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The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm Crusader to Venetian Famagusta

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The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm Crusader to Venetian Famagusta The Harbour of all this Sea and Realm Crusader to Venetian Famagusta Edited by Michael J.K. Walsh, Tamás Kiss, Nicholas S.H. Coureas Department of Medieval Studies & Central European University Press Budapest · New York Budapest, 2014 © Editor and Contributors 2014 1st edition Technical Editor: Copy Editor: Frank Shaer Cover design for the series by Péter Tóth Cover Illustration: Detail from Stephano Gibellino’s print of the siege of Famagusta, 1571. Joint publication by: Central European University Department of Medieval Studies Nádor u. 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Telephone: (+36-1) 327-3051 Fax: (+36-1) 327-3055 E-mail: [email protected], Website: http://medievalstudies.ceu.hu Central European University Press An imprint of the Central European University Limited Liability Company Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 Fax: +36-1-327-3183 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com 400 West 59th Street, New York NY 10019, USA Tel: +1-212-547-6932, Fax: +1-646-557-2416 E-mail: [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISSN 1587-6470 CEU MEDIEVALIA ISBN 978-963-5225-96-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The harbour of all this sea and realm: crusader to Venetian Famagusta / edited by Michael J.K. Walsh, Tamás Kiss, Nicholas Coureas.—1st edition. pages cm.—(CEU medievalia, ISSN 1587-6470; 17) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-6155225963 (hardbound) 1. Famagusta (Cyprus)—Civilization. 2. Famagusta (Cyprus)—History. 3. Material culture—Cyprus—Famagus- ta—History. 4. Crusades. 5. Cyprus—History—Lusignan dynasty, 1192–1474. 6. Cyprus—History—Venetian rule, 1474–1570. I. Walsh, Michael J. K., 1968- II. Kiss, Tamás, 1976- III. Coureas, Nicholas. DS54.95.F35H37 2014 956.93’01--dc 3 2014004412 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ..................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... xi Introduction: Michael J.K. Walsh, Tamás Kiss and Nicholas S.H. Coureas . 3 Section One: History Philippe Trélat Nicosia and Famagusta during the Frankish Period (1192–1474): Two Capitals for One Kingdom? ................................................................. 21 Pierre-Vincent Claverie Stephen de Mezel Bishop of Famagusta and his Age (1244–1259) ............................................................................................... 41 David Jacoby Refugees from Acre in Famagusta around 1300 ..................................... 53 Nicholas Coureas Apprentice Artisans and Craftsmen in Famagusta in the Notarial Deeds of Lamberto di Sambuceto and Giovanni da Rocha, 1296–1310 ...... 69 Michel Balard The Mercenaries of Genoese Famagusta in the Fifteenth Century ........ 77 Benjamin Arbel Maritime Trade in Famagusta during the Venetian Period (1474–1571) ............................................................................................... 91 Section Two: Material Culture Ulrike Ritzerfeld Made in Cyprus? Fourteenth Century Mamluk Metal Ware for the West: The Question of Provenance ................................................... 105 Maria Paschali Crusader Ideology, Propaganda and the Art of the Carmelite Church in Fourteenth Century Famagusta .................................................. 135 Michele Bacci Identity Markers in the Art of Fourteenth-Century Famagusta ............. 145 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Allan Langdale Pillars and Punishment: Spolia and Colonial Authority in Venetian Famagusta ..................................................................................... 159 Thomas Kaffenberger Harmonizing the Sources: An Insight into the Appearance of the Saint Georgios Complex at Various Stages of its Building History . 169 List of Contributors ................................................................................................... 191 Index .......................................................................................................................... 