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Shaping society and urban fabric in Crusader Jerusalem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

Anna Gutgarts Open the ORCID record for Anna Gutgarts [Opens in a new window]
Anna Gutgarts*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt Scopus, 91905, Israel The Haifa Center for Mediterranean History (HCMH), University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel
*
*Corresponding author. Email: agutgarts@gmail.com
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Abstract

This study addresses the interplay between the formation of civic society and urban development in the Latin East, particularly in the city of Jerusalem. It argues that while the municipal mechanisms that were formed in Jerusalem during the first half of the twelfth century drew on Western European models, they were adapted to meet the challenges of the young capital of the Latin Kingdom. The process revolves around the pivotal role of the patriarch and the clergy of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem's most important religious institution at the time, in the moulding of the urban fabric. This was realized through a close collaboration with the local burgess class, followed by the rise of new religious institutions that spurred the transition to a new urban balance. These processes demonstrate the reciprocity between spatial, social and economic factors in the shaping of the cityscape and urban dynamics in Frankish Jerusalem.

Type
Research Article
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Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 2 - 19
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

The vast historiography on the urbanization processes that swept Western Europe starting from the eleventh century owes much to the seminal works of Henri Pirenne and Max Weber, who described the mechanisms that enabled developing cities to attract new populations and to form highly diverse and stratified social structures.Footnote 1 Therefore, the study of medieval cities deals extensively with the consolidation of dominant groups within the city's population into coherent social formations such as communes, guilds and fraternities as well as the relationships of these formations with municipal mechanisms and their impact on the urban fabric.Footnote 2

Such urbanization processes took an interesting course in cities located at the periphery of Latin Christendom, and specifically in the Latin East. Cities in newly conquered areas presented their rulers with new opportunities but also with new challenges, emanating from the encounter with urban landscapes that differed considerably from their European counterparts, and with non-Christian or non-Latin populations. These challenges concerned the fusing of a highly heterogeneous population into a more consolidated urban society.Footnote 3 Such problems were exacerbated in the Latin East by the need to bridge not only cultural and religious divides between the European settlers and the local populations but also by the social heterogeneity among the settlers themselves, who came from diverse backgrounds and lands of origin.Footnote 4

However, Jerusalem during this period is fascinating for more than its unique characteristics. Unlike other cities in the Latin East, Jerusalem was not a commercial centre, a crucial factor in determining its demographic makeup and the socio-economic mechanisms that developed in it. Thus, whereas in cities such as Acre, urban development was largely circumscribed by the presence of the Italian communes, this was not the case in Jerusalem, where such independent quarters did not develop. Yet at the same time, Jerusalem's politically important role in the ideology of the crusading movement was vital to the rise and status of new institutions such as the military orders, which exercised a considerable impact on municipal mechanisms.

Jerusalem's particular interest as a case-study of urban development thus lies in its inherent sacrality, which makes it an archetypal yet an anomalous city.Footnote 5 But while earlier episodes in the city's history do not easily lend themselves to an investigation of the reciprocity between social structures and urban fabric due to a paucity of evidence, the Crusader period stands out in its relative wealth of written and archaeological data.Footnote 6

The establishment of Jerusalem as the Christian capital of the Crusader Kingdom, following its conquest in July 1099, brought significant changes to the city's population and urban landscape. Numerous architectural endeavours initiated in Jerusalem towards the middle of the twelfth century aimed to make the city befit its newly acquired status.Footnote 7 Due to the city's symbolic and religious importance, it was presumed in the scholarship that its urban transformation was a rather swift and sleek one.Footnote 8 A close reading of the sources, however, suggests a quite different narrative.

The violent conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 was the culmination of a long period of urban decline caused by a series of geo-political and climatic crises.Footnote 9 The city's capture was accompanied by the expulsion and massacre of the city's non-Christian inhabitantsFootnote 10 and the return of many of the leaders of the Crusade, as well as the rank and file, back to Europe.Footnote 11 As a result, the resettlement of the city and the transformation required by its new status demanded the establishment of entirely new municipal mechanisms and a revitalization of the urban economy. Rather than flocking to the city, new settlers had to be lured there by privileges offered by the Frankish kings.Footnote 12 In addition to their chequered success rate, these policies failed to provide long-term solutions for the challenges that Jerusalem faced during the beginning of the twelfth century.

The city's monumental transformation is said to have relied on royal patronage as well as on growing numbers of pilgrims and the active personae of patriarch William of Messines (1130–45) and of Queen Melisende (1131–53). Yet such explanations have paid little heed to the socio-economic structures that were formed in Jerusalem during that period.Footnote 13 As recently shown, the corpus of documents pertaining to property transactions conducted in and around Jerusalem during the twelfth century indicates that a peak in monumental construction occurred simultaneously or was even preceded by a new phase in the patterns of real-estate distribution in the city and its environs, which began in the early 1130s.Footnote 14

During the first 30 years of Frankish rule in Jerusalem, properties were distributed mainly by means of endowments granted by the monarchy and religious institutions. The early 1130s, though, saw a spike in diverse forms of commercial exchange (sales, leases, barters, etc.) that were introduced into the former grant-based system. The proliferation of transactions displaying such forms of exchange point to an increasing engagement of Jerusalem's population in an emerging ‘proto real-estate market’Footnote 15 and may be indicative of an intensification of land use in the city. Chronologically, these processes occurred earlier than the main stage in monumental construction and, therefore, may have paved the way for the major transformation of the entire cityscape.Footnote 16

Similar forms of property ownership and alienation are known from European cities in that period, where they were associated with a specific social group, namely the burgesses.Footnote 17 The presence of such economic patterns in Jerusalem can thus be linked with the development and rise of a similar class there as well. The urbanization processes that Jerusalem underwent during the twelfth century should be understood in light of the socio-economic motivations of its burgess population and the correlation between such socio-economic patterns and a monumental transformation of the built environment.

In what follows, I offer a reconstruction of these processes, distinguishing between three main phases. Initially, the patriarchs and the church of the Holy Sepulchre took the leading role in municipal initiatives, establishing various channels of collaboration with the burgess population. By the middle of the century, the Holy Sepulchre partnered with the Hospital of Saint John and the Latin monarchy in their urban endeavours. In the third phase, the Hospital's engagement in the municipal sphere gradually increased, overshadowing other institutions. However, its involvement was based on different social mechanisms than those established earlier between the burgesses and the Holy Sepulchre, dictating a different pattern of municipal engagement.

