The Assise Sur La Ligece

Abstract

It is easy for the historian of medieval government to over-simplify the ideas men had of monarchy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One can read into the institution of kingship political theories that were present, if at all, in embryonic forms, giving more significance than is their due to signs of an elective or hereditary monarchy and to the limitations upon as well as the rights of kings. Kingship in the High Middle Ages was an amalgam of elements that had never been separately analysed because the theoretical foundations upon which it was based were only just coming to be considered. It was at the same time hereditary and elective or nominative — that is to say that kings succeeded one another because they were related, but also because of the choice of their subjects or nomination by their predecessors. The monarchs were heirs to the public rights of the Roman principate or Germanic theocracy, but they were also bound by feudal contract and by custom. The historian must also recognise that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a state in some ways unlike those with which he is familiar.