... Godfrey of Bouillon (c. ... Saladin, king of Egypt from a 15th century illuminated manuscript; the orb in his left hand is a European symbol of kingly power. ... Events May 1 - Battle of Cresson - Saladin defeats the crusaders July 4 - Saladin defeats Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, at the Battle of Hattin. ... Old French is a term sometimes used to refer to the langue doïl, the continuum of varieties of Romance language spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland during the period roughly from 1000 to 1300 A.D... The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is one of the Roman Catholic patriarchs of the east. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem is the oldest of Eastern Catholic Patriarchates, and the only one that still follows the Latin Rite. ... There were six major officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem: constable, marshal, seneschal, chamberlain, butler, and chancellor. ... An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript, often of a religious nature, in which the text is supplemented by the addition of colourful ornamentation, such as decorated initials, borders and the like. ...

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 Rienhold Röhricht. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society founded in 1663 and concerned with the humanities. ... (13th century - 14th century - 15th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 14th century was that century which lasted from 1301 to 1400. ... Lusignan castle of Kantara in the Beşparmak mountains The Kingdom of Cyprus was a Roman Catholic Crusader kingdom on the island of Cyprus in the late Middle Ages. ... John of Brienne (c. ... This is a list of Kings of Jerusalem, from 1099 to 1291, as well as claimants to the title up to the present day. ... Hugh I of Jerusalem (Hugh III of Cyprus) (died 1284), was the son of Isabella of Cyprus (daughter of Hugh I of Cyprus) and Henry of Antioch. ... Alternate use, see charter airline or bare-boat charter. ...

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. The assizes of the burgess court have not yet been published in the original Old French, 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. (14th century - 15th century - 16th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500. ... The Greek language (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA – Hellenic) is an Indo-European language with a documented history of some 3,000 years. ...

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 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). The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ... Trial by ordeal is a quasi-judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful task. ... The Fourth Council of the Lateran was summoned by Pope Innocent III with his Bull of April 19, 1213. ... Events June 15 - King John of England forced to put his seal to Magna Carta, outlining the rights of landowning men (nobles and knights) and restricts the kings power. ...

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, 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 Greilshammer, ed., Le Livre au Roi. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1995.
• Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
• Reinhold Röhricht, ed., Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (MXCVII-MCCXCI), with Additamentum. New York: 1893-1904.