Social cohesion and urban change – the Holy Sepulchre and the burgesses of Jerusalem

Early on, Jerusalem was formally divided between the kings and the patriarchs, the latter being lords of their own quarter inside the city.Footnote 18 The patriarchs served as the bishops of Jerusalem, and respectively the Holy Sepulchre was the city's cathedral church.Footnote 19 Contemporaneous cities in Europe show a similar dual rule, with bishops taking a central part in municipal administration.Footnote 20 Indeed, the documents indicate that from the 1120s, it was the patriarch, in collaboration with the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, who actively promoted the municipal development of Jerusalem.Footnote 21 Already the earliest grants and privileges given to the church by the kings underscore its responsibility for supplying the city with its basic provisions. Thus, the Holy Sepulchre was granted extensive properties in Jerusalem's rural hinterland and owned all but three of the city's baking ovens.Footnote 22 In line with this tendency was the exemption from taxes on the import and export of agricultural produce to and from the city, granted in 1120 by Baldwin II to merchants entering Jerusalem, which was, in fact, issued in response to the request of the patriarch.Footnote 23

It should be noted that we do not have evidence to suggest that at that point, i.e. the early decades of the twelfth century, any other religious institution based in Jerusalem was involved in such efforts on a similar scale.Footnote 24 Moreover, as suggested by the account of the construction of the outpost of Castellum Arnaldi outside Jerusalem in c. 1133, even municipal responsibilities such as the protection of pilgrimage routes leading to Jerusalem, which later became associated with, for example, the Hospital of Saint John, were then still under the auspices of the patriarch, who acted as head of the Jerusalemite community.Footnote 25

The dominance of the patriarchate and the church of the Holy Sepulchre was also expressed in other spheres of municipal development, most importantly in the establishment of socio-economic mechanisms that fostered a collaboration with Jerusalem's burgesses. This collaboration correlates with the above-mentioned increase in the volume of commercial property transactions, most of them involving, from the late 1120s and especially during the 1130s, canons from the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre and burgesses residing in and around Jerusalem (Table 1).Footnote 26 As previous studies have shown, these transactions produced long-standing relationships between the church and the burgesses, who entered its sphere of influence and established ongoing mutual commitments.Footnote 27

Table 1. Initiators of transactions according to social groups, 1099–1139

Note: The categorization into groups is based on various factors: namely identification included within the document itself, or in secondary literature and prosopographic studies, such as the discussion of each document in the UKJ; Tischler, Die Burgenses; Alan V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099-1125 (Oxford, 2000); Shagrir, Naming Patterns, and other similar studies. Percentage was rounded to the nearest whole number.

An example of this reciprocity is an 1136 transaction between the burgess couple Andreas and Hosanna, and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, licensing them to build a house on a plot of land that belonged to the chapter in exchange for an annual rent.Footnote 28 The transaction included clauses stipulating the rights of each spouse in case the other died, legally affixing the terms of the inheritance and holding the chapter responsible for providing for the remaining one. This document exhibits a twofold strategy relying on a mutually beneficial economic collaboration, in which the Holy Sepulchre improved the assets under its control and thus increased its revenues, while the socio-economic security of a burgess family was solidified.Footnote 29

This pattern, which was common in transactions between the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre and the burgesses of Jerusalem,Footnote 30 was not found, at least during these decades, in transactions conducted by other institutions such as the military orders, or any of the city's big monastic institutions. However, this pattern was pivotal for the development of a city with a highly diverse population.

As mentioned above, Jerusalem's settlement by European immigrants brought together people from different backgrounds and origins, and diverse local populations.Footnote 31 Thus, the communal bonds among the city's inhabitants early in the twelfth century are likely to have been rather loose. The contractual affirmation of mutual commitments among the burgesses themselves, and between them and the Holy Sepulchre, promoted social cohesion within the urban (and particularly burgess) populace. In turn, this became the legal and economic catalyst for small-scale enterprises such as new construction projects and the repurposing of existing plots, necessary for urban development.Footnote 32

By engaging in active collaboration with the burgess population, the Holy Sepulchre was the first Jerusalemite institution to develop a framework that increased the social cohesion among the city's inhabitants, and between them and municipal institutions.Footnote 33 Minimizing mutual economic risks and reducing transaction costs, this framework thus provided the level of security that was necessary for motivating further investment in the development of the cityscape.Footnote 34 Moreover, as Joshua Prawer and Kaspar Elm have shown, these legal and economic mechanisms were inseparable from social frameworks, mainly the confraternity of the Holy Sepulchre,Footnote 35 facilitating the formulation of group identity among members of the burgess class. With the increase in their economic and social impact, the burgesses became active stakeholders in the municipal sphere, which could have attracted more settlers to the city.

This complex system was aided by the legal norms that generally characterized medieval property transactions. According to these, a transaction was legally validated by the witnesses who attested it, some of whom had either a direct interest in the exchanged property, or in adjacent assets.Footnote 36 Such a system of collaterals added another layer to the forming of communal bonds among the burgesses themselves, and between them and the Holy Sepulchre.

This can be demonstrated in transactions that were conducted in the patriarch's quarter (Figure 1). During the first decades of the twelfth century, many residential properties in this area were occupied by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre.Footnote 37 An 1114 monastic reform required them to reside in designated lodgings within the church's facilities. However, since the renovation of the Holy Sepulchre complex continued at least until 1149, and in 1121 the canons were admonished for still residing ‘in their own houses’,Footnote 38 we may assume that the transition took time. During that period, some of the canons may have continued to live in houses around the quarter, alongside burgesses who occupied recently vacated properties, and neighbourly relationships may have sprung up between the two groups. Even after the canons left their houses in favour of lay tenants, their frequent appearance as witnesses in property transactions in the same quarter may reflect an amalgamation of personal and institutional interests (Table 2).Footnote 39 Plausibly, then, residences in close proximity to one another, at least during the first decades of the twelfth century, added a more personal facet to the clientele relationships formed between the burgesses and the canons residing in the patriarch's quarter. Later, such personal networks evolved into the contractual forms observed in the documents starting from the 1130s. These obligations promoted social cohesion in the highly heterogeneous demographic environment of Jerusalem in the period of interest.Footnote 40

Figure 1. Jerusalem in the twelfth century – residential and monumental development

Table 2. Burgesses’ witnessing patterns in Jerusalem

That similar mechanisms cannot be traced in the documentation pertaining to the municipal activities of other institutions that operated in the city during that period further supports the argument that the church of the Holy Sepulchre was the first to adjust its socio-economic modus operandi to the needs of Jerusalem's population. These church mechanisms bolstered the urban transformation of early twelfth-century Jerusalem and smoothed its transition from an initial state of crisis to growth.

