ntury.

The kingdom of Jerusalem! At the very mention of the name, there seems
to pass over us a breeze from that charmed time when Christendom,
inspired by its faith with heroic zeal, went forth to rescue from insult
and ignominy the tomb of the Redeemer. Who does not feel a kind of
longing after that romantic splendor of the Orient, which impelled the
people of Europe to leave homes and families upon this great enterprise
beyond the sea? Who does not gladly lose himself in contemplating the
traditions of life and deeds, contests and poesy of those chivalrous
times, and dream over again a short portion of that brief but beautiful
dream of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem?

Nor is it merely this feeling of romance which binds us to the law book
of the Crusaders. It has important political and judicial significance.
In the kingdom of Godfrey of Boulogne lived mixed up together, formed
into a kind of variegated checkerwork, people of all lands and languages
of the Occident--French, Italians, Spanish, English, and Germans. The
system of law which united this mixed multitude was indeed the German,
at least in its fundamental and leading forms and features, as this was
before the time when the flourishing of the law school at Bologna had
brought again everywhere into use the Roman law. There is, however, a
perceptible influence of the Roman law in this work, and indeed an
occasional reference to it as an authority. It has, therefore, its
importance to jurists, but its general interest is deeper, disclosing,
as it does, a view of a distant age, and of a land long since covered
with the charm and glory of song.

This manuscript is in the old French tongue, was evidently written by an
Italian hand in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and bears the
title: '_Livres des assises et bons usages dou reaume de Jerusalem._'

'Assize,' primarily means an assembly of several wise men in the court
of a prince for the making of laws; but it comes thence to mean that
which they have determined upon as law, and is so used in the judiciary
of the Christian Orient.

We shall see that the Munich manuscript does not fully make good its
name. It is not in the proper sense a law book, but rather notes in
regard to the judiciary of the kingdom, made by authors of unknown
names. There are internal evidences that the original compilation must
have taken place from 1170 to 1180 of the Christian era, that is, before
the recapture of Jer