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It is (not only) the will of god»: the king-doms of Cyprus and Cilician Armenia... 155

Cilician Armenia in his Lusignan Cyprus and Lesser Armenia 1195-
1375, upon which this study builds . For the Armenian Church, al-
11
most all existing studies have used Bernard Hamilton’s article ‘The
Armenian Church and the papacy in the time of the Crusades’, which
remarks on the interconnection between these two actors in ecclesias-
tical and political terms . Additionally, the Actes du Colloque «Les
12
Lusignans et l’Outre Mer», edited by Claude Mutafian, is essential
background for different aspects discussed here, with contributions
by scholars such as John France, Gilles Grivaud, and Mutafian him-
self, focusing on the two kingdoms .
13

Social and Ecclesiastical Diversity in Cyprus Before the Establish-
ment of the Latin Church

When the Latin Church was established in Cyprus, the island was
a populous, culturally diverse place. The population was overwhelm-
ingly Greek; and, by religion, Orthodox. Until a few years earlier, it had
been under Byzantine rule and within the jurisdiction of the Orthodox
church hierarchy. However, religious identity was not uniform, in the
sense that several groups existed alongside the Greek, Orthodox ma-
jority, including western Catholics, Armenians, Jews, Maronites, Jac-
obites, Nestorians, and Muslims . The Armenians of Cyprus were
14

11 N. Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus cit.; Idem, Lusignan Cyprus and Lesser
Armenia 1195-1375, «Journal of the Cyprus Research Centre», 21, (1995), pp. 33-71.
Besides these works see also Idem, Friend or Foe? The Armenians in Cyprus as Others
Saw them During the Lusignan Period 1191-1473, in C. Mutafian (ed.), La Méditerranée
des Arméniens, XIIe-XVe siècle, Geuthner, Paris, 2014, pp. 75-83; Idem, Religion and
Ethnic Identity in Lusignan Cyprus: How the Various Groups Saw Themselves and Were
Seen by Others, «Identity/Identities in Late Medieval Cyprus», (2014), pp. 13-25; A. Ni-
colaou-Konnari, C. Schabel, (eds.), Cyprus Society and Culture cit.
12 B. Hamilton, The Armenian Church and the Papacy cit., pp. 61-87; Idem, The Latin
Church in the Crusader States, cit,. On Leo II and the Armenian Church, see also I.
Rapti, Featuring the King cit., pp. 291-335; P. Cowe, The Armenians in the Era of the
Crusades, in M. Angold, (ed.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5: Eastern
Christianity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 404-429. For the Arme-
nians and the periphery, see G. Dédéyan, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans et
Croises. Étude sur les Pouvoirs Arméniens dans le Proche-Orient Méditerranéen 1068-
1150, vol. 2, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2003.
13 C. Mutafian, (ed.), Les Lusignans et L’outre-Mer: Actes du Colloque, Poitiers,
Lusignan, 1993.
14 See A. Varnava, N. Coureas, M. Elia, (eds.), The Minorities of Cyprus: Development
Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-Exclusion, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cam-
bridge, 2014. For the Nestorians and the other communities’ image in Pope Honorius
III’ letter in 20 January 1222, see Cartulary, n. 35; Synodicum, n. X.9; For detailed
information, see C. Schabel, Religion, in A. Nicolaou-Konnari, C. Schabel, (eds.), Cyprus

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XIX - Aprile 2022
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