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Pisans, Catalans, Sicilians, and the men of Provence. The former class had permanent settlements of the most extensive character, including churches, as well as shops, and factories, and warehouses. The existence of separate churches, or what we should now call freedom of worship, was doubtless a necessary corollary to the establishment of factories, although the Rupenian dynasty itself had made act of submission alike to the Western Church and the Western Empire, in accepting the Royal title from the Emperor with the assent of the Pope. Such, at least, is the language of M. Langlois. Prof. Bryce, in the interesting, though unfortunately very brief, summary which he gives of "Imperial Titles and Pretensions," chap. xii. of his “ Holy Roman Empire" (1866), simply states, without any details, that "the Kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI. to confess themselves his vassals and ask his help." That the King of Cyprus, rather loosely described as " up to that time a feudatory of the Eastern Roman Empire," was crowned "as a feudatory of the Western Empire" by Conrad, Bishop of Ildesheim, Chancellor of the Empire, in September, 1197, is mentioned in De Cherrier's "Lutte des Papes et des Empereurs de la Maison de Souabe" (Paris, 1841, Vol. I., p. 485.) The King so crowned, however, who was Amanry de Lusignan, brother of Guy of Jerusalem, had never been a feudatory of the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin Kingdom of Cyprus had been created in his favour by the Emperor, Henry VI., on his petition and homage at the Imperial Diet at Gelnhausen, in 1195. (Huillard-Bréholles, "Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi," Paris, 1859, Intr., p. 333.) Now Henry VI. died on the 28th September, 1195, and M. Langlois refers the acceptance of the Royal title by Leo II. of Armenia to the year 1199. It would seem, therefore, that although the King of Cyprus may have been crowned, as he certainly was invested by transmission of the sceptre (conveyed to him by the Archbishops of

Trani and Brindisi, Huillard-Bréholles, op. cit. ib.) while as yet Henry was alive, and at any rate was crowned in his name and by his authority, exercised through his Chancellor: the confirmation of the Armenian crown must have been due to another Emperor than Henry VI., and another Pope than Cælestine III. The Catholicos of the Armenians who received a Pallium in 1239, must have brought a certain portion at least of his flock into the Roman Communion. But their maintenance of an independent spirit is shown by the fact that the Catholicos entreated Innocent III. to absolve Frederick II. from the excommunication pronounced against him at the First Council of Lyons. Yet we do not know that the people generally followed their Kings to any appreciable extent. Whether the history of the Latin Armenian Church, the internal division of which into Hassounists and Kupelianists, partly due to the ecclesiastical events of 1870, seems to have been lately healed by the reconciliation of Mg. Kupelian, can be traced back by documentary evidence in unbroken succession to the period of the Crusades, we are not able summarily to decide. But even if there was, as we believe to have been the case, a small Armenian community which went with its Kings in acknowledging the Bishop of Rome as the Divinely appointed Centre of Unity, and Universal Bishop, that community, with the tenacity of national sentiment always manifested by the Armenian race, would doubtless make the liturgical maintenance of the national language a "sine quâ non " of its accession to Roman Communion. That would in itself have constituted a valid reason for the demand of separate churches on the part of the foreign settlers, though we incline to think that it was in the main a theological and not simply a linguistic necessity. We content ourselves, therefore, with stating the fact, without claiming it as an example of tolerance rare among the Kings of the Earth, whether in East or West, for many centuries after the days of Leo II. of Armenia.

Tolerance alone, however, would not have satisfied the Republic of Genoa in any matter which was capable of being secured by Law. In the year 1200 we find the Republic sending a fleet and an Admiral (not a very pacific style of Embassy) to Lajazzo, the principal port of the Kingdom of Sis, to demand of the King that the privileges which had hitherto been enjoyed by the Genoese in the way of Comity should now be placed on the firm footing of Convention, signed by the King's sign-manual, and sealed with the Royal Seal. Three different Charters are known to us, embodying the privileges accorded to the Genoese by the Kings of Lesser Armenia. In the first, a Chrysobullum of the year 1201 of our era, which followed on the embassy of Niccolò Doria, Admiral of the Republic, with a strong fleet, Leo II., "Rex Armeniorum, filius Stephani et de potenti genere Rupinorum," raised to the Royal dignity by the Empire and the Holy See, grants the following rights to the subjects of the Republic, "Assensu Curiæ Regalis."

