A School of Feudal Jurists

Abstract

The authors of the law-books of the middle of the thirteenth century acknowledged their debt to earlier jurists, but it would be a mistake to assume that all those with legal reputations were baronial sympathisers. Two of them, King Aimery and Bohemond IV of Antioch-Tripoli, were rulers and strong ones at that; another was one of the five imperial baillis of Cyprus; and the great jurists Balian of Sidon and Nicholas Antiaume were at times supporters of the Emperor Frederick II. Practising permanently in the Kingdom of Cyprus, moreover, where the courts applied almost the same laws as those of Jerusalem, were prestigious lawyers like the members of the family of Gibelet, the founder of which, Renier, had been in 1161 a burgess of Caesarea. By the early 1190s he had attached himself to Guy of Lusignan and followed him to Cyprus where he was raised to knighthood; when Aimery of Lusignan succeeded to the lordship of the island he sent him to Apulia to negotiate the grant of a crown from the western emperor. Renier, who died before 1205, was a devoted servant of the Lusignans and to later generations he had a great reputation for his wisdom and his ability in court.¹