DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0190
New Chapters in Greek History. [Chap. VI.
sick of the vanity of enjoyment, went into the cloister to
seek peace in self-control and the limitation of desire.
Everyone knows how, after a thousand years of Roman
government and Byzantine bureaucracy, the glory of a
second youth burst upon Cyprus. Under the Lusignan
family the island became the bulwark of Palestine and the
chosen home of the flower of Frankish chivalry. If the
life which the medieval writers of romances describe ever
became actual fact, it was there. Of the law adminis-
tered between knight and knight we have evidence in
the Assizes de Jerusalem, a monument of lofty feelings
and gallant aspirations. Then tourneys and combats,
conducted according to the most approved methods
of fantastic chivalry, took place daily in the plain of
the Pediaeus. Then rose Nicosia and Famagosta, cities
splendid even at this day in their utter decay, filled with
churches, some of them built in a style peculiar to Cyprus,
a refinement of Norman art. Then the castle of Buffa-
vento was erected on the perpendicular rocks of the
northern coast, and rich abbeys like that of Bellapai's
became the abode of a host of ecclesiastics and the
centres of rich cultivation. The materials for the his-
tory of this period have been collected with zeal by de
Mas Latrie, and the subject is well worthy of an English
pen. But we have not here space to recount it even in
outline, and we have chosen for our subject rather the
ancient than the medieval glories of Cyprus. We will but
quote the testimony of Ludolf of Sudheim, an ecclesiastic
of Paderborn, who visited Cyprus in the middle of the
fourteenth century :—■
" Cyprus is the noblest, most fertile, and most illustri-
ous of islands, and the richest too : none in all seas comes
near to it, and in all goods it is richer than the rest. . . . By
all sea-ports, Egyptian, Syrian, Armenian, Turkish, and
Greek, it is surrounded as with a girdle. To them all one
sick of the vanity of enjoyment, went into the cloister to
seek peace in self-control and the limitation of desire.
Everyone knows how, after a thousand years of Roman
government and Byzantine bureaucracy, the glory of a
second youth burst upon Cyprus. Under the Lusignan
family the island became the bulwark of Palestine and the
chosen home of the flower of Frankish chivalry. If the
life which the medieval writers of romances describe ever
became actual fact, it was there. Of the law adminis-
tered between knight and knight we have evidence in
the Assizes de Jerusalem, a monument of lofty feelings
and gallant aspirations. Then tourneys and combats,
conducted according to the most approved methods
of fantastic chivalry, took place daily in the plain of
the Pediaeus. Then rose Nicosia and Famagosta, cities
splendid even at this day in their utter decay, filled with
churches, some of them built in a style peculiar to Cyprus,
a refinement of Norman art. Then the castle of Buffa-
vento was erected on the perpendicular rocks of the
northern coast, and rich abbeys like that of Bellapai's
became the abode of a host of ecclesiastics and the
centres of rich cultivation. The materials for the his-
tory of this period have been collected with zeal by de
Mas Latrie, and the subject is well worthy of an English
pen. But we have not here space to recount it even in
outline, and we have chosen for our subject rather the
ancient than the medieval glories of Cyprus. We will but
quote the testimony of Ludolf of Sudheim, an ecclesiastic
of Paderborn, who visited Cyprus in the middle of the
fourteenth century :—■
" Cyprus is the noblest, most fertile, and most illustri-
ous of islands, and the richest too : none in all seas comes
near to it, and in all goods it is richer than the rest. . . . By
all sea-ports, Egyptian, Syrian, Armenian, Turkish, and
Greek, it is surrounded as with a girdle. To them all one