e Dei_. All these writers furnished an enlarged vocabulary to
their successors, the most remarkable of whom were the already mentioned
Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier. The latter is especially
noteworthy as a prose writer, and the comments already made on his style
and influence as a poet apply here also. His _Quadriloge Invectif_ and
_Curial_, both satirical or, at least, polemical works, are his chief
productions in this kind. Raoul de Presles also composed a polemical
work, dealing chiefly with the burning question of the papal and royal
powers, under the title of _Songe du Verger_.

[Sidenote: Codes and Legal Treatises.]

It might seem unlikely at first sight that so highly technical a subject
as law should furnish a considerable contingent to early vernacular
literature; but there are some works of this kind both of ancient date
and of no small importance. England and Normandy furnish an important
contingent, the 'Laws of William the Conqueror' and the _Coutumiere
Normandie_ being the most remarkable: but the most interesting document
of this kind is perhaps the famous _Assises de Jerusalem_, arranged by
Godfrey of Bouillon and his crusaders as the code of the kingdom of
Jerusalem in 1099, and known also as the _Lettres du Sepulcre_, from the
place of their custody. The original text was lost or destroyed at the
capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187; but a new _Assise_, compiled
from the oral tradition of the jurists who had seen and used the old,
was written by Philippe de Navarre in 1240, or thereabouts, for the use
of the surviving Latin principalities of the East. This was shortly
afterwards enlarged and developed by Jean d'Ibelin, a Syrian baron, who
took part in the crusade of St. Louis. These codes concerned themselves
only with one part of the original _Lettres du Sepulcre_, the laws
affecting the privileged classes; but the other part, the _Assises des
Bourgeois_, survives in _Le Livre de la Cour des Bourgeois_, which has
been thought to be older than the loss of the original. These various
works contain the most complete account of feudal jurisprudence in its
palmy days that is known, for the still earlier Anglo-Norman laws
represent a more mixed state of things. It was especially in Cyprus that
the Jerusalem codes were observed. The chief remaining works of the
same kind which deserve mention are the _Etablissements de St. Louis_
and the _Livre de Justice et de Plet_, which both date from the tim