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Cyprus was European throughout the Middle Ages. Of course, until independence in 1960, Cyprus was part of Europe politically during the entire Christian era, a province of empires centered in turn on Rome, Byzantine Constantinople, Venice, Ottoman Constantinople and finally London. The major exception was a long spell of independence known as the Frankish period. The exception merely proves the rule, however, and it was taken for granted that Frankish Cyprus, through blood ties, language, religion, culture, social structure, the economy, and art, was an independent European kingdom for these three centuries. The historiography of Frankish Cyprus reinforces this fact. The primary source material, written in Cyprus itself during this time, is not in one language, but mainly in four: French, Greek, Italian, and Latin, with minor texts in other European languages. Since the Ottoman conquest of 1571, the main scholars approaching the subject have written in English, French, German, Greek, and Italian. Thus, both the subject matter and the scholarly field are European.
In May 1191 King Richard I of England, the legendary Lionheart, conquered Cyprus on his way to liberate Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. Sometime in the summer of 1192 the Lusignan dynasty was established on the island. The Lusignan rule began when the ousted king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, from Poitou in western France, arranged to buy Cyprus from Richard, after the island had been administrated by the Knights of the Order of the Temple for less than a year. Cyprus was never to be part of the Byzantine Empire again, while the Kingdom of the Lusignans far outlasted the crusader states in Syria and Palestine, becoming the last outpost of Western Christendom in the Eastern Mediterranean against the advances of the Arabs and the Ottomans. Guy was succeeded by his brother, Aimery (1196-1205), who secured a crown from Emperor Henry VI of Hohenstaufen of Germany in 1196-1197, thus elevating Cyprus to a kingdom. Aimery further legitimated his position by seeking the establishment of a Latin Church on the island from Pope Celestine III in 1196. A diocesan structure was introduced with an archbishop in Nicosia and suffragan bishops in Limassol, Famagusta, and Paphos. The presence of an institutionalised Latin Church represented the expression of the cultural and spiritual identity of the Frankish regime and was necessary for the legitimisation of its secular authority. Guy's descendants ruled until the line died out in the 1470s, and in 1489 the monarchy was officially abolished and the island became a dominion of the Republic of Venice.
The Lusignans were well aware of the economic and political importance of Cyprus for the consolidation of the crusader states in Syria and Palestine and the success of the crusading movement. This created special political links and cultural affinities of the Kingdom of Cyprus with France, traditionally the focus of the efforts of the Latin settlers in the East to prompt a new crusade. Consequently, the Lusignans often allowed the island's material wealth and military capacity to be used for the cause of the crusades, and Cypriot knights participated in crusading expeditions from the West. Within the framework of the 13th and 14th century crusades, the strategic role of Cyprus was well appreciated. The island became an important regular provisioning centre for agricultural and other products for crusaders from the West and also a convenient meeting or withdrawal place for the crusader troops and fleets from Europe in general and France in particular: Emperor Frederick II of Germany stationed in Limassol in 1228, King Louis IX of France in 1248-1249, and Lord Edward, future King Edward I of England, in 1271. Moreover, following the successive retreats of the crusaders in the Levant, especially after the 1291 disaster that led to the loss of Acre, Cyprus became a natural shelter for the waves of Latin and Christian Syrian refugees from the mainland. Cyprus exploited its new position on the border between Islam and Christendom. The island's stable prosperity until the third quarter of the 14th century was closely linked to its importance as a final Christian stop on the trade and pilgrim routes of the time; as a port of call the island hosted famous pilgrims and travellers from the West.
In 1334 Venice, the Knights of St John in Rhodes, France, the Papacy, Byzantium, and Cyprus under Hugh IV formed a Christian naval league with the intention of controlling Turkish piracy and expansionism in the Aegean. A new league was brought into being in 1344 and the port of Smyrna was captured; the league was renewed in the 1350s. In the 14th century, dynastic marriages between the Lusignan royal house and members of French and Aragonese royalty point to the island's political importance. The romantic figure of Peter I of Lusignan (1359-1369) marked this period of the history of the island. He twice toured Western Europe in order to promote the launching of a new crusade; his exploits in Alexandria in 1365 against the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and his successful wars against the Turks in Southern Anatolia were praised by writers of the calibre of Guillaume de Machaut, Francesco Petrarca, and Geoffrey Chaucer. In the years to come Cyprus would usually be included in Western plans for the liberation of the Holy Land, plans which, however, would not materialise. The Genoese invasion and the capture of Famagusta in 1373-1374 marked the end of Lusignan political influence in international affairs and of the golden days of the island's prosperity.
