Worshiping Christ in Frankish Cyprus

 During the last century, the assumption was that during the reign of the Lusignans the Latin elite oppressed and despised the Greek Orthodox majority. However, historians of the 21st century have uncovered a wealth of evidence that suggests rather than tensions or mere tolerance, the dominant feature of religious life in Frankish Cyprus was mutual respect and joint worship. 

The key to understanding the religious situation on Cyprus is to recognize that the Catholic Church in the 12th and 13th centuries did not view Greek Orthodoxy as either heretical or schismatic. Throughout the period of Frankish rule in Cyprus, a succession of popes confirmed that the differences between the churches were ones of "rites" (i.e. practice) rather than doctrine.   

The tensions that misled historians of the last century into hypothesizing hostility and oppression were -- on closer examination -- competition between the clergy of the respective churches, not tensions between the believers of either church. Rather than dogma and theology, the two issues that agitated the Latin Church were access to Greek Orthodox lands and other sources of income and the primacy of the pope. The resident Greek clergy, on the other hand, was primarily concerned about retaining control over the lives of their flock and autonomy from Rome. 

The Latin church hierarchy on Cyprus incessantly nagged the crown and Latin nobles for more land and more income sources not from greed alone. It was also a reflection of the fact that the Greek church had, contrary to popular assumptions, suffered very few expropriations in the course of the conquest.  Furthermore, the land that was taken away was never that on which churches or monasteries stood, but rather the productive estates that had generated income for those institutions. The beneficiary of those land-grabs, however, was not the Latin Church but rather secular lords during the first decade of Lusignan rule. 

The Greek Orthodox Church was undoubtedly impoverished by the exodus of wealthy Greek aristocrats who had been it's most lavish patrons. It lost some of its economic land-holdings as well, but it retained all its churches and the tithes of the Orthodox population. The Latin Church, in contrast, had a very small population of Latins which it could tithe and otherwise had to live from donations. Notably, the secular lords of Cyprus repeatedly backed the Orthodox Church in stopping the Latin Church from claiming the lands of the Greeks -- in large part to protect their own properties!

The other principal point of tension, the primacy of the pope, was superficially doctrinal, but in practice an issue of prestige. Initially, the Cypriot clergy steadfastly refused to take an oath of fealty to the pope in Rome. Eventually, after a series of negotiations, the Cypriot clergy opted to swear fealty in exchange for effective autonomy. Professor Schabel summarized the deal as follows: 

Greek Orthodoxy survived the Frankish period not so much because of a successful national struggle against complete absorption as because the Greeks always remained the majority and neither the Franks nor the Latin Church ever attempted any Latinization. The Latin Church required what it thought was the bare minimum from the Greek clergy -- nothing from the Greek laymen -- and the Greek clergy gave the Latin Church what it required, including by the end of the thirteeth century, an oath of obedience from the bishops and an end to active opposition concerning unleavened bread. Almost all other particulars of the Greek rite, what we now call Greek Orthodoxy, were allowed to remain the same. [Chris Schabel, "Religion" in Cyprus: Society and Culture 1191 - 1374, editor Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel, 201; italics addded by HPS]

The drawn-out struggle between the Latin and Greek clergies, however, had very little impact on daily life or popular attitudes. Only on three occasions in the history of Frankish rule on the island did the inter-clerical disputes rise to the level of popular unrest. Two of these instances, both from the fourteenth century, were riots "lasting only a matter of hours and directed successfully at the actions of a single outsider." [Schabel, 207] The other incident was far more serious and shocking. It entailed the burning at the stake of thirteen Orthodox monks in the mid-13th century.

The execution of thirteen Orthodox monks dates to either 1231 or 1232 -- in either case to a period of "chaos" when King Henry I was not yet of age. Indeed, King Henry was very probably not even present in his kingdom as from February until June 1232 he was in Syria with his regent and all his barons. Furthermore, the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia was also absent from the kingdom much of 1231 and early 1232. Most significantly, from May to mid-June, the Kingdom of Cyprus was occupied by the forces of the Imperial Marshal Riccardo Filangieri. 

In short, Cyprus was effectively without its legal rulers either secular or ecclesiastical for this critical period.  It appears that this fact was exploited by outsiders with no history of peaceful co-existence. At the urgings of a certain Dominican friar -- the Order of the Inquisition and possibly fresh from fighting the Alibigensians -- the Greek Orthodox monks were condemned to die a heretic's death. Yet, as the documents prove, they were not condemned because they used leavened bread, but rather "because for years they refused to stop calling the Latins heretics for using unleavened bread." Schabel suggests that despite knowing that the pope did not consider the use of leavened bread heretical, the Dominicans could "not tolerate the Greek accusation that they were heretics for their practice." (Schabel, 196). 