New trajectories of urban development – a socio-spatial analysis

Towards the 1150s, the dominance of the Holy Sepulchre in the municipal sphere was gradually replaced by a tripartite collaboration with two key players who gradually increased their engagement in Jerusalem's cityscape, namely the Hospital of Saint John and the Frankish monarchy.Footnote 41 During the 1140s, each of the three institutions became increasingly responsible for different aspects of urban development.Footnote 42 While the chapter established the socio-economic infrastructure that eased the densification of the urban fabric and the kings sponsored monumental architectural endeavours, the Hospital became responsible for the safe-conduct and accommodation of pilgrims to Jerusalem. The new equilibrium, which was rather short-lived, was followed by a rise in the Hospital's power, occasionally at the expense of the Holy Sepulchre.Footnote 43 This, coupled with political tensions between the monarchy and the patriarchate,Footnote 44 ended in the collapse of the tripartite collaboration, which in turn significantly undermined the patriarch's municipal authority.Footnote 45

It was during this period that the rise in the Hospital's institutional autonomy and influence in the local and international arenas allowed it to strengthen its hold in the municipal sphere and to expand its possessions in Jerusalem's hinterland (Table 3). The involvement of the Hospital in the urban transformation of Jerusalem has been hitherto assessed primarily through the prism of monumental construction in and around the order's headquarters (i.e. the Muristan compound) and the promotion of pilgrimage to Jerusalem.Footnote 46 My analysis of the documents yields a more fine-grained image of the Hospitaller involvement in the municipal sphere, from c. the 1150s, with far-reaching implications for other aspects of urban development.

Table 3. Participation of the Hospital of Saint John and the Holy Sepulchre in commercial transactions inside Jerusalem

*This sharp rise in the number of commercial transactions is associated with the appearance in these decades of rental lists summarizing multiple properties that yielded annual rents. It is impossible to determine conclusively whether similarly to some confirmations, such lists summarized now lost documents that referred to each property individually (as we find in other cases that establish the rentals of separate properties), merely recorded already established realities, or both. However, especially in the case of the 1165 list of the Holy Sepulchre, that clearly refers to previously recorded transactions, the first premise seems more plausible. Considering this issue, the dating of the individual transactions summarized in such rental lists is also difficult to establish, and although it is clear that they were conducted before the lists were composed, in most cases they cannot be dated with more accuracy than their terminus ante quem. However, even if, for the sake of a more conservative estimate, we exclude these lists from our calculations for the 1160s and 1170s, the patterns indicated in the analysis are maintained, with the Hospital's considerable pre-eminence in the sphere of commercial property transactions inside the city.

During this period, the Hospital expanded its real-estate activity inside the city and its immediate environs through the acquisition of new properties and the active consolidation of adjoining plots. Via a series of exchanges with other religious institutions, from the 1150s onwards, the Order of Saint John enlarged its land plots and consolidated new acquisitions with older possessions in the city and its environs, a process that appears to have been part of a carefully planned agenda.

Consider a transaction conducted in 1157 with the abbess of Saint Lazarus in Bethany. In this case, the Hospitallers commuted their tithes from the casale (village) of Bethaanina (about 5 km north of Jerusalem) for a vineyard located outside the northern wall of Jerusalem bordering two other vineyards, one of them belonging to the Hospital and the other to the monastery of Saint Anne. In the terms of exchange, the abbesses of Saint Anne and Saint Mary the Great, who also owned a portion of the tithes of the vineyard, granted their shares to the Hospital. The latter thus relinquished its revenues from a property that was more distant from the city in order to expand and consolidate its possessions closer to Jerusalem.Footnote 47

Clearly, the construction works in the impressive compound of the Muristan in the heart of Jerusalem was just one of many actions that expressed the Hospital's increasing foothold in the landscape. The consequent concerns of the patriarch and the Holy Sepulchre came to a head in 1154 when, as part of a campaign against the patriarch, then Fulcher of Angoulême, the Hospitaller brothers made a habit of ringing the bells of their adjacent church so loudly that it prevented those congregated at the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre from hearing his sermons. According to the outraged account of William of Tyre, the Hospital's contempt for the Holy Sepulchre and the patriarch was further broadcast in the construction of a Hospitaller building whose splendour exceeded that of the church, standing directly opposite its main entrance.Footnote 48

What began as a violent inter-institutional conflict within a central location in Jerusalem's public sphereFootnote 49 soon became a competition for urban resources that employed legal and economic mechanisms and significantly influenced the urban fabric in central areas of the city. This process was accompanied by the appearance in the early mid-1160s of new, previously unrecorded, types of document. Such documents, one from the cartulary of the Hospital and the other from that of the Holy Sepulchre, include lists of properties located in the city and yielding annual rents.Footnote 50 The earliest and most extensive known example from Jerusalem is the Hospitaller census, drafted in the early 1160s.Footnote 51

While such documents became more common in the second half of the twelfth century and their apparent resemblance can be explained by the similar circumstances of their composition,Footnote 52 careful inspection reveals significant differences in the way properties were recorded. These nuances reflect the different types of municipal engagement that were practised by each of the two institutions (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Demarcation of assets in the rentals of the early 1160s Note: Translations are based on Pringle's above-mentioned edition of the list, and the RRR.

