The Assise sur la ligece (roughly, "Assize on liege

Allegiance

An allegiance is a duty of fidelity said to be owed by a subject or a citizen to his/her state or sovereign.-Etymology:From Middle English ligeaunce . The al- prefix was probably added through confusion with another legal term, allegeance, an "allegation"...

-homage") is an important piece of legislation passed by the Haute Cour of Jerusalem

Haute Cour of Jerusalem

The Haute Cour was the feudal council of the kingdom of Jerusalem. It was sometimes also called the curia generalis, the curia regis, or, rarely, the parlement.-Composition of the court:...

, the feudal court of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem

Kingdom of Jerusalem

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....

, in an unknown year, but probably in the 1170s under Amalric I of Jerusalem

Amalric I of Jerusalem

Amalric I of Jerusalem was King of Jerusalem 1163–1174, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. Amalric was the second son of Melisende of Jerusalem and Fulk of Jerusalem...

.

The Assise formally prohibited the illegal confiscation of fiefs and required all of the king

Monarch

A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...

's vassal

Vassal

A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...

s to ally against any lord

Lord

Lord is a title with various meanings. It can denote a prince or a feudal superior . The title today is mostly used in connection with the peerage of the United Kingdom or its predecessor countries, although some users of the title do not themselves hold peerages, and use it 'by courtesy'...

 who did so. Such a lord would not be given a trial, but would instead be stripped of his land or exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

d. The king could now legally confiscate a fief if a vassal refused to pay homage

Homage

Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....

 to him; this had been done in the past but was technically illegal before this Assise. The Assise was apparently created after a dispute between Gerard, Lord of Sidon, and King Amalric; Gerard had dispossessed one of his rear-vassals and refused to return the land even when Amalric stepped in. Open warfare was just barely avoided.

The Assise also made all nobles direct vassals of the king, eliminating the previous distinction between higher and lesser nobles. This distinction still existed in reality, and although they theoretically had an equal voice in the Haute Cour, lesser nobles could only appeal to the high court when their own baronial courts refused to hear their complaints. In any case, the more powerful barons refused to be tried by lesser lords who were not their peers, and the higher nobles were still able to judge the less powerful lords themselves. There were about 600 men eligible to vote in the Court according to the Assise.

Sources

• Peter W. Edbury, ed., John of Ibelin
  John of Ibelin (jurist)
  John of Ibelin , count of Jaffa and Ascalon, was a noted jurist and the author of the longest legal treatise from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was the son of Philip of Ibelin, bailli of the Kingdom of Cyprus, and Alice of Montbéliard, and was the nephew of John of Ibelin, the "Old Lord of Beirut"...
  
  , Le Livre des Assises. Leiden, 2003.
• Myriam Greilshammer, ed., Le Livre au Roi. Paris, 1995.
• M. Le Comte Beugnot
  Auguste-Arthur, Comte de Beugnot
  Count Auguste-Arthur Beugnot was a French historian and statesman. He was a son of Jacques-Claude Beugnot...
  
  , ed., Livre de Philippe de Novarre. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades
  Recueil des Historiens des Croisades
  The Recueil des Historiens des Croisades is a major collection of several thousand medieval documents written during the Crusades. The documents were collected and published in Paris in the late 19th century, and include documents in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Old French, and Armenian...
  
  , Paris, 1841.
• John L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100-1291.
• Joshua Prawer
  Joshua Prawer
  Joshua Prawer was a notable Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem.His work often attempted to portray Crusader society as a forerunner to later European colonialist expansion...
  
  , Crusader Institutions. Oxford, 1980.
• Jonathan Riley-Smith
  Jonathan Riley-Smith
  Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, K.St.J., Ph.D. MA, Litt.D., FRHistS is an historian of the Crusades, and a former Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History...
  
  , The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277. London, 1973.