The main component of the population of Cyprus was Orthodox Greek. Frankish and Greek coexistence on the island was peaceful and often fruitful for both ethnic groups. Evidently, the Lusignans were concerned about the demographic superiority of the Greeks and welcomed Latin settlers. Although it is difficult to assess the number of the Frankish population, it must never have surpassed one fifth to one fourth of the total population. It is generally accepted that rural areas were predominantly Greek whereas the majority of the Latin population, including Italian merchants, lived in the towns and most Frankish knights in Nicosia. Most of the first Western settlers in Cyprus were dispossessed knights and burgesses of predominantly French origin who had lost their lands and incomes in the Latin states in Syria and Palestine. Others were newcomers in the East, from Western Europe or Guy of Lusignan's native Poitou. Everyone welcomed the opportunity to acquire a new livelihood on the island. The policy of Guy and his successors was one of balancing the demographic difference with the native population; this demanded generous land concessions since the main attraction for the new settlers lay in social privileges. A calculation on the basis of the extant numbers of the fiefs distributed (300 to knights and 200 to turcopoles) would give a population of higher and lesser nobility of approximately 2.000 at the time of the Latin settlement. The number of knights never seems to have exceeded the initial 300. It is impossible, however, to assess the unspecified number of the lower classes both at the time of the settlement and later. It is certain that the inflow of refugees from the mainland in the last quarter of the 13th century must have increased the number of the Latin population of the island.
Until the third quarter of the 14th century, the Frankish landed nobility was an extremely homogeneous group; no evidence concerning intermarriage with Greek families survive and class endogamy was the main trait of marriage alliances. A high mortality rate amongst children and a young mortality age amongst adults, though, together with the post-1291 economic prosperity of the burgesses, gradually threatened the social balance and allowed class intermarriage with lesser nobility, wealthy burgesses, or Italians. Moreover, the 1306-1310 civil war, the policy of Peter I of Lusignan (1359-1369) of enfeoffing foreigners in his service, as well as the Genoese invasion of 1373-1374, the Mamluk invasion of 1426, and the civil war of 1460-1464 for the succession to the throne weakened the traditional Frankish nobility. In the 15th century, dynastic marriages were arranged with the ruling houses of Byzantium and various Italian cities, another indication of the growing Greek influence and Italian penetration. By the end of the civil war, many families of French crusader origin had died out and many members of the old-established families who had supported Queen Charlotte shared her exile to Italy. At the same time, in his struggle for the throne, James II of Lusignan (1464-1473) had to rely on foreign mercenaries whom he rewarded with Cypriot lands and titles. After his marriage to Caterina Cornaro there was a growing Venetian presence on the island. By the end of the 15th century, Cypriot nobility included Greeks who had risen economically and socially, Italians, and Spaniards.
Under the Lusignans, Western trade communities acquired extensive rights: tariff reductions, rights of jurisdiction over their own nationals, rights to own property and have their own quarters, and government guarantees of safety and protection. The Genoese were granted privileges in 1218 and 1232, the Provengaux (Marseilles, Montpellier, and other Provengaux towns) in 1236, and the Pisans and the Aragonese in 1291. The Venetians were granted privileges only in 1306 despite their successive requests, unless the Lusignans honoured earlier privileges granted by Constantinople. In the 13th century, the numerical presence of the Latin merchants was limited compared with the post-1291 boom, and the colonies of the major Italian trade cities were under the jurisdiction of their consuls in Syria. In the 1270s-1280s and following the Latin setback in Syria, there was a gradual increase in commercial activity and the presence of Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and Provengaux merchants was more prominent. Famagusta became an international entrepot and a busy commercial centre for goods travelling to and from the West or the East in the 14th century, and by the end of the 13th century natives of Italian, Provengaux, and Aragonese cities of an impressive variety and number relocated their trade business to Cyprus. Surviving evidence suggests that the Genoese and the Ligurians in general represented the largest trade community in Famagusta, followed by the Venetians, the Pisans, the Anconese, the Florentines, and other Italian cities, and the Provengaux and the Catalans. There were consuls of Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Marseilles, Montpellier, Narbonne, and Barcelona. Trade companies were also represented on the island by their agents, such as the Florentine banking house of Bardi, whose agent Francesco Balducci Pegolotti was in Cyprus in the 1330s. In the main, the Lusignan regime was on better terms with the Venetians than with any of the other major trading communities.
