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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2015
This article explores medieval and Renaissance evidence for the origins and meaning of the imperial regalia privileges exercised by the Greek archbishops of Cyprus, said to have been granted by the Emperor Zeno (c. 425–91), along with autocephaly, upon the discovery of the relics of the Apostle Barnabas. Though claimed to have existed ab antiquo, these imperial privileges in fact have their origin in the late sixteenth century and bear the characteristics of western Latin ecclesial and political thought. With the Donation of Constantine as their prototype, they bolster the case made to the Italians and the French for saving Christian Cyprus from the Turks.
1 Morini, E., ‘Apostolicità ed autocefalia in una chiesa orientale: la leggenda di san Barnaba e l'autonomia dell'arcivescovato di Cipro nelle fonti dei secoli v e vi’, Studi e ricerche sull'Oriente Cristiano ii (1979), 23–45Google Scholar; Hackett, John, A history of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus from the coming of the Apostles Paul & Barnabas to the commencement of the British occupation, London 1901, repr.. New York 1972Google Scholar; George Hill, A history of Cyprus, Cambridge 1940–52, repr. 2010; Downey, Glanville, ‘The claim of Antioch to ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Cyprus’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society cii (1958), 224–8Google Scholar; Stylianou, Marios T., Apostle Varnavas: the founder and protector of the Church of Cyprus, Nicosia 2005Google Scholar; Öhler, Markus, Barnabas: der Mann in der Mitte, Leipzig 2005, 170–3Google Scholar.
2 de Mas Latrie, Louis, Histoire de l'île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la Maison de Lusignan, Paris 1852–61Google Scholar, i. 80–1; Luke, Harry, Cyprus under the Turks, 1571–1878: a record based on the archives of the English consulate in Cyprus under the Levant Company and after, London 1921, repr. 1989, 16–17Google Scholar; Hill, A history of Cyprus, i. 278. According to John Hackett, ‘Zeno, to mark his sense of the importance attaching to the discovery [of St Barnabas' relics], conferred upon the Cypriot primates certain privileges, which they have most jealously guarded ever since’: A history of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 24.
3 ‘With the end of the fifth century and the appearance in the East of the Roman theology on the apostolic sees, that is, with apostolicity now as the principle of ecclesiastical organization, the Cypriot bishops, who until then had made no mention of St. Barnabas, remembered their apostle. The autocephaly, however, had already been assured in the fourth century by the work and person of Epiphanius of Salamis, especially’: Englezakis, Benedict, ‘Epiphanius of Salamis, the father of the Cypriot autocephaly’, in Ioannou, Silouan and Ioannou, Misael (eds), Studies in the history of the Church of Cyprus, 4th–20th centuries, Aldershot–Brookfield, Vt 1995, 38Google Scholar.
4 As an important part of Emperor Justinian i's administrative reforms, Cyprus was removed in ad 536 from the praetorian prefecture Oriens and, along with five other provinces, put under the authority of a newly created quaestor exercitus. Governors are in evidence during the ‘Second Byzantine Golden Age’ down to the start of the Lusignan era in 1191 (during which there were neither Byzantine governors nor Orthodox archbishops).
5 Laurent, Vitalien, Le Corpus de sceaux de l'empire byzantine, V/2: L'Eglise, i/2: Les archevêches autocéphales, A: L'Église autonome de Chypre, Paris 1965Google Scholar, repr. 1981, 309–10, nos 1480–1. No. 1481 also appears in Oikonomides, Nicolas (ed.), Catalogue of the Byzantine seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, II: South of the Balkans, the islands, south of Asia Minor, Washington, DC 1994, 105Google Scholar, no. 38.12.
6 Laurent, Le Corpus de sceaux, 310–11, nos. 1482–3; Oikonomides, Catalogue of Byzantine seals, 106–7, nos 38.14, 38.15.
7 For the most up-to-date and richly analysed collection of episcopal seals see Metcalf, D. M. (ed.), Byzantine lead seals from Cyprus, Nicosia 2004Google Scholar. Concerning the popularity of St Epiphanius Metcalf concludes (p. 429) that ‘St Epiphanios figures frequently in the iconography of Cypriot seals, especially in connection with the church of Constantia. It seems, also, that the cult of the saint made the name popular.’
