Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/578

 556 APPENDIX rescue a possession so valuable and portable as their Code. The Patriarch could not have overlooked it when he carried forth the treasures of the churches (as Ibn al-AthIr mentions). And, if it were unaccountabh- forgotten, we should have to suppose that Saladin caused it to be destro3-ed afterwards when it was found. And had he done so, it is highly unlikelj' that the &■^'!t would not have been men- tioned by some of the Frank chroniclers. The conclusion is that the kings of Jerusalem in the twelfth century did not give decisions according to a code drawn up at the time of the foundation of the kingdom, but tliemsclves helped to build up a structure of Customary Law, which in the follo'.ving century was collected and compiled in the book of the Assises b}' John Ibelin, a.d. l2bo. This book of Ibelin has not come down to us in its original form. There were two redactions : (1) at Nicosia in Cyprus in 1308 under the direction of an assembly of C3'priote lords, and (2) in the same place in 1531, by a commission appointed by the Venetian government. Both these rehandlings introduced a number of corrections into the Assise dc la haute cour. The Assises dr la cour des bourgeois stand on a different footing. This work seems to have existed perhaps from the end of the twelfth ceutur}'. It was not supposed to have been destroj'ed in 1187 ; it was not, so far as we know, edited b- Ibelin ; nor was it revised at Nicosia in 1308. (Cp. Dodu, p. 54, 55.) The study of the Assises of .Jerusalem may now be supplemented by the Assises of Antioch, ])reserved in an Armenian version, which has been translated into French (puldished by the Mekhitarist Society, Venice, 1870). How far is the policy of Godfrey of Bouillon represented in the Assises ? In answer to this question, the observations of Bishop Stubbs may be quoted : — i "We trace his hand in the prescribing constant military service (not definite or merely for a certain period of each year), in the non-recognition of representa- tion in inheritance, in the rules designed to prevent the accumulation of fiefs in a single hand, in the stringent regulations for the marriages of ^vidows and heiresses. Tliese features all belonged to an earlier age, to a time when everv knight represented a knight's fee, and when no fee could be suffered to neglect its <lutj' ; when the maintenance of the conquered country was deemed more important than the inheritances of minors or the will of widows and heiresses. That these provisions were wise is proved by the fact that it was in these very points that the hazard of the Frank kingdom lay. . . . Other portions of the Assizes are to be ascribed to the necessities of the state of things that followed the recovery of Palestine b- the Saracens ; such, for instance, as the decision how far deforcement by the Turks defeats seisin ; and were of importance only in the event of a reconquest." 17. THE ACCIAJOLI— (P. 485) If Gibbon had been more fully acquainted with the history of the family of the Acciajoli, he would have probably devoted some pages to the rise of their fortunes. They rose to such power and influence in Greece in the 14th century that the sub- joined account, taken from Finlay (vol. iv. p. 157 sqq.) — with a few additions in square brackets — will not be out of place. " Several members of the family of Acciajoli, which formed a distinguished commercial company at Florence in the thirteenth century, settled in the Pelo- ponnesus about the middle of the fourteentli, under the protection of Robert, king of Naples. Nicliolas Acciajoli was invested, in the year 334, with the ad- ministration of tlie lands which the compam* had acquired in payment or in security of the loans it had made to the royal House of Anjou ; and he ac(iuired additional ])ossessions in the principality of Achaia, both by purchase and grant, from Cat'.ierine of Valois, titular empress of Romanin and regent of Achaia for her son jirincc Ixobert. [It is disputed whether lie was her lover.] The en- croachments of the mercantile spirit on the feudal system are displayed in the 1 Itinerarium Regis Ricardi (Rolls series), Introduclion, p. xc, xci.