The Hospital census records provide detailed descriptions of each property, and often contain the tenants’ first name and surname, and the exact co-ordinates of each property, as well as a careful registration of the dates when rents were due. By comparison, the list of properties belonging to the Holy Sepulchre seems cursory and almost haphazard. Tenants are often mentioned by first name only and their houses are identified just by the name of the street where they are located. Considering the meticulous registration practices found in earlier property records of the Holy Sepulchre, it seems unlikely that these discrepancies in the style of the documents should be attributed to the differences in the bureaucratic mechanisms of the two institutions. Therefore, it is plausible that the almost stenographic style of the Holy Sepuchre list signals a closer acquaintance with the properties and their tenants, making elaboration redundant. This notion is reinforced by the final items on the list, specifying properties which came under the control of the chapter through various arrangements with its burgess clientele.

I argue that since the Hospital became actively involved in the proto real-estate market that evolved in Jerusalem from the 1130s, at a much later point than the Holy Sepulchre, it did not develop the level of engagement with the burgess population that the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre did. Thus, rather than relying on long-term arrangements stemming from various levels of clientele relationships, the Hospital's engagement with the burgesses who occupied properties under its control remained, at least at that point, rather superficial.

The Hospital's new patterns of engagement with the burgess population that were part of the changing institutional balance in the 1160s were accompanied by new spatial and socio-economic trends. While, initially, the Hospital's engagement in the urban sphere concerned properties throughout the city, it gradually focused its expansion efforts on David Street, adjacent to the Hospitaller compound.Footnote 53 The efforts entailed substantial monetary investment in the acquisition of new properties and effected substantial changes in the layout of this important area of the city.Footnote 54

A transaction from 1175 recorded an exchange of several properties between the Hospital and the Holy Sepulchre, some of them located along David Street. The terms of this transaction included a licence granted by the patriarch to the Hospital to construct new edifices in place of residential buildings that were rented out to burgesses and occupied the plots that the licence concerned.Footnote 55 Although we cannot know whether such construction eventually occurred, we can deduce that the Hospital intended to repurpose these buildings from the licence granted by the patriarch but also from an examination of the broader context of this document and its comparison with other documents within the corpus.

The document mentions, apart from the aforementioned buildings on David Street, the transfer of ownership of several other buildings, also yielding annual rents. However, while the terms of such transfers equally in this and in other documents explicitly state that the payment of rent is to be continued under the new owners, this is not the case regarding the buildings on David Street. Hence, this document distinguished between buildings whose tenants would continue to reside in their houses and pay rent to their new landlords and the buildings on David Street whose residential purpose had changed consequent to the exchange. Although the documents do not reveal the Hospital's plans for these buildings, other documents may provide some clues. For example, another transaction, signed sometime before 1175, mentions a tavern belonging to the Hospital that was located on David Street.Footnote 56

While we cannot generalize based solely on the available evidence, it is possible to conjecture that the expansion of Hospitaller properties on David Street was not only aimed at increasing the order's control over the area surrounding its headquarters but that it also affected, and perhaps economically invigorated, this part of the city. The repurposing of former residential land plots, coupled with already operating businesses such as the above-mentioned tavern, suggests a shift in the character of this area, which now aimed to serve discrete Hospitaller interests rather than its previous and residential purposes. This was achieved by economically profitable businesses that could have expanded the services provided by the order to pilgrims and travellers, such as the tavern, or perhaps by expanding the infrastructure of the Hospitaller compound itself – perhaps intended in the above-mentioned transaction.Footnote 57 The changes that occurred in the urban fabric of this area may have been part of a broader redrafting of the cityscape, orchestrated by the Hospital.

The increase in Hospitaller presence along and around David Street had additional spatial implications. The transactions in the 1170s show that the Hospital expanded its control of this area at the expense of the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, which had previously owned many of the properties now acquired by the Hospital. In exchange, the Holy Sepulchre received properties along the eastern edge of the patriarch's quarter.Footnote 58 These exchanges cemented Hospitaller control over the surroundings of its compound while shifting the Holy Sepulchre's main sphere of influence to the commercial areas on the outskirts of the quarter, located along the street leading to and from the gate of Saint Stephen (present-day Suq Khan A-Zeit/ Beit Habad Street).

The foregoing analysis of transactions conducted in Crusader Jerusalem reveals changing patterns and a distinct urban development. Documents from the beginning of the twelfth century reflect how the collaboration between the Holy Sepulchre and the burgess class stimulated the process of urban renewal. Later, with the increase of Hospitaller activity, one observes a trend reflecting narrower institutional interests in the shaping of the cityscape.

This transition is related to a shift in the status of the burgess population: whereas in the first half of the twelfth century this group's involvement in the cityscape was channelled almost exclusively through its collaboration with the Holy Sepulchre, by mid-century, its growing legal and social autonomy decreased its dependence on any single institution.Footnote 59 Therefore, when the Hospital was expanding its foothold in the city, it could no longer rely solely on the mobilization of the burgesses into its sphere of influence, but rather had to develop more commercialized forms of inter-institutional collaboration and active engagement in the city's emergent real-estate market. This policy, which was pursued with concrete institutional interests in mind, had a direct impact on the urban fabric of key areas in the city.

Conclusion

When the Crusaders breached the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, they perceived its conquest in eschatological terms.Footnote 60 However, the Frankish leaders were soon forced to face the gap between the heavenly city they had imagined and the crisis-ridden city they had conquered. This required not only a change in Crusade rhetoric but also immediate action. First to meet this challenge were the patriarchs and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who actively sought to strengthen communal bonds with and among the main group in the city's population, the burgesses.Footnote 61 This allowed the development of socio-economic mechanisms that facilitated processes of urban transformation. While these mechanisms resembled those found in contemporaneous cities in the West, they were adapted to meet the challenges that faced a newly formed urban society in a newly conquered frontier of Latin Christendom.

Towards the middle of the twelfth century, the municipal dominance of the Holy Sepulchre shifted in favour of the rising engagement of the Hospital of Saint John in the cityscape. Yet the Hospitaller expansion was driven by different interests related to the new Order's local and international agendas and to the city's new socio-economic dynamics.

These processes were highly instrumental in the transformation of the urban fabric of Jerusalem and in shaping the course of urban development during the second half of the twelfth century. The municipal importance of the Holy Sepulchre and, later, the rise of the Hospital, was accompanied by considerable investment in new construction in the heart of the city – e.g. the renovation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, inaugurated in 1149, and the Hospital quarters, built around the same time. Yet Hospitaller involvement in the cityscape paralleled a transition to more commercialized forms of urban development that relied on monetary investment in specific areas and inter-institutional commercial exchanges.

