A History of the Crusades-Vol 2 (38 page)

It is impossible to give a precise account of
the constitution of the Frankish states because at no moment was there a fixed
constitution. Customs developed or were modified by particular pronouncements.
When later lawyers produced such compilations as the
Livre au Roi
or the
Assises de Jerusalem
, they were attempting to find out where definite
decisions had altered accepted custom rather than to lay down an established
governmental code. There were local variants. The Prince of Antioch and the
Counts of Edessa and Tripoli normally had little trouble from their vassals.
The King of Jerusalem was in a weaker position. He was the Lord’s Anointed, the
accepted head of the Franks in the East, with no rival after Baldwin I had
demolished the pretensions of the Patriarchate. But, while the lords of Antioch
and Tripoli could hand on their power by the accepted rules of hereditary
succession, the kingship was elective. Public feeling might support a hereditary
claim. In 1174 Baldwin IV was accepted without question to succeed his father,
though he was only thirteen years old and a leper. But the confirmation by
election was needed. Sometimes the electors made their terms, as when Amalric I
was obliged to divorce his wife Agnes before they would allow him the crown.
When the natural heir was a woman there were further complications. Her husband
might be elected as King; but it seems that he was regarded as deriving his
rights through her. In the case of Queen Melisende and her son Baldwin III no
one quite knew what was the juridical position; and the whole constitutional
problem was disastrously illustrated after Baldwin V’s death in 1186.

The King was at the apex of the social pyramid,
but it was a low apex. As the Lord’s Anointed he commanded some prestige. It
was high treason to do him an injury. He presided at the High Court, and he was
commander-in-chief of the forces of the realm. He was responsible for the
central administration and he appointed its officials. As his vassals’ suzerain
he could prevent them from alienating their lands, and he could choose husbands
for their heiresses. Having no superior lord to consider, he could make grants
as he pleased from his own domain, though, like his nobles when they alienated
lands, he usually associated his wife and children in the grant, lest there
should be some later complaint over the widow’s dower or the son’s inheritance.
But there the royal power ended. The royal revenues were restricted and were
reduced by over-generous gifts. The King was always short of money. He was at
the head of the kingdom but he was under the law of the kingdom; and the law
was represented by the High Court. The High Court consisted of the
tenants-in-chief of the realm, the lords who owed allegiance direct to the
Crown. Leading ecclesiastics attended in virtue of their landed holdings, and
foreign communities who possessed land in the kingdom, such as the Venetians or
Genoese, sent representatives. Distinguished visitors might be invited to be
present, though they did not form part of the Court and had no vote in it.

The High Court

The High Court was fundamentally a court of
law. As such it had two main functions. First, it had to elucidate what was the
law on particular points. This meant that it passed legislation; for each
assise
was in theory merely a statement of the law, but in fact was also the
definition of a new law. Secondly, it tried those of its members who were
guilty of crime and heard cases that they might bring against each other. Trial
by peers was an essential feature of Frankish custom; and the King ranked with
his tenant-in-chief as
primus inter pares
, their president but not their
master. The theory behind it was that the kingdom had not been conquered by a king
but by a company of peers who then elected their king. This theory justified
the Court in electing subsequent kings and, in the case of a minority or the
King’s captivity, a regent or
bailli.
The High Court was also consulted
on major matters of policy; this was an inevitable development, for without the
co-operation of his vassals the King would seldom have been able to carry out
his policy. In 1166 the High Court was enlarged to include
arriere
-vassals,
as part of Amalric I’s scheme to find support for the Crown against the chief
vassals. In 1162 he had obliged the Court to pass an
assise
allowing
arriere
-vassals
to appeal against their lords to the High Court, and if the lord refused to
answer the summons his tenants could put themselves under the Crown. Though
this law provided the King with a useful weapon against the nobility, in the
long run it merely added to the power of the High Court and could be used
against the King. The Court seems to have heard cases carefully and
conscientiously, though the result of trial by battle was accepted as proof. It
had no fixed seat but could be summoned by the King wherever was convenient.
During the First Kingdom this was usually at Jerusalem or at Acre. The nobles,
in their desire to attend, began to neglect their fiefs and to establish
residences in either city. But their power as a collective body was weakened by
their perpetual quarrels and family feuds, which were intensified and
complicated as time went on and almost all the noble houses were connected by intermarriage.

