The Book of the Assizes of the Burgess Court

A large percentage of the Latin ("Frankish") population of the Crusader States were neither nobles nor peasant farmers but a middle class of "burgesses" defined by their holding a particular kind of property. The importance of the burgesses is attested by the survival, among the many French legal treatises of the Latin East, of the "Livres des assises de la Cour des Bourgeois" (The Book of the Assizes of the Burgess Court). This week's host, Sean Loritz, introduces us to the crucial piece of evidence for the social and economic history of the Latin East, and some of its quite surprising statutes.