16 January 1120 · Nablus
Council of Nablus
The council held at Nablus on 16 January 1120 under Baldwin II and Patriarch Warmund adopted twenty-five canons for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They regulated tithes, marriage, sexual offences, theft and relations between Latins and Muslims, with secular penalties.
RESEARCH DOSSIER
Historical analysis of the event
Background
The year 1119 had been hard for the Latin East: the army of Antioch had been destroyed at the Field of Blood, and the kingdom had suffered successive plagues of locusts and famine. In the thinking of the time these disasters were read as divine punishment for the sins of society. To restore the kingdom's religious and moral order, the king and patriarch gathered the lay and ecclesiastical magnates at Nablus.
The canons
The council adopted twenty-five canons. The first regulate the king's surrender of church tithes to the patriarch. Others prescribe severe penalties for offences such as adultery, sodomy, bigamy, theft and false accusation.
A significant number of the canons forbid sexual relations between Latins and Muslim women and prohibit Muslims from wearing Frankish dress. One canon also accepts that clergy may bear arms in self-defence without this being counted an offence.
Outcome and significance
The Nablus canons are the oldest surviving legal text of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and show how the boundaries between Latin settlers and the local population were drawn through law. They are a rare example of joint legislation by religious and secular authority; it has been suggested that the Temple brotherhood founded at about the same time by Hugh of Payns's circle may also have been discussed at this meeting.
Sources and debates
The canons survive in a single manuscript, a copy that travelled from Sidon to Venice, and were edited in modern times by B. Z. Kedar. William of Tyre mentions the council but does not give the content of the canons. How far the canons were applied, and how they influenced later law in the kingdom, is debated.
Dates, places and figures in this record compare the principal narrative sources with modern scholarship. Where the sources disagree this is stated in the text; for a thesis or publication, consult the relevant edition and page reference.