These developments take on even greater salience in light of contemporaneous medieval urbanization processes taking place in Western Europe, and were affected by large-scale migrations, as was the Frankish settlement in the Latin East. Jerusalem, then, presents an important case-study of the municipal socio-economic mechanisms that were developed during that period to meet the challenges confronted by these newly established settler societies.

Footnotes

†

I would like to express my profound gratitude to Professor Ronnie Ellenblum and Professor Iris Shagrir for their help and support, as well as instrumental comments in the various stages of the preparation of this article. I also wish to thank Dr Na'ama Cohen-Hanegbi for her encouragement and helpful observations, and Dr Yamit Rachman-Schrire for her insights and comments on each version of this article. Finally, I am thankful to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

References

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8 For example Schein, S., ‘From the “city of the Holy Sepulchre” to the “city of the humanity of Christ”’, in Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187) (Aldershot and Burlington, 2005), 63–90Google Scholar; Hamilton, ‘Rebuilding Zion’. An exception to this premise is Joshua Prawer's analysis, pointing out the discrepancy between the idealized rendition of the state of the city in a later redaction of the chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres, and its earlier versions, with a bleak account of conditions in Jerusalem. Prawer reconciled this gap by assuming that royal patronage sufficed in order to stimulate monumental growth quickly towards the middle of the twelfth century. Prawer, J., Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980), 91–2Google Scholar.

9 For the conditions in and around Jerusalem during the eleventh century, see Ellenblum, R., The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean. Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072 (Cambridge, 2012), 163–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Avni, G., The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine. An Archaeological Approach (Oxford, 2014), 158–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an account of pre-Crusade Jerusalem, see Gat, S., ‘The Seljuks in Jerusalem’, in Lev, Y. (ed.), Towns and Material Culture in the Medieval Middle East (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002), 1–39Google Scholar. For the political conditions surrounding the arrival of the Crusader armies, see, for example, Murray, A.V., ‘A race against time – a fight to the death: combatants and civilians in the siege and capture of Jerusalem, 1099’, in Dowdell, A. and Horne, J. (eds.), Civilians under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy (London, 2017), 163–4Google Scholar.

10 Murray, A.V., ‘The demographics of urban space in Crusade-period Jerusalem (1099–1187)’, in Classen, A. (ed.), Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age (Berlin and New York, 2009), 205–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the massacre, see Kedar, Benjamin Z., ‘The Jerusalem massacre of July 1099 in the Western historiography of the Crusades’, Crusades, 3 (2004), 15–75Google Scholar.

11 This is repeatedly reported in the chronicles. For example Carnotensis, Fulcherius, Historia Hierosolimitana, ed. Hagenmeyer, Heinrich (Heidelberg, 1913), book 1, chapter 32, 318–22Google Scholar; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. Edgington, S.B. (Oxford, 2007), book 6, chapter 37, 450, chapter 54, 474Google Scholar. While in the early chronicles written during the First Crusade, this return is considered as an anticipated and reasonable phenomenon, writing several decades later, William of Tyre directly links it to the demographic crisis and its impact on Jerusalem. See Tyrensis, Willelmus, Chronicon, ed. Huygens, R.B.C., Mayer, H.E. and Rösch, G., Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. LXIII (Turnhout, 1986), book 9, chapter 19, 446 (hereafter WT)Google Scholar.

12 For the legislative efforts and the resettlement of Eastern Christians brought from the Transjordan, in Jerusalem, see WT, vol. LXIII, book 9, chapter 19, 446, and book 11, chapter 27, 535–6. On the impact of the absence of the Italian communes on Jerusalem, see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 95–7.

13 For studies of the impact of Melisende's patronage on the urban environment of Jerusalem, see Folda, J., ‘Melisende of Jerusalem: queen and patron of art and architecture in the Crusader Kingdom’, in Martin, T. (ed.), Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture (Leiden, 2012), vol. I, 429–78Google Scholar; Kenaan-Kedar, N., ‘Armenian architecture in twelfth-century Crusader Jerusalem’, Assaph – Studies in Art History, 3 (1998), 77–92Google Scholar; for a more nuanced depiction, incorporating the influence of the Hospitallers and the patriarch, see Riley-Smith, J., ‘The death and burial of Latin Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and Acre, 1099–1291’, Crusades, 7 (2008), 165–79Google Scholar. On the liturgical manifestations of the Latin monarchy in Jerusalem's cityscape, see Shagrir, I., ‘Adventus in Jerusalem: the Palm Sunday celebration in Jerusalem’, Journal of Medieval History, 41 (2014), 13–15Google Scholar.

14 Gutgarts, ‘The earthly landscape of the heavenly city’, 272–3.

15 On the necessary caution in the use of the term ‘market’ in regard to medieval land sales, see Wickham, C., ‘Land sales and land market in Tuscany in the eleventh century’, in Land and Power. Studies in Italian and European Social History, 400–1200 (London, 1994), 257–8Google Scholar; in the context of an urban environment dominated primarily by religious institutions, see Hubert, Espace urbain et habitat à Rome: du Xe siècle à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Rome, 1990), 336.

16 Similar questions concerning the connection between monumental and non-monumental development were examined in regard to medieval Muslim cities. See Michael E. Bonine, ‘Waqf and its influence on the built environment in the Medina of the Islamic middle eastern city', in Classen (ed.), Urban Space in the Middle Ages, 637.

17 For a general definition of burgage tenure and the status of burgesses, see Goddard, R., Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation: Coventry, 1043–1355 (Rochester NY, 2004), 36Google Scholar. On the association between burgage tenure and urbanization processes, see Hilton, R., Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism. Essays in Medieval Social History (London, 1985), 187–8Google Scholar. The legal and social status of burgesses in Frankish Jerusalem was the subject of several studies: Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 252–314, 328–9; Nader, M., Burgesses and Burgess Law in the Latin Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1099–1325) (Aldershot and Burlington, 2006)Google Scholar; Tischler, C., Die Burgenses von Jerusalem im 12. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 2000)Google Scholar; Mayer, H.E., Von der Cour des Bourgeois zum öffentlichen Notariat (Wiesbaden, 2016)Google Scholar. The primary focus of most of these studies was legal-institutional, with only cursory references to the impact of legal mechanisms on longitudinal socio-economic shifts and the course of urban development in Jerusalem.

