{{Short description|Common law code of the states of Frankish Greece}} The '''''Assizes of Romania''''' ({{langx|fr|Assises de Romanie}}), formally the '''''Book of the Usages and Statutes of the Empire of Romania''''' ({{langx|vec|Libro de le Uxanze e Statuti de lo Imperio de Romania}}),<ref name="Setton">Setton (1975), pp. 154–155</ref> is a collection of laws compiled in the Principality of Achaea that became the common law code of the states of Frankish Greece in the 13th–15th centuries, and continued in occasional use in the Venetian Ionian Islands until the 18th century.
== History == The compilation comprises a prologue and 219 clauses.<ref name="fordham"/> The traditional story of the law code's origin, recounted in the prologue, is that the first Latin Emperor, Baldwin I, based it on the ''Assizes of Jerusalem'', but this is disputed.<ref name="fordham">{{cite web | url = http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/medieval_studies/french_of_outremer/sources_by_locale/the_morea/assizes_of_romania_79634.asp | title = Assizes of Romania | publisher = Fordham University | access-date = 9 July 2013}}</ref><ref>Bon (1969), pp. 18 note 5, 84–85</ref> The present collection was actually compiled in the Frankish Morea (the Principality of Achaea) between 1333 and 1346 and is based on a variety of legal traditions.<ref name="Setton"/> The ''Assizes of Jerusalem'' were used in so far as, in the words of medievalist David Jacoby, "[there] the Latins faced political and military circumstances similar to those of the Morea, and existed in a virtual state of perpetual war", but the Moreote collection incorporates also feudal customs imported by the Crusaders directly from Western Europe, legislation from France and Angevin Naples, Byzantine law in matters of inheritance and agricultural law (especially as regards the serfs or ''paroikoi''), as well as laws and court decisions from the Latin Empire and the Principality of Achaea.<ref>Jacoby (1989), pp. 191–192</ref><ref>For the provisions of the ''Assizes'' as regards the Morea, cf. Setton (1975), pp. 31–33</ref>
Due to the political pre-eminence of Achaea, the ''Assizes'' were adopted across most of Frankish Greece, and survived longest in the Venetian colonies in the Ionian Islands, where they were occasionally consulted until the dissolution of the Venetian Republic by Napoleon in 1797. Indeed, the ''Assizes'' only survive in Venetian translations dating from 1423 to the mid-18th century.<ref name="Setton"/>
== Editions == The various manuscripts of the ''Assizes'' were first published by Paolo Canciani in 1785:<ref name="Bon18">Bon (1969), p. 18</ref> * {{cite book | editor-first=Paolo |editor-last=Canciani| title = Liber Consuetudinum imperii Romaniae, in Venetorum et Francorum ditionem redacti, concinnatus in usum Principatus Achajae a Serenissima Republica Veneta | series = Barbarorum leges antiquae | volume = III | location = Venice | year = 1785 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=iiFJAAAAcAAJ | pages = 495–534}}
There also exist three critical editions with French, English, and Italian translations respectively: * {{cite book | editor-first=Georges |editor-last=Recoura | title = Les Assises de Romanie: éd. critique avec une introd. et des notes | location = Paris | publisher = H. Champion | year = 1930 | oclc = 2365468 }} * {{cite book | editor-first=Peter W. |editor-last=Topping| title = Feudal Institutions as Revealed in the Assizes of Romania: The Law Code of Frankish Greece; Translation of the Text of the Assizes with a Commentary on Feudal Institutions in Greece and Medieval Europe| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press | location = Philadelphia | year = 1949 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=za0TAAAAIAAJ | oclc = 302644}} * {{cite book | editor-first=Antonella |editor-last=Parmeggiani| title = Libro dele Uxanze e statuti delo imperio de Romania| publisher = Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo | location = Spoleto | year = 1998 |isbn=9788879881401| oclc = 42616986}}
==See also== * Assizes of Jerusalem
==References== {{reflist|2}}
==Sources== * {{La Morée franque}} * {{Cite book | first = David | last = Jacoby | title = La féodalité en Grèce médiévale: Les "Assises de Romanie", sources, application et diffusion | language = fr | location = Paris & The Hague | publisher = Mouton & Co | year = 1971 | lccn = 70-150569 | url = {{Google books|XWSEDwAAQBAJ|plainurl=y}} }} * {{Setton-A History of the Crusades | volume = 6 | chapter = Social Evolution in Latin Greece | pages = 175–221 | last = Jacoby | first = David }} * {{The Papacy and the Levant|volume=1}}
==External links== * {{cite web | url = http://www.ime.gr/chronos/projects/fragokratia/en/webpages/ach_just.html | title = Principality of Achaia: Legal system and administration of justice | work = Latin Occupation in the Greek Lands | publisher = Foundation of the Hellenic World | access-date = 9 July 2013}}
Category:14th-century documents Category:14th century in law Category:Medieval legal codes Category:Principality of Achaea {{italic title}}