In accordance with the principle of trial by
peers, non-noble Frankish settlers had their own
cours des bourgeois
.
These Bourgeois Courts were to be found in every large city. Their president
was always the Viscount of the city. There were twelve jurors to each Court,
chosen by the lord from his free-born Latin subjects. They acted as judges,
though a litigant could engage one of them as counsel. In this case the
counsel-juror took no part in the verdict. Jurors were also required to witness
any deed or charter made in court. Unlike the practice in the High Court,
careful records were kept of all proceedings. The Bourgeois Courts met
regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, except on feast-days. A case
between a noble and a bourgeois was held before the Bourgeois Court. The
Bourgeois Court admitted the ordeal by battle and the ordeal by water.

The native communities had at first their own
courts for petty cases, under the presidency of the local headman, appointed by
the Viscount, where their customary law applied. But during King Amalric I’s
reign a
Cour de la Fonde
was instituted in each of the thirty-three
chief market towns. This dealt with commercial questions and took over all
cases, even criminal, that involved the native population. It was under a
bailli
appointed by the local lord and six jurors, two Franks and four natives. Native
litigants took the oath each on his own holy book. Moslems could use the Koran;
and Moslem visitors admired the fairness of the proceedings. The
Cour de la
Fonde
also registered sales and gifts of all property other than real and
was an office for the collection of purchase taxes. There was a right of appeal
to the Bourgeois Court whose general procedure it copied. Amalric also set up a
Cour de la Chaine
in all maritime cities, to cover cases to do with
shipping and to be a registry of customs and anchorage dues. Its jurors were
drawn from merchants and sailors. In addition, the Italian and Provencal
commercial communities had their own consular courts for their internal
affairs. The chief feudatories had their own courts ‘baron’ to deal with
disputes between their knightly vassals. There were twenty-two of them, as well
as four for the King’s domain. Each of these many courts had its clearly
defined sphere; but where a case involved litigants of different rank, it was
heard in the Court appropriate to the inferior.

The
Administration

Owing to the medieval concept of law which
demanded specific laws only when the need arose to define a particular point,
the legislative activity of the government seems arbitrary and fitful. Of the
laws given in the thirteenth-century
Assises de Jerusalem
it is probable
that six date from Duke Godfrey’s time and another nineteen, of which eleven
can be roughly dated, from the period up to 1187.

The administration was in the hands of the
chief officers of the household, who were chosen from the tenants-in-chief of
the kingdom. First in precedence came the Seneschal. He was master of
ceremonies, and as such he carried the sceptre before the King at the
coronation; and he was head of the civil service. In particular he was in
charge of the treasury, the
Secrete
, the office into which moneys due to
the Crown were paid and from which salaries were taken, and which kept a
register of all financial dealings in which the government was involved. The
Secrete
was a loosely organized bureau, which the Franks took over from the Arabs who
in their turn had taken it from the Byzantines. Next after the Seneschal came
the Constable, who was greater in actual power. He was head of the Army, under
the King, and was responsible for all its organization and administration. At
the coronation he carried the King’s banner and held the King’s horse, which
became his perquisite. He was responsible for military supplies and military
justice. Mercenaries, whether hired by the King or by a lord, were under his
special jurisdiction and he saw to it that they were paid properly. If the King
or his
bailli
were absent from a campaign, he had complete control of
the expedition. He was assisted by the Marshal, who was his lieutenant in
everything. The Chamberlain was in charge of the King’s personal household and
finances. On ceremonial occasions he acted as chief Lord-in-Waiting. His was a
profitable office, as vassals paying homage were expected to make a gift to
him. Certain lands were assigned to the office; but in 1179 the Chamberlain
John of Bellesme sold them without apparently causing offence to the King. The
functions of the Butler are unknown. His duties were probably purely
ceremonial. The Chancellor, as in the West, was always an ecclesiastic, though
he was not, as often in the West, the royal chaplain. As head of the chancery,
it was his business to draw up and register all charters and to fix the royal
seal on them. The chancery remained a records office. As there was no royal
justice nor common law, it was never required to issue writs nor set up its own
court. Its records seem to have been well kept, though few have survived. The
language of the chancery in the twelfth century was Latin. The dating was by
the
anno Domini
and the Roman Indiction, with sometimes the regnal year
or the year from the capture of Jerusalem added. The year began at Christmas.
The Kings numbered themselves from Baldwin I, regardless of their names. Their
title did not at first follow a fixed formula but was eventually standardized
as ‘per Dei gratiam in sancta civitate Jerusalem Latinorum Rex’.

