Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 600–800)

Abstract

Research on early medieval Cyprus has focused on the late antique "golden age" (late fourth/early fifth to seventh century) and the so-called Byzantine "Reconquista" (post-AD 965) while overlooking the intervening period. This phase was characterized, supposedly, by the division of the political sovereignty between the Umayyads and the Byzantines, bringing about the social and demographic dislocation of the population of the island. This book proposes a different story of continuities and slow transformations in the fate of Cyprus between the late sixth and the early ninth centuries.Analysis of new archaeological evidence shows signs of a continuing link to Constantinople. Moreover, together with a reassessment of the literary evidence, archaeology and material culture help us to reappraise the impact of Arab naval raids and contextualize the confrontational episodes throughout the ebb and flow of Eastern Mediterranean history: the political influence of the Caliphate looked stronger in the second half of the seventh century, the administrative and ecclesiastical influence of the Byzantine empire held sway from the beginning of the eighth to the twelfth century. Whereas the island retained sound commercial ties with the Umayyad Levant in the seventh and eighth centuries, at the same time politically and economically it remained part of the Byzantine sphere. This belies the idea of Cyprus as an independent province only loosely tied to Constantinople and allows us to draw a different picture of the cultural identities, political practices and hierarchy of wealth and power in Cyprus during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Luca Zavagno received his BA degree in History from the University Ca'Foscari, Venice; he completed his PhD studies at the University of Birmingham on the society, culture, economics and politics of Byzantine cities. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Bilkent University. Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the Byzantine and early Medieval Mediterranean and of the co-edited volumes Islands of the Eastern Mediterranean: A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (2014), Goods on the Move: Merchants, Networks and Communication Routes in the Medieval and Early Modern Era (2016) and of Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (2009).

Ecclesiastical Economies: The Integration of Sacred and Maritime Topographies of Late Antique Cyprus

“…The multifaceted nature of ecclesiastical complexes demonstrates the pragmatic and individualized situations of each settlement, ranging from monumental visibility within the landscape to small-scale agricultural production. In analysing the other roles and involvements of churches on the coast of Cyprus, more information can be supplied to ongoing discussions of longevity of occupation, connectivity, orientation toward other regions, and Christian historical contexts like autocephaly and synods (Zavagno 2017;Veikou 2015, p. 49).…”

Cyprus between the sixth and eighth centuries

“…3 See comments in Gordon andCaraher 2009. Since Theodoros Papadopoullos's (2005) and Michael Metcalf's (2009) volumes on Byzantine Cyprus, there has been an increasing stream of publications that focus on several issues of Late Antiquity, including domestic architecture (Costello 2014), churches (Papacostas 2015;Horster et al 2018), the fate of monumental architecture and classical sculpture (Panayides forthcoming), ecclesiastical history and hagiographies (Kim 2015;Jacobs 2016;Arfuch 2020;Efthymiadis 2020), as well as the fate of the island between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (Zavagno 2017). A major exhibition at the Louvre and its catalogue presented historical overviews and a rich array of objects from various collections pertaining to between the fourth and sixteenth centuries in Cyprus (Durand, Giovannoni, and Mastoraki 2012).…”

“…The focus has been predominantly on ecclesiastical architecture and décor(Papacostas 1995;Stewart 2008;Foulias 2011), lead seals, and coins(Metcalf 2009;Zavagno 2017). In terms of its coverage, Andreas I.Dikigoropoulos's thesis (1961) remains seminal though outdated.…”

The current state of Byzantine archeology

“…Elsewhere, such as on Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily, archeological evidence for relative urban vitality persists in many areas (Vaccaro, ) through the seventh century and even into the eighth. The nature of insularity, although a modern pejorative, has recently been addressed in interesting ways in which the material evidence indicates that various island communities of the empire weathered the storms better than many other regions (Zavagno, ). One must be careful, though, to extrapolate too widely from these case studies.…”