With the establishment of the Frankish rule in Cyprus in 1192, a new complex social system had to be implanted in order to regulate relations between the two communities. The institutions that were introduced were feudal in nature and Frankish in origin. The Frankish settlers brought with them their customs governing tenure, military obligations, and the inheritance of fiefs. However, the social system that was established was characterised not only by innovation but by continuity as well: it also derived from the island's Byzantine past and it was intended to achieve conditions of peaceful coexistence as well as optimum economic and social advantages for the nobility and the well-being of the populace. The permanent settlement of the incoming group demanded the establishment of a system that was not one of colonial exploitation from the outside but of administration from within, based on cooperation with the existing population. The Lusignan regime also introduced to the island the legal system of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem as it was described in the Assises, an unofficial set of treatises in Old French designed to advise people how to plead or to explain the law. The Assises were based on the procedure and the decisions of the High Court and the Court of Burgesses (les assises et les bons usages et les bones costumes dou reaume de Jerusalem, les queles l'on doit tenir ou reaume de Chipre). In the able hands of the jurists of the 13th century, noble and burgess men of law and letters, it was the vernacular, French as opposed to Latin, that became the language used in the prestigious domains of rhetoric and law.
From the beginning, a long-lasting pattern of social discourse originated between the two ethnic groups: the Lusignans would try to balance the demographic difference and maintain the social and ethnic boundaries through the enforcement of a strictly stratified social system while the Greeks would gradually achieve the penetration of the social frontier through their economic and professional rise. Moreover, cultural interaction in the domains of language and religion as well as intermarriage, phenomena that had started from the beginning of the Latin settlement and culminated in the 15th century, would lead to the assimilation of the Frankish community into Greek society. By the middle of the 14th century, the Pope complained of the large number of noble women and commoners attending Greek churches; in the 15th century, the Papacy was obliged to sanction intermarriage between Greeks and Latins as well as marriages and funerals for the Latin population celebrated in accordance with the Greek rite. At the same time, the growing economic and political control of the Genoese and the Venetians was effected to the detriment of the Frankish community.
Contrary to the universalist goals of the Papacy for a Latin Christian East, Greek Cypriots upheld their tradition of religious independence. Until the 1260s relations between the Greek and Latin clergy were often strained, and sometimes violent. Usually the state tried to keep the peace in the interests of security and prosperity. With the compromise known as the Bulla Cypria of 1260, however, things generally quieted down. In this climate of general tolerance, the Frankish period saw a great flowering of Greek and Latin monasticism and of other forms of piety.
Demographic and literary evidence suggests that the French settlers in Cyprus spoke the langue d'oil. As a result of the Lusignan linguistic policy of tolerance that did not exclude either language from any domain of language use, both the Greeks and the Franks perceived mutual advantages in maintaining their languages. The social and economic advantages involved in language acquisition provided the Greeks with the necessary motivation to learn French and / or Latin while the new social and demographic reality of the Franks demanded the adoption of the local form of Greek as a means of communication with the general population. Ethnic antagonism in terms of rejecting each other's language did not occur. On the contrary, bilingualism in the form of code-switching according to domain or social context of verbal interaction was adopted by categories of individuals; it was used in both the domains of administration and justice and those of everyday life and social intercourse. Diglossia, on the other hand, as the conscious differentiation of high and low forms of the same language, meant that in the ecclesiastical domain the vernaculars were usually excluded. Speakers functionally and conceptually distinguished Greek (the vernacular and the koine), French, and Latin, even though it is difficult to assess the population proportion and stratum involved.
