Europe's spiritual leader, the Pope, to relieve the Christians of the East in general from Moslem oppression. Its leaders were Robert, Duke of Normandy, Raymond, Count of Toulouse, Robert, Count of Flanders, the Norman Dukes Bohemond and Tancred, Godfrey de Bouillon and his brother Baldwin, afterwards King Baldwin I. of Jerusalem. Antioch was captured by Bohemond in 1098, and Jerusalem on the 15th July, 1099; Damascus, however, together with Homs and Aleppo, was never lost by the Moslems. There is no space here to enter into the extremely picturesque details of Crusading history; it must suffice to chronicle the outstanding facts. In the reign of Baldwin II. the Latin conquests in the East reached their climax and the Kings of Jerusalem, together with their vassals, the Princes of Galilee, the Counts of Ascalon and Joppa, the Lord of Montreal and others, ruled the land in feudal fashion. The organization of the kingdom is well displayed in the famous 'Assizes of Jerusalem,' which laid down the constitution of the country on a strictly feudal basis. The 'Assizes,' which received their final form from the Cypriote jurisconsults of the thirteenth century, embodied "the usages which Godfrey ordered to be maintained and used in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, by the which he and his men, and his people, and all other manner of people going, coming, and dwelling in his kingdom of Jerusalem were to be governed and guarded."[1]
The Assizes included two codes, one for the nobles, the other for the bourgeoisie, which were deposited in a coffer in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and from the place of their custody were called 'Les Lettres du Sepulcre.' The coffer could only be opened for the purposes of consulting or modifying the law, and then only in the presence of nine persons particularly specified, including the King and the Patriarch.
The Second Crusade.—The early Crusaders weakened their strength by repeated and futile attempts to capture Damascus. Here they were opposed by the powerful
- ↑ Assizes of Jerusalem, i., 22.