8 According to the iconographical evidence, however, it was a minimal memory. Only ten of the many Orthodox churches of medieval and Renaissance Cyprus preserve images of St Barnabas: the twelfth-century wall paintings in the churches Panagia Phorbiotissa (Nikitari), Panagia tou Arakou (Lagoudera) and Holy Apostles (Perachorio); the thirteenth/fourteenth-century paintings in the church of St Nicholas of the Roof (Kakopetria); the late fifteenth-century paintings in the churches St Mavra (Kilani), Christ Antiphonitis (Kalogrea), Holy Cross (Platanistasa) and Archangel Michael (Kholi); the early sixteenth-century paintings in the churches of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Kourdali) and Holy Cross (Kyperounda). St Barnabas is always depicted wearing the omophorion or himation over a chiton (indicating his archiepiscopal status) with a rounded and somewhat elongated face and a rounded dark beard (the exception being St Nicholas of the Roof, where he sports a light brown pointed beard). Barnabas is usually paired with St Epiphanius, or the two are joined by a host of patristic saints (Gregory the Theologian, St John Chrysostom, St Basil, St Nicholas, St Athanasius) and Cypriot bishops. Not once in any of these church images does St Barnabas bear additional regalia, nor do any other archbishops of Cyprus for that matter: Sophocleous, Sophocles, Icônes de Chypre: diocèse de Limassol, 12e–16e siècle, Nicosia 2006, 75Google Scholar, 409 (plate 101); Stylianou, Andreas and Stylianou, Judith, The painted churches of Cyprus: treasures of Byzantine art, London 1985, 2nd edn 1997, 66Google Scholar, 67 (plate 26), 118, 147, 149 (plate 77), 175, 183–5, 213, 217–18, 237, 421–2, 484; Mouriki, Doula, ‘The cult of Cypriot saints in medieval Cyprus as attested by church decorations and icon painting’, in Bryer, A. A. M. and Georghallides, G. S. (eds), ‘The sweet land of Cyprus’: papers given at the twenty-fifth jubilee spring symposium of Byzantine studies, Birmingham, England (March 1991), Nicosia 1993, 238–40Google Scholar.
9 Alexander the Monk, Hagiographica Cypria: Sancti Barnabae laudatio auctore Alexandro monacho et Sanctorum Bartholomaei et Barnabae vita e menologio imperiali deprompta, ed. Peter van Deun, Turnhout 1993.
10 Theodorus Anagnostes (Lector), Historia ecclesiastica, PG lxxxvia.183–4. Based on its contents, Theodorus had to have concluded this history before ad 543. See also Theodorus Anagnostes, Kirchengeschichte, ed. Günther Christian Hansen, Berlin 1971, 2nd edn 1995, repr. 2009.
11 Léontios of Neapolis (Limassol), Vita Sancti Johannis Eleemosynarii, PG xciii.1613–68; Festugière, A. J., Léontios de Néapolis, Vie de Syméon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre, Paris 1974Google Scholar; Three Byzantine saints: contemporary biographies of St Daniel the Stylite, St Theodore of Sykeon and St John the Almsgiver: important documents for the social history of the Byzantine empire, ed. Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes, New York 1977, 206.
12 George of Cyprus, Georgii Cyprii descriptio orbis Romani, ed. Heinrich Gelzer, Leipzig 1890, 56, line 1096. See also Honigmann, Ernst (ed.), Le Synekdèmos d'Hiéroklès et l'Opuscule geographique de Georges de Chypre, Brussels 1939Google Scholar.
13 Georgius Monachus cognomine Hamartolos, Chronicon breve, PG cx.762. See also Chronikon, ed. C. De Boor and P. Wirth, Stuttgart 1978.
14 George Kedrenos, Compendium historiarum, PG cxxi. 673–4.
15 Menologii anonymi byzantini saeculi X quae supersunt, ed. Vasilii Vasilievic Latysev, St Petersburg 1912, ii. 36–40.
16 Nilus Doxapatris, Notitia patriarchatuum et locorum nomina immutata, PG cxxxii. 1097–8. Vitalien Laurent argued that Nilus was Sicilian: ‘L'Oeuvre géographique du moine sicilien Nil Doxapraxis’, Echos d'Orient xxxvi (1937), 5–30Google Scholar.
17 Joel the Chronographer, Chronographia compendaria, PG cxxxix.263–4. See also Ioelis Chronographia compendaria, i, ed. I. Bekker, Bonn 1938.
18 Nikephorus Kallistos Xanthopoulos, Historia ecclesiastica, PG cxlvii.193.
19 For a few of the many studies that provide exhaustive evidence for the survival of the pilgrimage church of St Barnabas in spite of the collapse of the former capital city around it see Papacostas, Tassos, ‘Byzantine Nicosia, 650–1191’, in Michaelides, Demetrios (ed.), Historic Nicosia, Nicosia 2012, 79–1099Google Scholar; Maratheftis, Frixos S., Location and development of the town of Leucosia (Nicosia), Cyprus, Nicosia 1977, 40–1Google Scholar; Megaw, A. H. S., ‘Byzantine architecture and decoration in Cyprus: metropolitan or provincial?’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers xxviii (1974), 57–88Google Scholar; and Charles Anthony Stewart, ‘Domes of heaven: the domed basilicas of Cyprus’, unpubl. PhD diss. Bloomington, In 2008, 134–52.
20 Wilbrand of Oldenburg, ‘Itinerarium Terrae Sanctae’, in Itinera Hierosolymitani Crucesignatorum (saec. XII–XIII), ed. Sabino de Sandoli, Jerusalem 1978–84, iii. 230–2.
21 The fourteenth-century writers George (Pseudo) Kodinos (Treatise on the dignities and offices) and Matthew Blastares (Syntagma alphabeticum) both mentioned the autocephaly of the Cypriot Church, but did not include the St Barnabas miracle story.
