Assise sur la ligece
The Assise formally prohibited the illegal confiscation of fiefs and required all the king's vassals to ally against any lord who did so.
The king could now legally confiscate a fief if a vassal refused to pay homage to him; this had been done in the past but was technically illegal before this Assise.
During the period of near constant warfare in the early decades of the 12th century, the king of Jerusalem's foremost role was as leader of the feudal host.
As a result, the royal domain of the first five rulers—including much of Judea, Samaria, the coast from Jaffa to Ascalon, the ports of Acre and Tyre, and other scattered castles and territories—was larger than the combined holdings of the nobility.
This meant the rulers of Jerusalem had greater internal power than comparative western monarchs, although they did not have the administrative systems and personnel to govern such a large realm.
Magnates—such as Raynald of Châtillon, Lord of Oultrejordain, and Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee—often acted as autonomous rulers.
Over time, the duty of the vassal to give counsel developed into a privilege and ultimately the legitimacy of the monarch depended on the agreement of the court.
The 1162 the assise sur la ligece theoretically expanded the court's membership to all 600 or more fief-holders, making them all peers.
Joshua Prawer considered the rapid offering of the throne to Conrad of Montferrat in 1190 and then Henry II, Count of Champagne in 1192, demonstrated the weakness of the crown of Jerusalem.
Many barons fled to Cyprus and intermarried with leading new emigres from the Lusignan, Montbéliard, Brienne and Montfort families.
This created a class apart from the remnants of the old nobility with limited understanding of the Latin East including the king-consorts Guy, Conrad, Henry, Aimery, John and the absent Hohenstaufen that followed.
The barons used this to reinterpret the assise sur la ligece, which Almalric I intended to strengthen the crown, to constrain the monarch instead, particularly regarding their right to remove feudal fiefs without trial.
The concomitant loss of the vast majority of rural fiefs led to the barons becoming an urban mercantile class where knowledge of the law was a valuable, well-regarded skill and a career path to higher status.
[8] The barons of Jerusalem in the 13th century have been poorly regarded by both contemporary and modern commentators: their superficial rhetoric disgusted James of Vitry; Riley-Smith writes of their pedantry and the use of spurious legal justification for political action.
[10] The Barons invoked the assise sur la ligece three times in justification of open opposition to arbitrary acts by the king: in 1198, 1229 and 1232.
Three years earlier, he had become king-consort when he married Isabella II and immediately claimed the throne of Jerusalem from her father, the king-regent, John of Brienne.
[12] In 1229, Frederick successfully negotiated the return of Jerusalem, lost in 1187 from Egypt, and went under the imperial crown in the Holy Sepulchre.
European monarchs such as St Louis, Emperor Frederick and King Edward I—contemporary rulers of France, Germany and England respectively—were powerful with bureaucratic machinery for administration, jurisdiction and legislation.
[15] The third invocation of the assise sur la ligece followed the Ibelin's fight for control with an Italian army led by Frederick's viceroy Richard Filangieri in the War of the Lombards.
