ASSISES DE JERUSALEM OU RECEUIL DES OUVRAGES DE JURISPRUDENCE COMPOSES PENDANT LE XIII SIECLE DANS LES ROYAUMES DE JERUSALEM ET DE CHYPRE. PARIS 1841-1843 FIRST EDITION, ROYAL FOLIO, complete in two volumes, contemporary burgundy leather over boards, a very nice binding, spine slightly faded, text clean and bright, 88p., 655p.,74p., 579p., overall a fine set. A LANDMARK WORK FOR CYPRUS. Edited by Auguste-Arthur Beugnot and published in Paris it remains the definitive edition of the laws of the Crusader Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus. The Assises de Jérusalem is a collection of legal treatises written in the 13th century. The work is divided into the laws for the High Court (Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois), dealing with the nobility and the King, and the Burgess Court, dealing with the commoners and merchants. Legend states the original laws were written by Godfrey of Bouillon and kept in a chest in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. While the originals were lost when Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187, the text was reconstructed by the great jurists of Cyprus, like Jean d'Ibelin. Most of the texts we possess were written by Jean d Ibelin, a native of Cyprus. Count Beugnot traveled across Europe to compare old French, Italian, and Greek manuscripts to find the most accurate text. He was the first to properly explain how these laws weren't just copied from France but were adapted to include aspects of the existing Byzantine and local Cypriot traditions. It was published by the Imprimerie Royale in Paris, known for its exceptional quality.While the title says Jerusalem, the text was largely preserved, written, and used by the high nobility of Cyprus. The Assises we have today are actually the Cyprus Versions. The texts are the one that were kept in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Nicosia. It served as the "Constitution" of Cyprus for over 250 years.One of the most fascinating parts of the 1841 edition is the section on the Court of the Burgesses (the commoners). In Cyprus, this court had to deal with a unique melting pot: French knights, Italian merchants and the local Greek population. It details how the law handled Greek-rite Christians. It contains specific statutes about how Greeks could testify in court and their legal status under the Catholic Lusignan kings. It contains also "Le Livre au Roi" (The Book of the King), which is a specific set of statutes from the late 12th and early 13th centuries, it outlines the coronation rites used in Nicosia and Famagusta, it describes the king's power to "disinherit" a vassal, which was a major point of conflict between the kings of Cyprus and their powerful knights. Because Cyprus was the trade hub of the Mediterranean, the Assises cover maritime disputes. It includes the rules for shipwrecks and the taxes owed by merchants from Venice and Pisa when they landed in Famagusta and provides a window into the immense wealth that flowed through Cyprus during the 13th and 14th centuries. Beugnot’s notes that when Venice took over Cyprus in 1489, they actually translated these "Assises" into Italian because the laws were so well-regarded that the Venetians continued to use them to govern the island. Les Assises de Jérusalem contains the most ancient Greek Cypriot surviving text, specifically a portion of the Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois (The Laws of the Burgess Court).While the original laws were drafted in Old French, the unique history of Cyprus led to a Middle Greek translation that is a linguistic treasure. To ensure the laws could be administered to the local population, the French legal code was translated into the Cypriot Dialect of the time. The translation is believed to have been completed in the late 13th or early 14th century. It represents the earliest extensive use of the medieval Cypriot vernacular in a formal, legal context. The Greek text in the Assises is a fascinating hybrid. For linguists, this is the most ancient evidence of how the modern Cypriot dialect began to evolve under Western influence. Much of what Beugnot edited in 1841 came from manuscripts found in Venice (specifically the Biblioteca Marciana). Because the Venetians took over Cyprus after the Lusignans, they preserved these Greek translations of the French laws, one specific manuscript, the Codex Marcianus Graecus 602, is often cited as the primary source for this Ancient Cypriot vernacular text. Beugnot was one of the first to bring this Greek version to the attention of the wider scholarly world. The Cypriot of the Assises is the earliest surviving prose text of significant length written in the common Cypriot dialect. The Assises gives us the first recording of how a person in a Cypriot village or market would have actually sounded in the 1300s. Beugnot often notes where the Greek translation differs from the French, providing the specific Cypriot terminology used for crimes, property, and inheritance. A monumental publication for Cyprus