Although language, like religion, constituted one of the major marks of group identification, language loyalties did not serve as a bond strong enough for ethnic collectivities to be based on, and linguistic interaction took place from an early time. Gradually the Greek Cypriot dialect emerged as a lingua franca for the entire population. The dialect was formed under the corrosive action of French influences that mainly concerned the domains of administrative lexicon and phonetics. There were few opportunities for proper Byzantine education locally; Greek elementary education was provided by Greek monasteries or schools in the towns run by churchmen. Similarly, an adequate Latin education was provided in the mendicant and cathedral schools and, later, in schools founded by the state in Nicosia. Cypriots often sought higher education in the centres of the Byzantine world or at the main Western universities. With the fall of Constantinople and the growing presence of the Venetians on the island, Italian universities became the main centres of attraction for Cypriots studying abroad.
Literary production in Cyprus during the Lusignan rule must be viewed in terms of the multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the Cypriot society of the time and must be studied as the cultural product of the fruitful encounter between the Greeks and the Latins. Scholarly classifications that distinguish between Greek and Frankish literary production on the basis of language may have some bearing only for the 13th century, but become meaningless in the context of a society that profited from a three-century process of cultural exchange and interaction. Cypriot men of letters made use of all the linguistic resources available to them. The change in the literary languages used by Cypriot writers (Greek and Old French from the 13th to the mid-14th century, the Greek Cypriot dialect in the 15th, and the Greek Cypriot dialect and Italian in the 16th) reflects cultural relations and linguistic evolution in the Lusignan kingdom. Cypriot men of letters drew upon both the Byzantine and the Western literary traditions as well as the tradition of the Levant (Greek ecclesiastical and Latin crusader). In the 13th century, contacts with France and Western Europe in general reinforced the literary and cultural links of the Franks with the West. Similarly, the Greek Church constituted the main channel of literary alimentation for the Greeks. However, some particularly Cypriot characteristics may be traced in literary form and content which contributed to the creation of a tradition of medieval Cypriot literature that went beyond the linguistic and ethnic barriers: thematically, a keen interest in legal and historical literature and, stylistically, the use of prose and the vernaculars (Old French as opposed to Latin and the Greek Cypriot dialect as opposed to the Byzantine koine). With these stylistic and linguistic means the Cypriot medieval chroniclers wrote the dynastic histories of the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, and it is not accidental that they were all connected with the circle of jurists or educated bureaucrats.
Until the death of Hugh IV of Lusignan in 1359, which coincided with the first outbreak of the Black Death and the ensuing demographic and social changes, French secular literary production on the island reflected the interests of a chivalrous, feudal society and was the direct descendant of the crusader literary tradition of the Latin East. In addition to this society's fascination with law that led to the development of an important legal tradition, a historiographical tradition emerged that must be placed within the framework of the historiographical literature of the crusader states in Syria and Palestine. Thus, apart from a few works in verse (some love songs by Ralph of Soissons, some epic songs, an allegorical poem, La Dime de Penitance, written in Nicosia in 1288 by John of Journy, and some ‘poemes de circonstance’ in the works of Philip of Novara and Gerard of Monreal), the entire literary production of the period was composed in Old French (with some local particularities) and in prose, and it includes only historical and moral works.
Surviving historical literature bears evidence to a remarkable continuity and diversity and covers chronologically the entire period; it includes chronicles (the Continuations of William of Tyre and the chronicle known as Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Tresorier), Philip of Novara’s memoirs of the 1229-1233 civil war (Estoire de la querre qui fu entre l’empereor Frederic et Johan d’lbelin), Gerard of Monreal’s early 14th century compilation Les Gestes des Chiprois (which includes the Chronique de Terre Sainte, the memoirs of Philip of Novara, and the Chronique du Templier de Tyr), annals (Les Annales de Terre Sainte), and genealogical literature (Les Lignages d’Outremer). The important figure of Philip of Novara dominated this period. An Italian from Novara in Lombardy, Philip became a Levantine French by adoption; a soldier, a statesman, and a jurist, Philip left an important literary work only part of which has survived. Apart from his memoirs, he composed works in verse that have not come down to us, a moral treatise , a moral treatise (Les Quatre Ages de l’homme), and a legal treatise (Le Livre de forme de plait).