22 The era of Lusignan French rule in Cyprus began in 1192 when Guy de Lusignan purchased the island from the Knights Templars as compensation for his loss of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and lasted until 1473 when the Republic of Venice assumed control of the island upon the death of the last Lusignan king, James ii. The Templars had purchased Cyprus from King Richard the Lionheart of England after the king's victory over the last Greek ruler, Isaac Komnenos, in 1191. Venetian control of Cyprus lasted until the Ottoman Empire took complete control of the island in 1570.
23 Machairas, Léontios, Recital concerning the sweet land of Cyprus entitled, ‘chronicle’, ed. Dawkins, Richard M., Oxford 1932Google Scholar, i. 143. See also Chronicle of Léontios Machairas: a diplomatic edition of the various manuscripts, ed. Pieris, Michaelis and Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel, Nicosia 2003Google Scholar, and Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel, ‘La Chronique de Léontios Machéras: historicité et identité nationale’, in Odorico, P. (ed.), Matériaux pour une histoire de Chypre (IVe–XXe s.), Paris 1998, 55–80Google Scholar. For the Cypriot dialect of Greek see Terkourafi, Marina, ‘Understanding the present through the past: processes of koineisation in Cyprus’, Diachronica xxii/2 (2005), 309–72Google Scholar. Machairas's history was published in about 1426–32.
24 Machairas served in royal and seigneurial Frankish administration and thus had access to both documents (Chancery, Haute Cour, and Secrète) and leaders among the French ruling elite, both appearing extensively in his chronicle: Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel, ‘Diplomatics and historiography: the use of documents in the Chronicle of Léontios Machairas’, in Beilhammer, Alexander Daniel, Parani, Maria G. and Schabel, Christopher David (eds), Diplomatics in the eastern Mediterranean, 1000–1500: aspects of cross-cultural communication, Leiden 2008, 293–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Catia Galatariotou, ‘Léontios Machairas' Exegesis of the sweet land of Cyprus: towards a reappraisal of the text and its critics', in Bryer and Georghallides, ‘The sweet land of Cyprus’, 409: ‘There is no doubt that in his references to Cyprus’ past Machairas draws from people's collective memory, from oral and written sources, to exemplify the rich cultural heritage which Greek Orthodox Cyprus carried over from its Byzantine past into its Lusignan present: memories of the stratia, the kapnikon, the doukes; of emperor Alexios Komnenos, Manuel Boutoumites and the legend of Kykko; of Saints, relics, miracles, bishops and archbishops.’ Machairas however, did not remember Cypriot autocephaly through the patronage of St Barnabas.
25 Laurent, Vitalien, ‘La Succession épiscopale des derniers archevêques grecs de Chypre, de Jean le Crétois (1152) à German Pèsimandros (1260)’, Revue des études byzantines vii (1949), 33–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In an ironic twist, Patriarch Ignatius ii of Antioch had fled in exile to Cyprus, among the losers in the Hesychast controversy in 1359. While in Cyprus, Ignatius was a frequent guest at the court of the Lusignan king Hugh iv.
26 Coureas, Nicholas, ‘The Cypriot reaction to the establishment of the Latin Church: resistance and collaboration’, Kyprios Kharakter: Quelle Identité Chypriote?, Paris 1996, 75–84Google Scholar, and The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312, Aldershot 1997, esp. part iii, ’Relations between the Latin and Orthodox Churches'; Schabel, Christopher David, ‘Religion’, in Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel and Schabel, Christopher David (eds), Cyprus: society and culture, 1191–1374, Leiden 2005, 193–8Google Scholar, and ‘The status of the Greek clergy in early Frankish Cyprus’, in Julian Chrysotomides and Charalambos Dendrinos (eds), ‘Sweet land …’: Cyprus through the ages: lectures on the history and culture of Cyprus, Camberley 2006, repr. in Schabel, Christopher David, Greeks, Latins, and the Church in early Frankish Cyprus, Aldershot 2010, 165–207Google Scholar.
27 Schabel, ‘Religion’, 157–218.
28 ‘Near Famagusta is another city called Constantia or Salamina [i.e. Salamis], set on the seashore, where was once a harbour, and a very noble, famous and wealthy city, as its ruins testify … In this city too S. Barnabas the apostle suffered martyrdom, and near it was burned and there buried’: von Suchen, Ludolf, ‘De terra sancta et itinere Ihierosol’, in Cobham, Claude Delaval (ed.), Excerpta Cypria: materials for a history of Cyprus, Cambridge 1908, repr. London 2011, 20Google Scholar. During his visit in around 1336–41, Ludolf was obviously not told Alexander the Monk's Laudatio miracle account, which insisted that St Barnabas was not in fact burned but buried intact. Almost a century and a half later (in 1483) the Dominican Felix Faber of Ulm received the same account of the patron saints of Constantia/Salamis during his pilgrimage on the island (Excerpta Cypria, 4) as did the Franciscan Francesco Suriano in 1484 (Excerpta Cypria, 48).