Sadly, these images of intolerance and violence, isolated and unrepresentative as they were, have dominated the popular image of the relationship between the churches on Cyprus. In fact, Frankish rule was characterized not only by tolerance but by patronage that fostered an expansion of Orthodox building. 

For example, the Frankish period saw a flourishing of Greek Orthodox monastic activity on the island. The number of monasteries on Cyprus more than doubled from 40 under Byzantine rule to over 100 by 1363. While a number of these monasteries were Latin (the Hospitallers, Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, Cistercians, and Augustinians all had three to four houses on Cyprus), Orthodox monasteries undoubtedly made up the vast majority of these religious houses. Furthermore, Orthodox parish churches, even in rural areas, also experienced an inflood of donations that enable renovations and redecoration. Far from languishing in oppression, the Orthodox church flourished under the Lusignans.

There were a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, the Lusignans viewed themselves as the kings of all Cypriots, not just the Latin Cypriots. The Lusignans and their (often Ibelin) wives regularly made generous donations to Greek Orthodox institutions. The nobility also made significant gifts to Greek Orthodox institutions, and there are recorded instances of Italian merchants doing the same. Indeed, by the fourteenth century at the latest, Latin prelates were complaining about "the noble and plebeian women" frequenting the churches of the Greeks, while their husbands "barons, knights, and burgesses" preferred to attend mass in private chapels. 

This situation arose primarily because of the large number of marriages between Latins and Greeks. With the Greek population so dominant, many immigrants found their wives among the local Greek population. The Italians, notoriously, left their wives at home, and one wonders how many took local "wives." Meanwhile, the rising Greek middle class that dominated the bureaucracy and increasingly merged into the gentry made good matches for younger daughters of poorer knights.

Another factor in the gradual slide toward Orthodoxy on the part of the Frankish population was the sheer lack of Latin parish churches. Even in Nicosia, the capital and heart of Frankish Cyprus, the Latin Cathedral was the only parish church. The suffragan bishops also had their cathedrals, but for Franks living outside the main cities, those living on their estates, there were no Latin churches at all. As a result, we have instances of Latin knights and ladies buried in Orthodox churches. The assumption must be that during their lives they also regularly attended mass at these churches, confessed their sins to the Orthodox priests, and possibly married and baptized children there as well. 

Even those Latins who remained true to their traditions gradually absorbed elements of Greek religious culture into their lives and churches. Cypriot saints such as Barnabas, Hilarion, and Epiphanios were worshiped in Latin as well as Orthodox churches. Latin patrons developed a taste for icons, particularly the vita icons that surrounded a portrait of the saint with scenes from his/her life. Frankish artisans became adept at producing icons. Indeed, icons have been found with labeling in the same hand in both Greek and Latin, suggesting that they hung in churches used by both Greek and Latin congregations.

In short, despite the bickering between the Latin and Greek clergy over hierarchy and income, for the average Cypriot whether Greek and Latin the shared belief in Christianity was paramount. Rather than hostility or tensions, the people of Cyprus worshiped Christ and his saints together evolving a distinctive form of almost ecumenical sacred architecture and other art forms. 

For more on the disputes between the Cypriot clergy and the pope as well as the evolution of unique art forms see: Nicolaou-Konnari, Angel and Chris Schabel (eds). Cyprus: Society and Culture 1191 - 1374 (London: Brill, 2005).

My most recent novels set in medieval Cyprus reflect this overall atmosphere of inter-faith cooperation punctuated by moments of tensions:

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her current series describes the civil war in Outremer between Emperor Frederick andthe barons led by John d'Ibelin the Lord of Beirut. Dr. Schrader is also working on a non-fiction book describing the crusader kingdoms. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Frederick II and Islam

Frederick II Hohenstaufen has attracted many modern admirers, in large part because he is perceived as an example of religious tolerance, allegedly far ahead of his time. The fact that he was twice excommunicated by the Pope, made him the darling of Reformation and Enlightenment historians, who equated the papacy with everything backward and corrupt. Twentieth Century atheists delight in the fact that Frederick allegedly claimed the Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were all shysters, who made fools of their followers.[i]  The fact that the Sicily he ruled still had large Jewish and Muslim populations, some of whom found employment at his court, qualified him in the eyes of more recent commentators as an early example of “multi-culturalism.” Some admirers go so far as to suggest that Frederick converted to Islam.  Today I look a more closely at Frederick and his relationship with Islam.

