The holiness of sacred spaces is expressed through the creative synthesis and performance of different symbolic or iconic elements. This article concentrates on the medieval church of Ayios Iakovos in Nicosia, Cyprus. Dedicated to Saint James the Persian, the church became, by the 1600s, a shared shrine for Christians of different denominations (Orthodox, Maronites, and Latins) and Muslims. The aim of this article is to investigate in an interdisciplinary way the formation, adaptation, and negotiation of insular religious identities in relation to Ayios Iakovos’ hierotopy, official and popular religious practices, and the appropriation of Byzantine culture. The components in the creation of this sacred space reflect long-term contact between Cyprus and Greater Syria, constructing an inclusive religious environment with its own insular characteristics. It will be argued that these characteristics were shaped by global, regional, and local developments, including trade, pilgrimage, war, and environmental changes. Being in dialogue with recent scholarship on mixed sacred sites, this case study stresses the importance of interconnectivity and mobility in the creation of shared places of worship. It also shows that phenomena of religious co-existence and syncretism do not always result in homogenisation but maintain distinct group identities.

Based on published and hitherto unpublished papal letters, this paper reconstructs the fascinating story of Abbot Germanos of St George of Mangana, one of the wealthiest Greek monasteries in Latin-ruled Cyprus. Beginning with an updated exposition of the monastery’s Byzantine origins and Constantinopolitan ties, the paper continues with Germanos’ appeals to Pope John XXII (1316-1334) concerning the settling of a dispute between Germanos himself and a group of his monks in the 1320s. Germanos’ case thus becomes a window for exploring the motivations of historical actors in a world shaped by the politics of Latin domination in the East, the agenda of papal supremacy, the Bulla Cypria constitution, and Latin and Byzantine monastic traditions and practices. The need to address these conditions in a realistic way, while serving institutional and personal interests, enabled the development of complex networks that cut across the binary of Greek vs. Latin. The editio princeps of Pope John XXII’s first letter to Germanos (8 July 1322) is an invaluable addition to the Mangana affair portfolio, contributing to a fuller picture of the crisis, providing information on the protagonists and the monastery, and reflecting papal pastoral concerns in the East.

This article revisits an important and much-discussed question: how and why was Christian learning in second- and third-century Alexandria institutionalised, leading to what came to be known as the “Catechetical School”? Its contribution to scholarship lays in that it focuses on cultural, ideological, and ecclesiastical developments under the Antonines and the Severans, placing the Alexandrian case within a broader context. Building on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, our examination seeks to map the complex web of interactions among the Christians themselves, as well as between Christians and non-Christians, so as to understand more deeply the mechanics behind the institutional establishment of the Alexandrian School. Berger and Luckmann’s theory on the relationship between institutions and knowledge frames our analysis of episcopal legitimation and the reception of the Alexandrian School’s origins by Eusebius of Caesarea. As will be argued, the early history of the School is largely “a tale of two cities”, in the sense that parallel and transverse processes in Alexandria and Rome reflect the plurality of Christian responses to pressing challenges.

The Cypriot Peasant Revolt of 1426 represents a unique expression of peasant resistance during the period of Frankish rule in Cyprus. The island’s Mamluk invasion in 1426 was followed by the defeat and capture of King Janus of Lusignan at the Battle of Khirokitia and the subsequent sack of Nicosia; upon the Muslim withdrawal, the peasants took up arms against the Frankish nobility, establishing their own hierarchy and proclaiming a peasant king: Alexis the serf. Based on the little information we possess on the event, this paper attempts to understand the nature of the revolt by transcending the methodological dichotomy of pure ethnic/national vs. pure class/social conflict.