29 Balletto, Laura, ‘Ethnic groups, cross-social and cross-cultural contacts on fifteenth-century Cyprus’, in Arbel, Benjamin (ed.), Intercultural contacts in the medieval Mediterranean, London 1996, 35–48Google Scholar. For a study of the multilingual Cyprus of the fifteenth century see Richard, J., ‘Culture Franque et culture Grecque: le royaume de Chypre au xvème siècle’, Byzantinische Forschungen xi (1987), 339–415Google Scholar, esp. pp. 406–8.
30 Lepentrenus' letter is included in these two chronicle editions: Léontios Machairas, Recital concerning the sweet land of Cyprus, ii. 112, and George Boustronios, A narrative of the chronicle of Cyprus, 1458–1489, ed. Nicholas Coureas with supplementary Greek texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries trans. H. Pohlsander, Nicosia–New York 2005, 239, no. 11.
31 Arbel, Benjamin, ‘The Cypriot nobility from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century: a new interpretation’, in Arbel, Benjamin and Jacoby, D. (eds), Latins and Greeks in the eastern Mediterranean after 1204, London 1989, 175–97Google Scholar, repr. in Cyprus, the Franks and Venice (13th–16th centuries), Aldershot 2000, and ‘Cyprus on the eve of the Ottoman conquest’, in Michael, Michaelis N., Kappler, Matthias and Gavriel, Eftihios (eds), Ottoman Cyprus: a collection of studies on history and culture, Wiesbaden 2009, 43Google Scholar.
32 Edbury, Peter, The kingdom of Cyprus and the crusades, 1191–1374, Cambridge 1991, 180–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The same can be said for the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical institutions and practices in Lusignan Cyprus, and so all such Greek Cypriot bureaucrats like Machairas knew well western notarial and ecclesial practices.
33 A reduced version of William of Tyre's history known as the Annales de Terre Sainte, Philip of Novara's Estoire et le droit conte de la guerre qui fu entre l'empereur Frederic et messier Johan de Ibelin, and the anonymous Chronique d'un Templier de Tyr (though perhaps authored by Gérard of Montréal) were known collectively as the Gestes des Chiprois. This tripartite manuscript apparently made its way to the West at some point in the fourteenth century from the copy produced by a certain John Le Miége while a prisoner in the castle of Kyrenia in 1343. When and by whom it was translated into Italian remains a mystery: Minervini, Laura, ‘Les Gestes des Chiprois et la tradition historiographique de l'Orient latin’, Le Moyen Age cx (2004), 315–25Google Scholar.
34 This chronicle only survives in one copy: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, ms It. VI, 154. See Grivaud, Gilles, ‘Une Petite Chronique chypriote du xve siècle’, in Balard, M., Kedar, B. Z. and Riley-Smith, J. (eds), Dei Gesta per Francos: études sur le croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, Aldershot 2001, 317–38Google Scholar, and Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel, ‘Anonymous short chronicle of Cyprus’, in Encyclopedia of the medieval chronicle, Leiden 2010Google Scholar, i. 101–2.
35 It is possible that Amadi obtained this Italian-language chronicle from the Podocataro family: Grivaud, Gilles, Entrelacs Chiprois: essai sur les lettres et la vie intellectuelle dans le royaume de Chypre, 1191–1570, Nicosia 2009, 252Google Scholar.
36 The chronicle of George Boustronios, 1456–1489, ed. and trans. R. M. Dawkins, Melbourne 1964; George Boustronios, A narrative. Whereas Amadi's history went to 1441, Strambaldi extended Machairas's account to 1458, and George Bustron extended it further to the close of the fifteenth century. One of the major transitions that Boustron documents is that of the indigenous island leadership from the Greek aristocracy under the Lusignan's feudal society to the Greek burghers under the Venetian mercantile empire, the latter increasingly educated in Italian schools and thus fully conversant with Italian language and history: Coureas, Nicholas, ‘From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance: elements of transition in the chronicle of George Boustronios’, in Kooper, Erik (ed.), The medieval chronicle VI, Amsterdam–New York 2009, 191–203Google Scholar.
37 Chroniques d'Amadi et de Strambaldi, ed. René de Mas Latrie, Paris 1891–3. Volume ii of this work contains Strambaldi's Chronicha del Regno di Cypro; volume i contains details about Strambaldi himself. Volume i was reprinted as Francesco Amadi, Cronaca di Cipro, ed. Theodore H. Papadopoullos, Nicosia 1999.
38 Angel Nikolaou-Konnari, ‘Greeks',’ in Nicolaou-Konnari and Schabel, Cyprus, 29–30.
39 The assizes of the Lusignan kingdom of Cyprus, ed. and trans. Nicholas Coureas, Nicosia 2002.
40 Hill, A history of Cyprus, iii. 1146. This is based on Giovanni Sozomeno's account. No other contemporary source confirms this, however, and perhaps Sozomeno might have been referring to another member of the Lusignan family with the same first name: Grivaud, Entrelacs Chiprois, 260.
