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The Concordat of Nablus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Hans Eberhard Mayer
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Extract

On 23 January 1120, in the ancient town of Nablus in Samaria, Patriarch Warmund of Jerusalem and King Baldwin II of Jerusalem held a famous assembly of the highest dignitaries of the clergy and nobility. It has become known as the Council of Nablus, although it was not, strictly speaking, a church synod. Because of lay participation it was more of a parlement, or a Reichsversammlung, a kind of assembly common in all medieval kingdoms which would have been summoned to decide matters of general interest. William of Tyre gave it a whole chapter of his chronicle and stated that its decisions were so widely known that it was superfluous to enumerate them. He correctly called the assembly a conventus publicus et curia generalis, and only in the rubric to the chapter was its synodal character referred to: Apud Neapolim urbem Samariae concilium celebratur.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 531 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Monte, J. L. La, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kindgom of Jerusalem 1100 to 1291, Monographs of the Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, Mass. 1932, 9Google Scholar, 94; Richard, J., Le Royaume latin de Jérusalem, Paris 1953, 68Google Scholar = idem, , The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Europe in the Middle Ages. Selected Studies, Amsterdam 1979, 68Google Scholar; Prawer, J., ‘Les Premiers temps de la féodalité dans le royaume de Jérusalem’, Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis, xxii (1954), 419–21Google Scholar = idem, , Crusader Institutions, Oxford 1980, 15–17Google Scholar, which deals only with cc. 24, 25; Mayer, H. E., Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Stuttgart 1965, 84Google Scholar = idem, , The Crusades, London 1972, 79Google Scholar. The Council of Nablus in general has not greatly attracted the attention of crusading historians. Runciman, S., A History of the Crusades, Cambridge 1952Google Scholar, i. 156, devotes five lines to it; Hamilton, B., The Latin Church in the Crusader States. The secular church, London 1980, 64–5Google Scholar, gives it 17 lines; Grousset, René, Histoire des croisades, I, Paris 1934Google Scholar; Prawer, J., Histoire du royaume de Jérusalem, 1, Paris 1969;Google Scholar and Nicholson, R. L., ‘The growth of the Latin states, 1118–1144’ in A History of the Crusades, ed. Setton, K. M., 1, Philadelphia 1955Google Scholar, pass it over in complete silence. On the peculiar tithe system of the Latin East see Richard, J., Chypre sous les Lusignans. Documents chypriotes des archives du Vatican (XIVe et XVe siècles), Bibliothèque archeologique et historique, lxxii, Paris 1962, 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayer, Kreuzzüge, 159 = Crusades, 167–8; Prawer, J., The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. European colonialism in the Middle Ages, London 1972, 377Google Scholar. Mayer, H. E., Bistümer, Klöster und Stifle im Königreich Jerusalem, Schriften, M. G. H. der, xxvi, Stuttgart 1977, 182–3Google Scholar; Hamilton, Latin Church, 145. Hamilton argues that the free Frankish peasants holding their land in burgage tenure were generally required to pay the tithe. While this may be possible, it cannot be proven from Reinhold Rohricht, Regesta regni Hierosolymitani (henceforth cited as RRH), Innsbruck 1893, no. 340, adduced in evidence. We are dealing here with the settlement of Frankish peasants established by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre at Magna Mahumeria (al-Bira) north of Jerusalem. Tenure was held there by the peasants ad terraticum et decimam. But the landlord was the cathedral church itself which would not, of course, tax its own income. Hence in this special case where there was no secular landlord as intermediary, the Frankish peasants were tithed directly. That there was a secular usurpation of tithes in the kingdom of Jerusalem up to 1120 was mentioned briefly by Richard, Royaume latin, 100 = Latin Kingdom, 107, but without reference to the Investiture Contest and to the tithe situation prevailing between 1101 and 1120.1 should like to record here my sincere gratitude to Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. where I was a Fellow during the academic year 1980/81, and had the time to write this study.

2 William of Tyre, Historia, rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, xii. 13, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, historiens occidentaux, Paris 1844, i. 351–2Google Scholar.

3 Carbani, Cerbanus, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori a Chio insula in civilalem Venetam, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Historiens occidentaux, Paris 1895, vGoogle Scholar. 322.

4 Chartres, Fulcherof, Historia Hierosolymitana iii. 4, ed. Hagenmeyer, Heinrich, Heidelberg 1913, 625Google Scholar. The patriarch went with the army carrying the true cross as far as the Jordan River, but from there the cross was carried to Antioch by the archbishop of Caesarea.