I. Freedom to come and go throughout the Kingdom, to buy and sell, to enter and leave the ports.

II. Abolition in their favour of Customs rights (i.e., as we shall see later, of the ad valorem dues, not of the fixed Customs dues of the Kingdom).

III. Abolition of the right of wreck.

IV. The concession of land at Sis, Mopsuesta, and Tarsus, for the building of Hospices (Fondachi), houses, churches, &c.

V. The creation of Courts in the above-mentioned towns. VI. Protection for the Genoese (i.e., we presume, in feudal language, extending the King's peace to them), and the abolition of the right of search (tzerca, query Italian ricerca ?), explained as meaning the dues exacted by the Treasury on the restoration of stolen goods.

This Bull, which is in the Archives of Genoa (Liber Jurium, Tom. I., fol. 231), was drawn up by the Chancellor

of the Kingdom of Armenia, John, Archbishop of Sis, Abbot of Trazarg (Trium Arcuum Abbas), subsequently Patriarch as John VII., or the Magnificent. The Kings of the Rupenian dynasty seem to have used the tribal and territorial forms of kingship indiscriminately. In the Capitulation of 1201, Leo II. calls himself, as we have seen, King of the Armenians (Thakavor Haïotz). In the Capitulation of 1215, the same Monarch styles himself "Rex Armeniæ," while in a Draft Capitulation of 1283, his successor, Leo III., calls himself King of all the Armenians. Some justification of our suspicion of "vis major," or at least that amount of pressure which the presence of a fleet of ships of war has been known to exercise in modern times, may be found, we think, on a comparison of the Capitulations of 1201 and 1215. In the former, Leo II. granted an unlimited extra-territorial Judicature to the subjects of the Republic of Genoa in Lesser Armenia. At that time Niccolò Doria's fleet lay at anchor in the waters of Lajazzo. In the latter, when we are not aware of the existence of such powerful arguments in favour of concession, the same King reserved to himself cases of robbery and murder, which were to be justiciable in the High Court (Curia Regalis) of the Kingdom. The later Bull also goes into more detail in a matter which had been left somewhat indeterminate in 1201, viz., the question of the dues which the great feudatories of the Kingdom-the Barons of Tiberias, the Lords of Gorigos, and others—were in the habit of exacting on merchandise passing through the defiles of Mount Taurus, which were wont thus to become a source of profit to these lords of the mountaingorges. Over these passes the King had no rights, and could therefore grant no concessions, until any of the fiefs in question reverted to the Crown, in which case the King promises to exempt the Genoese merchants from payment. Like his brethren in feudal Europe, the King of all the Armenians found his power limited by his great vassals.

He had sought to make himself a position as like as possible to that of a Western Monarch. Perhaps he found that in his success he had created for himself a Frankenstein, in the shape of numerous vassals who were quick to seize on all the points in the Feudal system which they could turn to their own advantage. The next Capitulation with which we are here concerned (that of 1288), seems not to be more than a draft presented by the Armenian King for the consideration of the Republic, for although it is signed by Leo III., it does not appear to be a Chrysobullum; and a Genoese Ambassador, Benedetto Zakaria, the same who had received from Leo the Draft of 1288, returned the following year to Sis with fresh demands. But he found Leo III. dead, and his son, Hethoum II. reigning in his stead. It does not appear that the second embassy was successful, and indeed the disturbed state of the Kingdom of Armenia was not likely to leave the King much time to discuss the affairs of foreigners. From this time it appears probable that the Genoese contented themselves with standing on the privileges which they had already secured, without attempting to add to them. And as it is clear that the Diploma of 1288 represented what Leo III. of Armenia was willing to grant in the way of extra-territorial privileges to the subjects of the Republic of Genoa, though it would seem that these concessions, ample as they were, did not satisfy the desires of the Republic to their full extent, we shall be warranted in considering that Diploma as presenting a fair picture of the ex-territoriality conceded by an Eastern Christian monarch to Western Christians at the close of the period of the Crusades. The age of St. Louis and of Edward I., of Dante and of St. Francis of Assisi, is also an age of constitutional and legislative progress. For it is also the age of Simon de Montfort, the true founder of our modern Parliamentary system, and of the Emperor Frederick II., whose almost life-long struggle with the Papacy, under some of the mightiest occupants of the

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