41 Grivaud, Gilles, ‘Ordine della Secreta di Cipro: Florio Bustron et les institutions franco-byzantines afférentes au régime agraire de Chypre à l'époque vénitienne’, Μελέται και ϒποųνήųατα ii (1989), 533–92Google Scholar. Grivaud describes Florio's history as ‘the first attempt at an historical synthesis’, which Florio intended as an erudite treatise written in the spirit of the scholarly work of Renaissance Europe: ‘Florio Bustron: storico de Rinascimento Cipriota’, in Chronique de l'ile de Chypre par Florio Bustron, ed. R. de Mas Latrie, Paris 1886, reissued as Bustron, Florio, Historia overo commentarii de Cipro, ed. de Mas Latrie, R. and Papadopoullos, Theodore H., Nicosia 1998, pp. vii–xiGoogle Scholar.
42 Both Lorenzo Calvelli and Gilles Grivaus consider Florio Bustron's rich classical learning rooted in the intellectual milieu of the Italian Renaissance: Cipro e la memoria dell'antico fra Medioevo e Rinascimento: la percezione del passato romano dell'isola nel mondo occidentale, Venice 2009, 123–33; Grivaud, Entrelacs Chiprois, 257–69. Evangelia Skoufari considers Florio Bustron's patriotic dedication to Cyprus in combination with his literary achievements: Cipro veneniana (1473–1571): instituzioni e culture nel Regno della Serenissima, Rome 2011, 154–45.
43 Florio Bustron, Historia overo commentarii de Cipro, 16. On the Kourion theatre legend as told to visiting pilgrims see Calvelli, Cipro e la memoria, 280–1, 301, 321. An additional legend was told to pilgrims about Barnabas turning two menacing lions into stone (pp. 31–2, 214) or in a modified version about a dragon sculpture come to life which he changed into a lion of stone (pp. 86, 97). For the Acts of Barnabas see Öhler, Barnabas, 164–73, and Kollmann, Bernd, Joseph Barnabas: Leben und Wirkungsgeschichte, Stuttgart 1998, 76–82Google Scholar.
44 Florio Bustron, Historia overo commentarii de Cipro, 32.
45 Ibid.
46 St George was also the patron saint of the Republic of Genoa, which flew the St George Cross flag on its substantial trading fleet. In the sixteenth century England also adopted the St George Cross for its own flag and St George as its patron saint (from his initial chivalric use in the Most Noble Order of the Garter).
47 Deér, J., ‘Der Globus des Spätrömischen und des Byzantinischen Kaisers: Symbol oder Insigne?’ Byzantinische Zeitschrift liv (1961), 53–85, 291–318Google Scholar.
48 Glaber, Rodulfus, Rodulfi Glaber historiarum libri quinque, ed. France, John, Oxford 1989, 312–13Google Scholar, contains Pope Benedict's instructions on the manufacture of the aureum pomum and its significance, and this was noted by the English antiquarian John Selden (1584–1654) in his Titles of honor and nobility, London 1614, repr. Clark, NJ 2006, 142–3. Surely the golden globus cruciger was considered no different from the imperial crown itself by both papal and imperial parties: the former seeing the giving of them as constitutive acts of papal authority and the latter as not signifying that the empire was in the hands of the pope to grant. Benzo of Alba made as much clear from the emperor's side: ‘Portans in sinistra aureum pomum, Quod significat monarchiam regnorum, In dextera vero sceptrum imperii, De more Iulii, Octaviani et Tiberii’: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores xi. 602–3:
49 Stiegemann, Christophe and Kroker, Martin (eds), Für Königtum und Himmelreich: 1000 Jahre Bischof Meinwerk von Paderborn, Regensburg 2009, 153Google Scholar (taken from the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Bremen, ms b21, fo. 3v). Henry iii's actual Reichsapfel (made of iron, wood and beeswax) remains preserved at his burial site in Speyer Cathedral. In a miniature from a manuscript in the Vatican Library Emperor Frederick i Barbarossa is also depicted as a crusader king holding the aureum pomum in his left hand and with a crusader's shield carrying a red cross behind him to his immediate right: Vat. Lat., Rome, ms 2001 dated 1188.
50 A manuscript of Ekkehard of Aura's world chronicle, once in the possession of Henry v's English wife Matilda, contains an illustration of Pascal ii giving Henry v the orb as a sign of global rule: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ms 373, fo. 83r. See Schmale-Ort, Irene, ‘Die Rezension C der Weltchronik Ekkehards’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters xii (1956), 363–87Google Scholar. Percy Ernst Schramm recounts the first written source of such an object of Herrschaftszeichen used in the imperial coronation of Henry vi by Pope Celestine iii in 1191: Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel: Wanderung und Wandlung eines Herrschaftszeichens von Caesar bis zu Elisabeth II: ein Beitrag zum ‘Nachleben’ der Antike, Stuttgart 1958, 75–96. Here the Reichsapfel was an orb surmounted by a cross, the very symbol that remains on the top of the archbishop of Cyprus' staff today.
