The Jurists, the Bailiff, and the Emperor

Some of the most extraordinary cultural monuments of the Frankish Levant are the massive legal texts composed by the aristocracy of the thirteenth-century Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, most of them living in Cyprus. These works and their authors provide an unparalleled resource for aspects of political and legal life. But, as Rachel Podd explains, the political context of Cyprus is also critically important in evaluating these works.