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GRANTOR

RÖHRICHT’S REGESTA REVISED

The Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani, refashioned by Jonathan Riley-Smith†, with assistance from
Ronnie Ellenblum†, Benjamin Kedar, Iris Shagrir, Anna Gutgarts, Peter Edbury, Jonathan Phillips and Myra Bom

Current managing team: Benjamin Kedar, Iris Shagrir, Anna Gutgarts, Peter Edbury

 

INTRODUCTION

Röhricht’s Regesta Revised is planned to be a calendar of all the charters, other legal or formal documents and letters that were composed between 1098 and 1291 in the Latin kingdoms of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Cilician Armenia, the principality of Antioch and the counties of Edessa and Tripoli, or were addressed to individuals in those settlements. It is based on Reinhold Röhricht’s Regesta regni Hierosolymitani 2 vols (Innsbruck, 1893-1904), the entries in which are signalled by the letters RRH. The revision has reached the year 1244 and will be continued to 1291, but new material is always coming to light and Röhricht’s Regesta Revised will be regularly up-dated.
Suggestions for new entries or corrections are welcome.

Every RRH entry has been rechecked against the latest or best edition of the original document and has been redrafted. Many new entries have been added. They include newly discovered material in law-books, western and eastern cartularies. chronicles and narrative histories, secular governmental records, papal and episcopal registers, necrologies and other ecclesiastical documents, Genoese and Venetian notarial archives, letter collections, the Templar process, Arabic, Greek, Armenian and Syriac narratives and Jewish records. Also included are all known inscriptions and other epigraphic material, such as epitaphs and commemorative plaques, that refer to persons living under Latin rule or are deemed to be of historical significance.

Forgeries and deperdita are clearly signalled and justified by reference to existing scholarship.  Use is made of the symbols * for a lost text and † for a forgery, which were employed by Hans Mayer in his Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem. Calendar entries are enclosed with square brackets [....]. All of Mayer’s deperdita are included, the evidence for many of which is provided by references to confirmations in later royal charters, but gifts by other landlords, which are known only through mentions in later documents, have not been entered, because it is not always clear that every gift was recorded formally.

An attempt has been made to date the entries more precisely, when this has been possible. Like Röhricht, all names and technical terms are included, together with full witness lists, but standardisation has been rejected, the entries are more detailed and all protocols of the rulers of the settlements and references to eleemosynary grants have been noted. Röhricht’s practice of listing every published edition of a charter or letter has been abandoned. Reference is generally made only to the latest or best edition, which in many instances provides a guide to other editions should a reader be interested in them. Dating clauses and legally necessary, but otiose, phrases have usually been omitted, as have entries that are not strictly relevant, such as commercial agreements between Italian merchants and the government of Egypt.  And where a document such as a papal confirmation includes lists of European properties, these are indicated by reference to the regions in which the estates were located.

The most striking departure has been to render the calendar in English, in the hope that it will be useful to university teachers who want to introduce their students to a valuable range of sources.

Technical terms have been left in the original languages (although accompanied on first appearance by a translation when the meaning is beyond doubt).

The names of all places and of all individuals residing in or visiting the Latin East are rendered as they appear in the documents, with the exception of the names of the following persons, places and institutions: the kings of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Cilician Armenia, the princes of Antioch and the counts of Edessa and Tripoli; the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem; European rulers or famous ecclesiastical figures; leading first crusaders; places well-known in history (Aleppo, Antioch, Ascalon, Beirut, Bethlehem, Caesarea, Damascus, Famagusta, Haifa, Hebron, Jaffa, Jericho, Jerusalem, Latakia, Limassol, Lydda, Mont Pèlerin, Nablus, Nicosia, Paphos, Ramla, Sidon, Tiberias, Tripoli, Tyre); city churches and famous sites in Jerusalem, such as the Tower of David; and well-known abbeys and religious orders.

 

Jonathan Riley-Smith, 15 July 2016

 

 

 

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