51 The costly tiara of Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13) was surmounted in this fashion.
52 Monarchs throughout Europe have made use of this miniature cross-surmounted orb as a finial on their crowns in concert with the Reichsapfel-Globus Cruciger: both can still be seen in the Holy Crown, Sceptre and Globus Cruciger of Hungary in the Hungarian Parliament Building, among the Austrian crown jewels in the Schatzkammer of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, and in Britain's Imperial State Crown and Sovereign's Orb among the crown jewels at the Tower of London. This latter set is best seen as ensemble with the sceptre in Queen Elizabeth ii's official coronation photographs.
53 Among the many Byzantine emperors who could be cited as an example, a silver Byzantine miliaresion of Emperor Romanos iii Argyros (dated c. 1030 in Constantinople) depicts on the reverse an ‘Emperor, wearing a modified loros and a crown with a cross and pendoulia, stands facing on a round cushion, holding in his right hand a long patriarchal cross and in the left a globus cruciger surmounted by a patriarchal cross’: Evans, Helen C. and Wixom, William D. (eds), The glory of Byzantium: art and culture in the middle Byzantine era, A. D. 843–1261, New York 1997, 213Google Scholar, no. 174F with image at p. 214. The seals of Romanos iii Argyros also employ this design: Nesbitt, J. W. (ed.), Catalogue of Byzantine seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, VI: Emperors, patriarchs of Constantinople, addenda, Washington, DC 2009, 199Google Scholar, no. 71.1. Though Byzantine crowns often did have a cross attached on the top, it was not mounted on a globus/aureum pomum. For details on the crowns and globus cruciger in Byzantine regalia see Philip Grierson and Alfred Bellinger, Raymond (eds), Catalogue of Byzantine coins in the Dumbarton Oaks collection and in the Whitemore collection: Leo III to Nicephorus III, 717–1801, Washington, DC 1993, i/3, 127–33Google Scholar.
54 In medieval France the royal sceptre came to be tipped with the fleur-de-lis or the hand of justice, while elsewhere sceptres were surmounted with crosses, flowers (like the St Foi Window of Chartres Cathedral or the twelfth-century Lichfield cathedral ivory plaque now in the British Museum), imperial eagles, hawks, doves (like the one Earl Richard of Cornwall gave to Aachen Cathedral in 1262), precious stones, even statuettes of Charlemagne (on the sceptre of Charles v of France) or even patron saints and the Madonna with Child (on the 1494 Sceptre of Scotland). In short there are innumerable medieval examples of the scepter cruciger and the globus cruciger, but not one of a scepter with a finial globus cruciger. In the modern period it remains unique as well, the exception being the ‘St Edward's Sceptre’ made for the coronation of Charles ii of Great Britain in 1661 and remodelled in 1905 to hold the Cullinan Diamond.
55 The archbishops of Cyprus still today use a sceptre with a finial globus cruciger in lieu of an episcopal crosier and include it on the archiepiscopal coat of arms. In an interesting historical twist, the Cypriot Maronite archbishop of his tiny church community (some 6,000 as of 2013) also maintains the use of this type of sceptre both as his pastoral staff as well as on the Maronite archiepiscopal coat of arms.
56 ‘The colouring is bright, and the icon shows good work in the Byzanto-Cypriot style. It is to be dated about the middle of the sixteenth century’: David Talbot Rice, Rupert Gunnis and Tamara Talbot Rice, The icons of Cyprus, London 1937, 262 and plate xliv, no. 128. I thank Barbara McNulty for her generous help in documenting this icon's provenance.
57 Gratian, Decretum, pt i. dist. xcvi, chs xiii–xiv. English translation taken here from Henderson, Ernest F. (ed.), Select historical documents of the Middle Ages, London 1910, 319–29Google Scholar.
58 E. Caspar (ed), Das Register Gregors. VII, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Selectae, 1920–3, ii. 202–8.
59 The symbols of imperial regalia were quite well known in medieval Europe. See, for example, from Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon: ‘Quae sint insignia imperialia, et quid significet unumquodque, videlicet sancta crux, sancta lancea et gladius imperialis et sceptrum et corona et aureum pomum’; ‘Quid significat globus aureus, qui regum manibus gestatur? Aureus ille globus pomum vel palla [i.e. ‘ball’ from Old High German ‘balla’] vocatur, Unde figuratum mundum gestare putatur, Quando coronatur, palla ferenda datur, Significat mundum forma peribente rotundum, Intus habet plenum terrestri pondere fundum, Quem tenet archanum pella ferenda manu. Hec fuit ex terris mundi collecta quaternis; Ut foret imperii manibus gestanda supernis, Hac tulit imperium Iulius arte suum. Taliter hunc mundum gestat manus una rotundum, Regius includit sic omnia climata pugnus, Taliter omne quod est regia pompa tenet’: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores xxii. 272, 274–5.
60 Arbel, ‘Cyprus on the eve of the Ottoman conquest’, 47.
61 In this context Florio Bustron would also have known about the widespread debate during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries concerning the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine, which had been initiated by Lorenzo Valla, Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa and Bishop Reginald Pecock of Chichester. Universal Catholic acceptance of the Donation as a forgery developed only after Cesare Baronius' recognition in his Annales ecclesiastici published between 1588 and 1607.