In the main, French literature produced on the island followed Western models; the presence of scholars of the calibre of Raymond Lull and Peter of Palude, as well as of writers such as Peter of Paris, Robert of Boron, Martino da Canale, and Marino Sanudo Torsello on the island, is representative of the literary and cultural links of the Franks with the West. A man of letters whose life and works constitute a link between the first and the second period of Frankish presence in Cyprus was the Greek George Lapithis. Lapithis lived in the first half of the 14th century and was a member of that small circle of Greek Cypriot intellectuals who belonged either to the old Greek nobility or to the new class of Greek educated bureaucrats and who shared in the literary life of the Frankish nobility. He is known in history as a friend of King Hugh IV of Lusignan (1324-1359) and of philosophers and thinkers of Greek, French, and Arab origin. He spoke French, Latin, and Oriental languages and was an active translator; his knowledge of Latin and French was essential for his literary, theological, and scientific studies and contributed to his social prominence and his association with the royal court of Hugh IV.
The social, economic, political, and demographic changes that marked the middle of the 14th century had an important impact on literary production. The Black Death weakened the Frankish population and there could be no demographic renewal; the social and economic rise of a class of well educated Greek burgesses who staffed royal administration led to the weakening of the homogeneity of the Frankish nobility and the permeability of the social and cultural frontiers; the murder of King Peter I of Lusignan in 1369 and the ensuing Genoese invasion in 1373 transformed many of the traditional values of the feudal, chivalric society of the Franks. Moreover, although there is evidence of cultural links with France under the reigns of Hugh IV (1324-1359) and Peter I (1359-1369) (as is attested by the presence of Philip of Mezieres on the island and the composition of a long epic poem by Guillaume de Machaut inspired by Peter's crusades), in the 15th century these links would gradually weaken. This period is characterised by the rise of the Greek culture and language to the detriment of the Frankish crusader culture and the French language and by a concentration of literary production on prose historiography.
A lost chronicle, written in French sometime in the 14th century by John of Mimars, constitutes the link between the early 14th century French compilation Les Gestes des Chiprois and Leontios Makhairas' early 15th century Greek chronicle, and bears evidence to the amazing continuity of Cypriot historiography. With the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and George Boustronios, written in the Greek Cypriot dialect in the 15th century, Cypriot historiography reached its full development. Both writers belonged to that class of Greek Cypriot dignitaries in seigneurial and royal administration who participated in both cultures and became the intermediary group between the two societies. They both wrote in prose and in the local Greek vernacular, which was the language spoken by both Greeks and Franks, and with their chronicles, the dynastic history of the glory and fall of the Cypriot royal house, they expressed their loyalty to the Lusignan regime. Their chronicles may thus be characterised as national histories, in the sense that they propagated a common Cypriot ethnic identity for both the Greeks and the Franks before the Muslim threat. Thus, their work must be placed within a historiographical tradition that shares elements from both the Western and the Byzantine traditions but which has a specific Cypriot character, the most forceful indication of the cultural osmosis between Greeks and Franks in medieval Cyprus and of the island having become an important meeting place of Western and Eastern European culture in the Middle Ages.
Gothic Architecture: The Franks built monumental Latin churches and monasteries in the Gothic style, impressive castles and fortifications, and great royal and seigneurial palaces, much of which still survives. Moreover, the artistic evidence even reveals French influences in Greek ecclesiastical art and architecture. In Nicosia the Greek Cathedral of the Virgin Hodegetria, known as St Nicholas (Bedestan), was built next to the Latin Cathedral of St Sophia and in Famagusta the Greek Cathedral of St George very near the Latin Cathedral of St Nicholas; constructed in Gothic style, the Greek cathedrals were not built as rivals to the Latin ones, but in coexistence. As the photographs reveal, Gothic architectural remains are the most prominent and longest surviving testimony of the French presence in Cyprus.