18 For discussions of the legal aspects of the division, see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 296–311. For a more recent reassessment, see Mayer, Von der Cour des Bourgeois, 33–8. The actual implications of this division stirred some scholarly debate. See Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 114–31; Mayer, H.E., ‘King Fulk of Jerusalem as city lord’, in Edbury, P. and Phillips, J. (eds.), The Experience of Crusading, vol. II: Defining the Crusader Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), 179–88Google Scholar.

19 The role of the Latin patriarch is best illustrated in the opening of RRH, 167; BB, 22 (p. 79) from 1136, equating the responsibilities of William as the patriarch of Jerusalem to those of a bishop towards his parish. For studies dealing with this issue, see Elm, K., ‘Fratres et Sorores santctissimi sepulcri. Beiträge zu Frateernitas, Familia, und weiblichem Religiosentum im Umkreis des Kapitels vom Hlg. Grab’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 9 (1975), 290–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yael Katzir argued that despite these efforts, the church in the Latin Kingdom never managed to fashion itself fully according to such models: Katzir, Y., ‘The patriarch of Jerusalem, primate of the Latin Kingdom’, in Edbury, P.W. (ed.), Crusade and Settlement (Cardiff, 1985), 169–75Google Scholar.

20 The vast literature on the urban manifestations of episcopal authority has emphasized the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a transitional period towards the emergence of civic communes. For several examples, see Miller, M., The Bishop's Palace. Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca and London, 2000)Google Scholar; Coleman, E., ‘Bishop and commune in twelfth-century Cremona: the interface of secular and ecclesiastical power’, in Andrews, F. and Pincelli, M. Agata (eds.), Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c. 1200 – c. 1450 (Cambridge, 2013), 25–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ott, J.S., Bishops, Authority and Community in Northwestern Europe, c. 1050–1150 (Cambridge, 2015), esp. chs. 2 and 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Although the collaboration between the chapter and the patriarchate has been previously discussed, only a few studies have noted its function as a vehicle of urban change. See, for example, Mayer, H.E., ‘Ehe und Besitz im Jerusalem der Kreuzfahrer’, in France, J. and Zajac, W.G. (eds.), The Crusades and their Sources. Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot and Burlington, 1998), 163Google Scholar.

22 RRH, 74; Mayer, Hans E. (ed.), Die Urkunden der Lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem (Hannover, 2010), vol. I (hereafter UKJ), 56Google Scholar. Equivalents of such monastic monopolization of baking ovens and market tolls can be found in other medieval European cities. See, for example, Hilton, Class Conflict, 192.

23 UKJ, 86.

24 This may of course be due also to the loss of documentation pertaining to other institutions; however, their urban involvement is indeed documented in later decades. A well-known example for other institutions’ investment in urban infrastructures is shops that belonged to Saint Anne, yet it is impossible to date their initial appearance accurately, and the earliest documentation for properties in/near Jerusalem belonging to this institution is only from the 1150s. See Pringle, D., The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. A Corpus, vol. III: The City of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 2007), 154Google Scholar; RRH, 327; UKJ, 193 (RRR, 607). For a discussion of the monastery's development, see Mayer, H.E., Bistümer, Klöster und Stifte im Königreich Jerusalem (Stuttgart, 1977), 243–57Google Scholar.

25 ‘…the patriarch and the citizens of Jerusalem, putting their trust in the Lord, assembled in full strength at a place near the ancient Nobe,…they built a fortress of solid masonry to ensure the safety of pilgrims passing along that route’. In WT, vol. LXIII, book 14, chapter 8, 639–40, translation in Babcock, E. Atwater and Krey, A.C. (eds. and trans.), A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea. By William, Archbishop of Tyre (New York, 1943), 58Google Scholar. However, since the account was written decades later, it may be more indicative of the time of its composition. This also pertains to the broader question of the institutional differentiation between the Holy Sepulchre and the Hospitaller Order in the beginning of the twelfth century. Although indeed at first the two were closely intertwined, by the 1130s, the Hospital was already gaining an autonomous status. See Luttrell, A., ‘The earliest Hospitallers’, in Kedar, B.Z., Riley-Smith, J. and Hiestand, R. (eds.), Montjoie. Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer (Aldershot and Brookfield, 1997), 43–4Google Scholar; Elm, K., ‘Das Kapitel der regulierten chorherren vom Heiligen Grab in Jerusalem’, in Elm, K. and Fonseca, C.D. (eds.), Militia Sancti Sepulcri. Idea e instituzioni (Vatican, 1998), 210Google Scholar; Richard, J., ‘Hospitals and hospital congregations in the Latin Kingdom during the first period of the Frankish conquest’, in Kedar, B.Z., Mayer, H.E. and Smail, R.C. (eds.), Outremer. Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer (Jerusalem, 1982), 92Google Scholar.

26 What may seem at first as a decline in the burgesses’ participation in transactions in the 1130s and a rise of clergymen as their initiators, in fact reflects the collaborations between the two groups.

27 See studies by Prawer and Tischler mentioned in n. 17. Most evidently, these structures were demonstrated in the confraternity of the Holy Sepulchre. On the relationship between the Holy Sepulchre and the burgesses of Jerusalem, see Mayer, ‘Ehe und Besitz’, 155–68; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 296–314; Elm, ‘Fratres et Sorores’, 293–302.

28 RRH, 166; BB, 103.

29 Elm, ‘Fratres et Sorores’, 300; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 304–14.

30 See, for example, Mayer, ‘Ehe und Besitz’, 155–67; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 287–304.

31 As shown by Marwan Nader, non-Latin Christians could possess properties in Jerusalem on terms similar to those of Latin burgesses, which suggests that the municipal mechanisms described here applied, at least partially, to them too. See Nader, Burgesses and Burgess Law, 163–4; and idem, ‘Urban Muslims, Latin laws, and legal institutions in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Medieval Encounters, 13 (2007), 259 n. 66; Tischler, Die Burgenses, 64–5. However, this issue merits an independent discussion, which is outside the scope of the current article.

32 Similar patterns detected in the rural hinterland were dubbed by Ellenblum as forms of ‘petty enterprise’. See Frankish Rural Settlement, 71.

