Cyprus and the Devotional Arts of Byzantium in the Era of the Crusades

Professor Carr is concerned here with the devotional arts of the Byzantine world in the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The first set of studies deals with groups of illuminated manuscripts of the twelfth century, mostly connected with the Eastern Mediterranean, while the second focuses directly on Cyprus and its rich Orthodox visual heritage in the later Middle Ages. As Byzantium’s strongest bridgehead to the Crusades and its heir in the Levantine balance of power, the island of Cyprus retains an exceptionally rich legacy of Byzantine culture and artifacts. At the same time, as the seat of the most enduring Crusader state, it offers unparalleled testimony to the interplay of Greek and Latin cultural traditions as they accommodated and resisted one another under the pressure of Mamluk, Mongol, and Ottoman expansion.