The chief local official was the Viscount, who
represented the King in the royal cities and the lord in the baronial cities.
He collected local taxes and transmitted them to the treasury after taking out
what he needed for the expenses of local government. He was responsible for the
local law-courts and for keeping order generally in his city. He was chosen
from a noble family, but his post was not hereditary. His second in command was
known by the Arabic title of
mathesep
, or sometimes the Master-Sergeant,
who had originally been the official responsible for marketing regulations.

The Vassal
States

The King of Jerusalem claimed suzerainty over
all the Frankish states in the East and considered that he was entitled to
demand their rulers to send troops to join him on his expeditions. In fact the
suzerainty existed only when the King was strong enough to enforce it, and even
in theory neither Antioch nor Tripoli was considered to be part of the kingdom.
The earlier kings achieved a personal suzerainty over Tripoli. Count Bertrand paid
homage to Baldwin I for his lands in 1109. Count Pons endeavoured to renounce
his allegiance to Baldwin II in 1122 but was forced to submit by his own High
Court. In 1131 he refused to allow King Fulk to pass through his lands but was
punished by the King and forced again into submission. From 1164 to 1171 King
Amalric was regent of Tripoli for the child Count Raymond III, but this was
probably as the boy’s nearest male relative rather than as his overlord.
Raymond III, when he grew up, never admitted the suzerainty, though he was the
King’s vassal in respect of his wife’s principality of Galilee. During the
campaign of 1187 in which he took part as Prince of Galilee his County of
Tripoli declared itself neutral. With the County of Edessa the Kings had a
personal bond. Baldwin I, when he appointed Baldwin II to succeed him there,
took from him an oath of vassaldom, and Baldwin II followed his example with
Joscelin of Courtenay. But Joscelin in his later days acknowledged the Prince
of Antioch also as his overlord. Antioch was in a different position, Bohemond
I admitted no one as his suzerain; nor did the regents Tancred and Roger, both
of them appointed by the High Court of the Principality. Baldwin II acted as
regent for the young prince Bohemond II from 1119 to 1126, but, it seems, not
by legal right but by invitation of the High Court. He was invited again in
1131, with the additional reason that he was grandfather to the young Princess
Constance, whose interests appeared to the Court to be endangered by her mother
Alice. After his death, when Alice once again tried to seize power, the High
Court invited King Fulk to take over the regency in his place. But here again
the King was the young Princess’s nearest male relative, as the husband of her
aunt. Had there been in the East a male member of the house of Hauteville he
would have been selected. Similarly when the King chose a husband for the
Princess he was acting at the request of the High Court and not as suzerain.
Baldwin II had asked the King of France to select a husband for his heiress
Melisende, without any suggestion that he accepted French suzerainty. When the
time came for Constance to take a second husband she made her own choice as a
sovereign princess. If she asked permission from King Baldwin III it was
because her chosen husband Reynald was his vassal. In 1160 the Antiochenes
invited Baldwin II to take over the regency; but here again the King was their
young Prince’s nearest male relative. The legal position was never clearly
defined. Probably the Prince of Antioch regarded the King of Jerusalem as his
senior but not as his superior.