62 Benjamin Arbel documents evidence indicating that only five or six Greek Cypriot families were among the roughly sixty noble families of the island in the late Venetian era, and that these came to such status through administrative, mercantile or medical service to the Venetian government: ‘The Cypriot nobility’, 175–97. This is a small audience indeed for Florio Bustron's history when compared to the larger body of native-speaking Venetian and Italian-speaking nobles of Cyprus.
63 ‘Bustron redasse le proprie opere in italiano sia perché a metà Cinquecento questa era la linga più diffusa a Cipro dopo il greco, sia perché intendeva rendere accessible la propria opera ai veneziani per far loro comprehendere il carattere del regno di Cipro e le istituzioni con cui governarlo’: Skoufari, Cipro veneniana, 144. See also Grivaud, ‘Florio Bustron’, p. x, and Entrelacs Chiprois, 261 where Grivaud concludes that Lusignan was motivated by ‘une volonté d'affirmer la particularité de l'indentité chypriote vis-à-vis du pouvoir vénitien … l'Historia entend prouver l'ancienneté de la civilisation insulaire, et souligner la dignité de ses institutions, en dépit d'un statut politique humiliant’.
64 Grivaud, ‘Florio Bustron’, pp. x–xi, and Entrelacs Chiprois, 269: ‘Il puise à des sources écrites en plusieurs langues, et en restitue fidèlement l'espirit en les traduisant en italien, langue employée par le public auquel Florio destine son oeuvre, à savoir la noblesse chypriote.’
65 Excerpta Cypria, 123. Lusignan, who was on a trip to Venice when the Ottomans invaded Cyprus in 1570, worked unceasingly to raise funds in Italy and France to ransom those Cypriots who were imprisoned by the Turks, including four of his brothers and two sisters: ‘Étienne désirait sensibiliser l'opinion occidentale au sort de Chypriotes après la conquête ottomane, afin de recueillir les sommes indispensables au rachat des esclaves': Grivaud, Entrelacs Chiprois, 289, 292. See also Wipertus-Hugo Rudt de Collenberg, ‘Les Litterae Hortatoriae accordées par les papes en faveur de la rédemption des Chypriotes captifs des Turcs (1570–1597), d'après les fonds de l'Archivio Segreto Vaticano', Epetīris tou Kentrou Epistīmonikōn Ereunōn xi (1981–2), 60.
66 Givraud, Gilles, ‘Les Lusignan et leur gouvernance du royaume de Chypre (xiie–xive siècle)’, in Pauly, Michel (ed.), Europäische Governance im Spätmittelalter: Heinrich VII. von Luxemburg und die grossen Dynastien Europas / Gouvernance européenne au bas moyen âge: Henri VII de Luxembourg et l'Europe des grandes dynasties: actes des 15es Journées lotharingiennes, 14–17 octobre 2008, Luxembourg 2010, 251–74Google Scholar.
67 Lusignan records that his brother Giovanni was a ‘monaco di San Basilio’ and his sister Isabella a ‘monaca di San Basilio chiamata Athanasia’: Chorograffia et breve historia universale dell'isola de Cipro principiando al tempo di Noè per in fino al 1572, Bologna 1573, repr. Famagusta 1973, Nicosia 2004, fo. 79r; Hill, A history of Cyprus, iii. 1110.
68 Lorenzo Calvelli considers Étienne de Lusignan's own Renaissance intellectual milieu and evaluates him as equal to Florio Bustron in education yet not sharing in Bustron's administrative culture: Cipro e la memoria, 134–9. Evangelia Skoufari concludes that, along with those of their compatriot Francesco Attar, the works of Étienne de Lusignan and Florio Bustron ‘ sono la prova della diffusione fra la popolazione cipriota della cultura italofona che sostitui presto l'utilizzo del francese, lasciando però, benché limitato, uno spazio de creazione letteraria al greco’: Cipro veneniana, 145–6. Gilles Grivaud, emphasises Lusignan's Cypriot patriotism, and concludes both that ’Étienne est une source indispensable pour comprendre la formation de l'identité chypriote à l'époque de la Renaissance’, and that ‘Dès lors, les arrière-pensées d'Étienne se dévoilent nettement, car son but inavoué reste bien de sensibiliser les puissants princes d'Europe à une reconquête de l'île’: Entrelacs Chiprois, 287–8, 298.
69 Étienne de Lusignan, Chorograffia, fo. 1r. Henry was the younger brother of Charles ix, and duke of Anjou before his election as Henry iii of Poland. He would succeed his brother as Henry iii of France (1574–89) and become mired in the religious battles of his day (the St Bartholomew Day Massacre took place on 24 August 1572).
70 Idem, Lusignan's chorography and brief general history of the island of Cyprus, ed. O. Pelosi, Altamont 2001, 1–2. See also Christopher Schabel's review article ‘Étienne de Lusignan's Chorograffia and the ecclesiastical history of Frankish Cyprus: notes on a recent reprint and English translation’, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook xviii/xix (2002/2003), 339–53.