33 Prawer argued that this stemmed from the status of burgesses in custom law. See Crusader Institutions, 252–62.

34 The impact of contracts and institutions on the reduction of transaction costs in the Middle Ages is generally associated with the development of long-distance trade and professionalization. Although this was not the case in Jerusalem, the same mechanisms can explain, albeit cautiously, how a municipal institutional framework, such as the one developed by the Holy Sepulchre in collaboration with the patriarch, promoted commercial real-estate exchanges and enhanced the development of properties by reducing risks and providing mutual assurance. For discussions of medieval transaction costs, see Greif, A., Institutions and the Path to Modern Economy. Lessons from Medieval Trade (Cambridge, 2006), 7–8, 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bindseil, U. and Pfeil, C., ‘Specialization as a specific investment into the market: a transaction cost approach to the rise of markets and towns in medieval Germany, 800–1200’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics / Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 155 (1999), 728–54Google Scholar; Narotzky, S. and Manzano, E., ‘The Ḥisba, the Muḥtasib and the struggle over political power and a moral economy’, in Hudson, J. and Rodríguez, A. (eds.), Diverging Paths? The Shapes of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam (Leiden and Boston, 2014), 30–54Google Scholar.

35 See n. 27. This can be compared to similar contemporary mechanisms in Europe. See, for example, Vauchez, A., ‘Les confréries au Moyen Âge: esquisse d'un bilan historiographique’, Revue Historique, 275 (1986), 467–77Google Scholar.

36 For Crusader Jerusalem, this was first noted by Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 328.

37 Mayer, ‘King Fulk’, 181; Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 94, argues that the patriarch's quarter was the first area to be settled after the conquest, which would explain its relative density.

38 RRH, 75; BB, 20; UKJ, 55 (RRR, 146) (1114); RRH, 95; R. Hiestand, Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heilige Lande (Göttingen, 1985), no. 21 (RRR, 207) (1121). In 1121, Pope Calixtus II admonished the cantor and succentor of the church ‘ut in domibus suis quasi seculariter manentes’. Hiestand, Papsturkunden, 130, no. 23; RRH, 94 (RRR, 206). See also Zöller, W., Regularkanoniker im Heiligen Land (Berlin, 2018), 70Google Scholar. Another possible example of these difficulties can be found in RRH, 181; UKJ, 139 (RRR, 365) (1138). This document reports the donation of 10 houses inside Jerusalem, of which 3 were previously owned by canons of the Holy Sepulchre. However, it is impossible to establish conclusively whether the canons indeed occupied the properties or were merely listed as their legal owners. For the debate concerning this issue, see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 300; Mayer, ‘King Fulk’, 180–2.

39 Lack of sufficient data from other areas of the city during this period prevents a suitable comparison to prove this hypothesis conclusively; indeed, canons may have witnessed these transactions simply as a part of their legal obligations.

40 Initially, this may imply that the collaborations described here between the burgesses and the Holy Sepulchre were confined to the patriarch's quarter, as part of the above-mentioned division of jurisdiction between the king and the patriarch (see n. 18). However, as shown in the scholarship, this was not the case, and this type of involvement on the part of the canons extended to other parts of the city as well. This was best demonstrated in Mayer, ‘Ehe und Besitz’, 155–67 (see especially 162 for the broader impact of patriarchal policies). For several additional prominent examples of transactions indicating similar levels of involvement and collaboration with the burgesses outside the patriarch's quarter, see Mayer, Von der Cour des Bourgeois, 26, 36, as well as RRH, 166; BB, 103 (RRR, 348); RRH, 223; BB, 68 (RRR, 420). The distribution of properties belonging to the Holy Sepulchre throughout the city, and its involvement in these properties, is further attested in rental lists, which will be discussed later in this article.

41 This collaboration was first noted in Riley-Smith, ‘The death and burial’.

42 In the case of the Hospital, the collaboration also relied on the close institutional bonds that tied it to the Holy Sepulchre during the early phases of its development. See n. 25.

43 This resulted from the far-reaching papal privileges secured in this period by the Hospital, granting it an autonomous status that had significant financial and institutional repercussions for the Holy Sepulchre. See Hamilton, B., The Latin Church in the Crusader States (London, 1980), 74–5Google Scholar; Riley-Smith, ‘The death and burial’, 174–5.

44 Patriarch Fulcher's unsuccessful attempt to mediate between Queen Melisende and her son, Baldwin III, in an inheritance strife that escalated to a military clash, followed by the latter's victory, substantially weakened the patriarch's status. Mayer, H.E., ‘Studies in the history of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 26 (1972), 168–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The situation was exacerbated by the rising tensions between the patriarch and the Holy Sepulchre during the patriarchate of Fulcher's successor, Amalric of Nesle. See Hamilton, The Latin Church, 76–80. A bull issued by Pope Alexander III in 1168 underlines the tension between the patriarch and the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. See RRH, 441; Hiestand, Papsturkunden, 246–7, no. 92, and 266–7, no. 103. Between 1170 and 1172, Alexander III again needed to interfere on behalf of the canons, reminding the patriarch that he had been forbidden to act on important matters without seeking the approval and advice of the chapter.

46 On the development of the Hospital's facilities, see Kedar, B.Z., ‘A twelfth-century description of the Jerusalem hospital’, in Nicholson, H. (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. II: Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot and Brookfield, 1998), 3–26Google Scholar. On the Hospital's place within the urban fabric both in the Levant and the West, see Carraz, D., ‘Templars and Hospitallers in the cities of the West and Latin East (twelfth to thirteenth centuries)’, Crusades, 12 (2013), 103–20Google Scholar.

47 RRH, 327; Roulx, J. Delaville Le (ed.), Cartulaire général de l'Ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310 (Paris, 1894–1906), vol. I, no. 250 (hereafter Cart. Hosp.)Google Scholar. However, Mayer suggested to locate the vineyard farther north on the road to Nablus (UKJ, 193).