5 Cerbanus, Translatio, 324.

6 RRH no. 102.

7 MS Vat. lat. 1345, printed by Mansi, Giovanni Domenico, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, new edition, xxi, Paris 1767Google Scholar, 261–6.

8 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia, ii. 60, 602–5.

9 Mayer, Bistümer, 183–92.

10 RRH no. 67. Mayer, Bistümer, 267–70.

11 RRH nos. 74, 75.

12 RRH no. 40. For the date see Mayer, Bistümer, 53 n. 36.

13 RRH no. 36. It is dated 1101, indictione viii. This led Kühn, F., Geschichte der ersten lateinischen Patriarchal von Jerusalem, Leipzig 1886, 69Google Scholar, to assume calculus Pisanus which would date the charter 25 March to 31 August 1100. He overlooked that the charter talks of Baldwin 1 as already king (elevated in November 1100, crowned 25 December 1100) and mentions both Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin 1 in the most deferential terms. This is incompatible with the political situation prevailing after the accession of Baldwin 1 when T^ncred openly refused to pay homage to him for Galilee. He came to an agreement with Baldwin in March 1101 and then left for Antioch to accept the regency there. We must, therefore, conclude that the indiction should have been viiii and that the charter is to be roughly dated in March 1101, after the agreement but before Tancred left for Antioch.

14 JL. no. 5948. Its authenticity was attacked by Carl Erdmann, but probably not with sufficient reason. Cf. Mayer, Bistümer, 91 n. 34.

15 RHR no. 51.

16 RRH no. 69. Mayer, Bistümer, 91–2.

17 Mayer, Crusades, 169.

18 Mayer, Bistümer, 158, 209, 225, 359, 390.

19 Ibid., 226–7. The following quotations from Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitana vii. 60–3, in Recueil des historitns des Croisades. Historiens occidenlaux, Paris 1879, ivGoogle Scholar. 547–8.

20 Anselm wrote to her repeatedly. Cf. Sancti Anselmi Cantuaricnsis archiepiscopi opera omnia, ed. Schmitt, Franciscus S., Edinburgh 1946–1951Google Scholar, iii-v. epp. nos. 82, 114, 131, 167, 244, 247.

21 Ibid. Edinburgh 1949, iv. 142, ep. no. 235. The carrier Renier is surely identical with Ida's cleric of the same name mentioned in ep. no. 167. This letter was first used in crusading research by Jonathan Riley-Smith in connection with the title of the first rulers of jerusalem, in ‘The title of Godfrey of Bouillon’, in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lii (1979), 84Google Scholar n. 12. For the date of the letter see Schmitt, F. S., ‘Die Chronologie der Briefe des hl. Anselm von Canterbury’, Revue Bénédictine, lxiii (1953), 198Google Scholar. The sequence of Anselm's letters in the best manuscripts is roughly chronological and this one precedes those datable in 1102. It was certainly written after 25 December 1100 and before Anselm's second exile beginning on 27 April 1103. The king's expulsion of Daimbert from his see was a more likely cause of Anselm writing this letter than the quarrel over the ecclesiastical income, as banishing the patriarch was a drastic step likely to be widely noticed in Europe.

22 William of Tyre, Historia x. 1, p. 401.

23 Poole, A. L., From Domesday Book to Magna Carta 1087–1216, 2nd edn, Oxford 1955, 180Google Scholar.

24 Ibid. 220.

25 William of Tyre, Historia, xviii. 20, printed only by Huygens, R. B. C., ‘La Tradition manuscrite de Guillaume de Tyr’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser, v (1964), 302Google Scholar.

26 Edbury, P. W. and Rowe, J. G., ‘William of Tyre and the patriarchal election of 1180’, EHR, xciii (1978), 5–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Hiestand, R. and Mayer, H. E., ‘Die Nachfolge des Patriarchen Monachus von Jerusalem’, Busler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, lxxiv (1974), 110Google Scholar.

28 William of Tyre, Historia, xii. 4, p. 516.

29 Ibid. xii. 3, p. 515.

30 Poole, Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 213.

31 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia, iii. 1, 7, pp. 616, 635.

32 William of Tyre, Historia, xii. 13, p. 531.

33 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia, iii. 13, p. 653–4.

34 RRH no. 102. William of Tyre, Historia, xii. 25, pp. 550–3.