71 Étienne de Lusignan, Lusignan's chorography, 10. Iohannis Cotovicus (van Kootwyck), a professor of canon and civil law at the University of Utrecht, spent a fortnight in Cyprus in August 1598, and heard this story there; he begins his own rendering of it with the words, ‘tradition holds that it [the temple to Venus] fell at the prayer of the Apostle Barnabas’: Excerpta Cypria, 193. See also Öhler, Barnabas, 166–7, and Kollmann, Barnabas, 76–82.
72 Joan Du Plat Taylor provides archaeological evidence for the historical reality of a cistern of fresh water, complete with paintings, located at the site of St Barnabas's discovered tomb: ‘A water cistern with Byzantine paintings, Salamis, Cyprus’, Antiquaries Journal xiii/2 (Apr. 1933), 97–108Google Scholar. A striking inscription survives, ‘Barnabas the Apostle is our foundation. Epiphanios our great governor’. Calvelli recounts a variant description of St Barnabas's cistern of fresh water as a healing agent for fevers: Cipro e la memoria, 299.
73 Étienne de Lusignan, Lusignan's chorography, 16–17.
74 Ibid. 30–1.
75 Ibid. 32.
76 Ibid. For the original sources see Irmscher, Johannes and Strecker, Georg (eds), ‘The Pseudo-Clementines’, in Schneemelcher, Wilhelm (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha, II: Writings related to the Apostles; apocalypses and related subjects, Cambridge 1992, 505–9Google Scholar; Pseudo–Epiphanius, Index apostolorum, in Prophetarum vitae fabulosae: indices apostolorum discipulorumque Domini Dorotheo, Epiphanio, Hippolyto aliisque vindicata, ed. Theodor Scherman, Leipzig 1907, 118, lines 14–17. See also Propheten- und Apostellegenden nebst Jüngerkatalogen des Dorotheus und verwandter Texte, ed. Schermann, Theodor, Leipzig 1907, 292–321Google Scholar. There is still a plaque on the south nave of the cathedral in Milan which lists St Barnabas as its first bishop. To see how the bishops of Milan used this legend to their ecclesial advantage, much like the archbishops of Cyprus, see Tomea, Paolo, Tradizione apostolica e coscienza cittadana a Milano nel medioevo: la leggenda di san Barnaba, Milan 1993Google Scholar. See also Öhler, Barnabas, 173–7, and Busch, Jörg W., ‘Barnabas, der Apostel der Mailänder: überlieferungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Entstehung einer stadgeschichtlichen Tradition', Frühmittelalterliche Studien xxiv (1990) 178–97Google Scholar.
77 Lusignan made use of Florio Bustron's history and followed Bustron's geographical approach to telling the glorious history of Cyprus, and so he was clearly aware of the latter's claim to the imperial privileges. He also made use of the chronicle of George Bustron: Grivaud, Entrelacs Chiprois, 292–3.
78 de Lusignan, Étienne, Description de toute l'isle de Cypre et des rois, princes, et seigneurs, tant payens que Chrestiens, qui ont commandé en icelle, Paris 1580Google Scholar, repr. Famagusta 1968, Nicosia 2004, fo. 230r. In this French edition Lusignan made major improvements to his flawed Italian edition, and provided more details of the St Barnabas miracle story, including the name of the Emperor Zeno. But he did not insert any mention of the emperor granting imperial privileges to the archbishop of Cyprus (fo. 46r–v).
79 The only result was an aborted attempt by Guy de Saint-Gélais, the pretender to the Lusignan throne of Cyprus whose claim Étienne had recognised, to lead a naval expedition against the Turks in order to recover the island kingdom. Guy was Étienne's last, best hope, as is evidenced by the fact that the latter had dedicated his French edition (Description de toute l'isle de Cypre) to Guy's father, Louis de Saint-Gélais of Lanzac: Hill, A history of Cyprus, iv. 39–40. As a kind yet merely honorary gesture, on 27 April 1588 Pope Sixtus iv appointed Étienne de Lusignan bishop of Limassol in partibus, which title the exiled Dominican bore until his death in 1590: de Collenberg, Wipertus-Hugo Rudt, ‘Les Lusignan de Chypre’, Epetīris tou Kentrou Epistīmonikōn Ereunōn x (1979–80), i. 252Google Scholar.
80 Instead he tried to remind the western ruling elites of their historical ties to the Levant through his genealogical publications in Paris: Les Généalogies de soixante et sept très-nobles et très-illustres maisons, partie de France, partie estrangères, Paris 1586; Les Droicts, autoritez et prerogatives que pretendent au royaume de Hierusalem, les princes et siegneurs spirituels et temporels cy apres nommez: le pape, patriarche, empereur, rois de France, Angleterre, Arragon, Naples, Hongrie, Cypre et Armenie, les Republiques de Venise, et Genes, les ducs d'Anjou, Bourbon, Savoye, Lorraine et Montferrat, les comtes de Brienne, Laval et autres, Paris 1586.