48 WT, vol. LXIIIa, book 18, chapter 3, 639–40. The new complex was first described c. 1165 by Johannes of Würzburg. For a discussion of pilgrims’ accounts vis-à-vis the archaeological evidence, see Pringle, D., ‘The layout of the Jerusalem hospital in the twelfth century’, in Upton-Ward, J. (ed.), The Military Orders on Land and by Sea, vol. IV (London and New York, 2008), 91–110Google Scholar. The increase in detailed descriptions of the Hospitaller compound found in pilgrims’ accounts from the second half of the twelfth century, such as Johannes of Würzburg and Theoderich, may be indicative of the development that this area underwent. However, as noted by Basit Hammad Qureshi, this may also be part of a broader transformation of the genre of pilgrims’ accounts, and its increasing tendency to refer to the contemporary urban layout. See ‘A hierophany emergent: the discursive reconquest of the urban landscape of Jerusalem in Latin pilgrimage accounts from the twelfth century’, The Historian, 76 (2014), 725–49.

49 On the importance of medieval cathedral squares in the urban fabric, see Dey, H., to, ‘From “street” “piazza”: urban politics, public ceremony, and the redefinition of platea in communal Italy and beyond’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 937Google Scholar.

50 For the Hospitaller census see RRH, 483, recently discussed by Pringle, D., ‘A rental of Hospitaller properties in twelfth-century Jerusalem’, in Edgington, S. and Nicholson, H.J. (eds.), Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury (Farnham, 2014), 194–6Google Scholar; For the census of the Holy Sepulchre, see RRH, 421; BB, 168, 169.

51 On the dating of these documents see Pringle, ‘A rental of Hospitaller properties’, 186–9; RRR, 712 n. 92.

52 RRR, 755 n. 103.

53 RRH, 365a; Cart. Hosp., no. 283 (c. 1160). This transaction includes a sale of a house on David Street for the extraordinary sum of 900 besants. Its terms were repeated and renegotiated in two additional transactions, one in 1172 (RRH, 494a; Cart. Hosp., no. 432), and another in 1175 (RRH, 535; Cart. Hosp., no. 469); as well as RRH, 528; Cart. Hosp., no. 483 (RRR, 941). Recent archaeological excavations locate substantial parts of the Hospitaller complex along David Street: Berkovich, I. and Re'em, A., ‘The location of the Crusader Hospital on the Muristan – a reassessment’, in Vieweger, D. and Gibson, S. (eds.), The Archaeology and History of the Church of the Redeemer and the Muristan in Jerusalem (Oxford, 2016), 193–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Re'em, A. and Forestani, R., ‘Jerusalem, the Old City, the Muristan’, Hadashot Arkheologiyot. Excavations and Surveys in Israel, 129 (2017)Google Scholar: www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25216, accessed 1 Jul. 2018. For a discussion of this group of documents, see Tischler, Die Burgenses, 166–9. Later examples of large Hospitaller monetary investments around that area include RRH, 504 (Mayer, Von der Cour des Bourgeois, no. 3) (1173), a purchase of a curtille right outside the city below the Tower of David, and near the road leading to Bethlehem for 760 besants (confirmed in RRH, 517b; UKJ, 373); and the aforementioned RRH, 528 (Cart. Hosp., no. 483) (1175), and RRH, 535 (1175), naming more properties on David Street.

54 It led from one of the city's main gates to its holiest shrines, passing along central commercial areas and symbols of authority such as the citadel and royal palace. On the gate, the palace and the citadel, see, for example, Boas, A., Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades (London and New York, 2001), 50–3, 73–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent excavations in the Street of the Temple, continuing David Street to the east revealed what is presumed to be a butchery, mentioned in sources from the end of the twelfth century, thus shedding new light on the functions of this important thoroughfare. See YZelinger, ., Haber, M. and Shotten-Hallel, V., ‘Jerusalem's Via Templi – a twelfth-century builder's exercise’, New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region, 11 (2017), 226–38 (in Hebrew)Google Scholar.

55 RRH, 528 (Cart. Hosp., no. 483) (1175).

56 Such a taberna is mentioned in the documents cited in n. 53. On taverns in Frankish Jerusalem, see Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades, 167. This document is noteworthy not only because of its unusual reference to a tavern inside the city, but also because this is a rare case, at least for Frankish Jerusalem, where the traces of a written record can be located in a contemporary map. See Levy-Rubin, M., ‘The rediscovery of the Uppsala map of Crusader Jerusalem’, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 111 (1995), 162–7Google Scholar.

57 Although it might be tempting to argue that these zoning processes aimed to clear space for the new Hospitaller compound, which was presumably already built by 1165 when it was described by Johannes of Würzburg, most of the relevant transactions are either contemporaneous or from a later date. Earlier transactions, too, do not allow us to pinpoint purchases targeted to make room for the new compound. It seems more plausible, then, that this zoning aimed to demarcate the Hospital's sphere of influence near the already built compound, or perhaps to expand it in the future.

58 This zoning process can be traced in transactions starting from the late 1160s. For example, RRH, 431; Cart. Hosp., no. 376. However, expansion of Hospitaller presence around the Muristan can be noted even in earlier exchanges, such as RRH, 204 of 1141, granting the Hospital a garden near the patriarch's house.

59 The legal aspects of these processes are outside the scope of the current article. For several studies dealing with this issue, see Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 263–95 (esp. 267), 328; Mayer, Von der Cour des Bourgeois, 1–37; Nader, Burgesses and Burgess Law, 140.

60 On the impact of the conquest of Jerusalem on Crusade spirituality, and the integration of the conquest of Jerusalem into the framework of redemptive history, see Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City, 35–48, 109–40; Purkis, W.J., Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095 – c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), 59–85Google Scholar; Rubenstein, J., Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York, 2011), 273–303Google Scholar.

61 This was of course in line with the broader socio-religious functions of a cathedral church, and the services it provided to the community. See, for example, Hamilton, S., Church and People in the Medieval West (Harlow, 2013), 163–223Google Scholar.

Figure 0

Table 1. Initiators of transactions according to social groups, 1099–1139

Figure 1

Figure 1. Jerusalem in the twelfth century – residential and monumental development

Figure 2

Table 2. Burgesses’ witnessing patterns in Jerusalem

Figure 3

Table 3. Participation of the Hospital of Saint John and the Holy Sepulchre in commercial transactions inside Jerusalem

Figure 4

Figure 2. Demarcation of assets in the rentals of the early 1160s Note: Translations are based on Pringle's above-mentioned edition of the list, and the RRR.