                                                                                                    

Heiko Suhr in a short paper on this topic published in 1968[ii] identified four factors that contributed to Frederick’s image as pro-Islamic: 1) his childhood in a Palermo allegedly dominated by Muslims, 2) the city of Lucera in Southern Italy populated by Sicilian Muslims who enjoyed complete religious freedom, 3) his culturally and religiously diverse court and his amicable correspondence with Muslim scholars and scientists, and finally 4) his diplomatic relations with al-Kamil culminating in the return of Jerusalem to nominal Christian control without bloodshed.

Unfortunately, for Frederick’s admirers, the legend that he grew up wandering freely through the streets of Palermo, learning fluent Arabic by chatting with the people of the markets and streets, has been exposed as fiction. Not only did Frederick enjoy (or suffer, depending on your perspective) a conventional education for a future king at the hands of predominantly clerical tutors, but Palermo in the decades of Frederick’s youth was no longer predominantly Muslim. In fact, the Muslim population of Sicily had already been pushed into the mountainous interior (where they were to offer armed resistance to Frederick on more than one occasion). The educated Arab elites had withdrawn even farther -- to Muslim-held Spain or North Africa rather than submit to Christian subjugation.

The city of Lucera, established in 1246 toward the end of Frederick's reign, did indeed provoke the outrage of the Pope because it was full of mosques, and the entirely Muslim population lived openly according to their faith.  Even more problematic for the Pope, as Muslims, they couldn’t have care less about being excommunicated or put under interdict.  In short, the Pope had no weapons with which to threaten or intimidate them, and they were utterly loyal to Frederick.  The fact that Lucera sat in a vital geo-strategic position that blocked the access of papal forces to Foggia and Trani undoubtedly made him livid.  

Yet, it is important to remember that the creation of Lucera followed the expulsion of the entire Muslim population from Sicily proper.  This expulsion was Frederick’s response to a renewed Muslim revolt. Historians estimate that between 15,000 and 60,000 Muslims were forced to leave their homes and re-settle in Lucera.  In short, Frederick was not exhibiting humanitarian tolerance for his Muslim subjects, but rather pursuing the strategic goal of removing rebellious subjects from the heartland of his kingdom. To his credit, he did not massacre them, but with what was truly ingenious foresight recognized that he could use them in his struggle with the pope because they were his only subjects that could not be bullied by papal threats.

Turning to Frederick’s famed erudition which included correspondence with a wide range of scholars from Spain to Syria, there is little question that his fascination with scientific, philosophical, and intellectual problems was exceptional. Frederick II conducted experiments (apparently without the slightest concern for the welfare of the participants), and he took part in public, mathematical debates. This is impressive, but by no means as exceptional as Frederick’s admirers suggest. The education of princes was very rigorous and included languages, theology (not just dogma), mathematics and natural sciences. Frederick’s contemporary Louis IX of France was also highly educated, for example, including a sound grounding in ancient Greek and Roman texts.

The fact that Frederick II corresponded with Arab scholars and he spoke Arabic is also far less exceptional that historians (particularly German historians) make it appear. The biographies of Frederick II which I have read (an admittedly limited sample) reveal an astonishing ignorance of the history and society of the crusader states. The fact that most knights and nobles in Outremer also spoke Arabic, that they too corresponded with Saracen leaders, and that some could translate Arab poetry into French has escaped the notice of the admirers of Frederick. Frederick was not the first or only Western monarch to recognize the humanity and intellectual qualities of individual Muslim leaders. Richard the Lionheart developed a degree of rapport with al-Adil before Frederick II was even born. The bottom line is that a command of Arabic had nothing to do with an admiration for Islam.

Far more indicative of a cultural attraction to Islam than correspondence with Arab intellectuals is the fact that Frederick maintained a harem full of sex-slaves.  This was in clear violation of Church law, and not comparable to a succession of mistresses as, say, Henry II of England had. 

Frederick’s campaign to the Holy Land likewise presents hints of a more tolerant attitude toward Islam than was common among the Hohenstaufen’s contemporaries.  This has nothing to do with the fact that Frederick preferred negotiations to bloodshed. Any and every general prefers to win without risking battle. Richard the Lionheart, the ultimate soldier’s soldier so often portrayed as a mindless killing machine, likewise sought to negotiate with Saladin almost from the moment he set foot in the Holy Land. (See Diplomacy of the Third Crusade Part I and Part II.)

Far more damning are the terms of the treaty Frederick concluded.  By accepting a “demilitarized” Jerusalem surrounded by Muslim-controlled territory, he revealed that he cared only about a temporary victory ― the medieval equivalent of a “photo op” in the shape of him wearing his crown in the Holy Sepulcher. The truce (it was never a treaty because it had a limited duration of ten years, five months and forty days) served not the interests of Christendom, but rather the Emperors desire to thumb his nose at the Pope. The truce was about show rather than substance. The fact that the truce prohibited Christians from setting foot on the Temple Mount effectively added insult to injury, and it is not surprising that the Patriarch of Jerusalem characterized the terms of the Treaty as “unchristian.” 

Added to this is an incident recorded in Arab sources of Frederick rebuking the Qadi of Nablus for silencing the muezzins during his short visit to Jerusalem. According to al-Gauzi, Frederick went so far as to claim that his “chief aim in passing the night in Jerusalem was to hear the call to prayer given by the muezzins, and their cries of praise to God in the night.”[iii]

Despite such apparently pro-Islamic words (assuming they are correct at all), the rest of Frederick’s life does not square with a man who had a genuine affinity for Islam. Within a few months he had sailed away,  and returned to Sicily ― where he proceeded, as noted earlier, to expel every last single Muslim from the island.

Frederick II was not pro-Islam, rather he appears to have been profoundly cynical about religion. The legend about him saying Moses, Jesus and Mohammed hoodwinked the gullible, while not a genuine quote, may nevertheless capture his skepticism about faith generally.  The Arab chroniclers certainly saw him as a materialist. A man who played with religion and theology, rather than respecting God. Devout themselves, they had more admiration for genuine Christians (like St. Louis) than for Frederick Hohenstaufen.

While it is impossible to know a man’s soul ― particularly after nearly 1,000 years ― it is fair to say that Frederick consistently put “raison d’état” ― not to say self-interest ― before religious considerations. His sexual gratification was more important than respecting church law. Returning to Sicily with the appearance of regaining Jerusalem, was more important than securing a sustainable solution for the Holy City. Retaining his temporal power was more important than finding a compromise with the Pope. Having soldiers impervious to papal influence was worth allowing Muslims to publicly exercise their religion (under the nose of the Pope, so to speak.) And so on. While this may arouse admiration in many, it is hardly something particularly modern. Nor, in my opinion, does it qualify Frederick to be viewed as particularly “enlightened,” “tolerant” or “modern.”

---

[i] Boulle, Pierre. L’etrange Croisade de l’Empereur Frédéric II. Flammarion, 1968.

[ii] Suhr, Heiko. Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen: Seine politischen and kulturellen Verbindungen zum Islam. GRIN Verlag, 2008.

[iii] Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. Oxford University Press, 1988, p.185.

Frederick II is an important character in "Rebels against Tyranny" and his curious "crusade" an important part of the plot of this novel, the first in a new series set in the crusader states.

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Myths about the Crusader States 3:

Muslim Rulers were Benign and Tolerant

It has become commonplace to allege that prior to the crusades, Muslims and Christians lived together in harmony in the Holy Land. These assertions ignore the fact that in the 7^th century the Holy Land was conquered for Islam with the sword – not gently proselytized by peaceful imams. It also ignores the fact that the Seljuk Turks wrested the Holy Land from the (over time complacent and comparatively benign) Fatamids also by the sword between 1071 and 1085.  Finally, it ignores the fact that the Muslim Caliph al-Hakim utterly raised the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and many other churches. It ignores the massacre of some 3000 Christian pilgrims in the decade between 1185 and 1195. In short, it ignores all the abuses referenced in Pope Urban II in his call for the First Crusade.

It is no longer politically correct to believe there was any truth in Urban II’s catalogue of crimes committed by Muslims against Christians in the Holy Land.  Undoubtedly, Pope Urban the Second and the Byzantine Emperor Alexis I, who approached Urban with a request for Western help against the Seljuks in the first place, were both seeking to manipulate emotions. Urban II furthermore had a hidden agenda – namely increasing the power of the papacy, possibly healing the schism with the Eastern Church, and getting rid of excess numbers of violent young men, who were disruptive factors in Western feudal society.  Alexis I wanted mercenaries to keep the aggressive Seljuks at bay.

Nevertheless, it is disingenuous to assert that all the allegations made by Alexis and Urban respectively were pure fantasy. The archeological record alone testifies to the destruction of Christian monuments under Seljuk rule, belying the vaunted “tolerance” of Muslim rulers. Furthermore, the abuse of Christians was well enough documented to result in an almost complete halt of pilgrimage traffic and even trade with Europe during the period following Seljuk seizure of the Holy Land; Christian pilgrims and merchants had been made to feel unwelcome and unsafe once the Holy Land was in Seljuk hands.

Even under the more moderate Fatimids, Christians in the 12^th century – no less than in the 21^st century – were second-class citizens, subject to extra taxes and excluded from positions of power and authority.  The Fatimids, no less than the Seljuks, silenced the church bells, and punished attempts by Christians to spread their religion with death.

This is not my definition of “tolerance” – not then any more than now.