195 PILLARS AND PUNISHMENT: SPOLIA AND COLONIAL AUTHORIty IN VENETIAN FAMAGUSTA Allan Langdale Recent years have seen an increase in scholarship dealing with the Venetian empire and with the colonial towns and islands that Venice controlled through the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.1 Studying Venice’s protectorates beyond the confines of its lagoon furnishes a myriad of illuminating case studies where Venetian enterprises can be examined as precursive to later European colonial ventures. For a brief historical period, between 1489 and 1571, the Cypriot port of Famagusta was one of Venice’s most strategic and distant possessions.2 Despite this relatively brief, eighty- two-year tenure, the Venetians undertook dramatic modifications of the town’s rich architectural heritage and organized significant embodiments ofvenezianitá (“Vene- tian-ness”), especially in the city’s mural defenses and in the city’s core, the piazza of the cathedral of St Nicholas, around which the various signifiers of Venetian hegemony were structured. A noteworthy vehicle of this process of colonial signification and the articulation of Venetian authority in this and other locations was the utilization of spo- lia: reused architectural fragments, in this specific case from the ancient Greco-Roman city of Salamis, the ruins of which lie just six kilometers north of Famagusta. The Venetians were by no means exceptional in their redeployment of “histori- cal” architectonic and sculptural fragments to embody ideological concepts. Many civi- lizations before them, and since, used remnants of subjugated or inherited cultures to develop iconographies of conquest or to visually supplement historiographic mythol- 1 M. Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2001). The art and architecture of Venetian Crete is compiled in G. Gerola, Monumenti Veneti nell’Isola di Creta, Richerche e descrizioni fatte per incarico del R. Istituto, 4 vols. (Venice, 1908). For architectural influences from the Middle East, see D. Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Vene- tian Architecture 1100-1500 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000). See as well C. Campbell, A. Chong et al., Bellini and the East (London: National Gallery, 2005). 2 For a survey of the general visual culture of Venetian Cyprus, see the exhibition catalogue Cyprus: Jewel in the Crown of Venice (Nicosia: Leventis, 2003). 160 ALLAN LaNGDALE ogies. While it may have been convenient to reuse materials—for example, using col- umns that were ready-made as opposed to quarrying and carving new ones (a compel- ling pragmatic, rather than programmatic rationale for the use of spolia) there is every indication that such remnants were also very consciously curated to convey notions of triumph and/or of the inheritance of the grandeur of past civilizations and to reinter- pret old iconographies to new purposes. Spolia were not simply convenient; they also carried with them powerful symbolic associations wherein artifacts of the past, and of prior peoples, were reassigned as trophies and as signifiers of a current regime’s potency and its continuity with an eminent former civilization. It is with these processes in mind that this paper makes some inferences about how the Venetians may have used spolia in Famagusta, or how spolia might have been understood in Famagusta during the Venetians’ brief time as colonial power. One particular aspect of power will be focused on: the articulation of authority through the threat of physical punishment. The pro- cedure presumes a consistency of iconographies and meanings throughout the Vene- tian empire, with Venetians in particular being able to recognize local variations in the diverse, yet consistent, arte-factual improvisations. In an earlier article I dealt with the question of the use of antique spolia in the Famagusta cathedral square and how the Venetians may have arrayed the assemblage into a programme consistent with humanist strategies surrounding the “Myth of Ven- ice” and the appropriation of some signifiers of Greco-Roman civilization, in this specific case represented by the ancient city of Salamis.3 As inheritors of a renaissance humanist tradition, contemporary scholars often find it easy to move in humanist past culture where we find the intellectual environment comfortable. We are, however, often less sure of ourselves when dealing with vernacular culture, sometimes because of the limitations of the archive, sometimes because of cul- tural prejudices about the paradigmatic superiority of high culture. This has also been the case when interpreting programmatic exhibitions of spolia. Nevertheless, Marilyn Perry demonstrated some time ago how many popular readings could grow up around the pieces of spolia in Venice.4 Similarly, Robert Nelson has recently shown, in the case of the so-called “Pillars of Acre”, how Venetian humanists from many eras could be involved in the construction and propagation of spurious but nonetheless ideologically useful popular myths.5 Since the appearance of Guido Ruggiero’s work on crime and 3 A. Langdale, “At the Edge of Empire: Venetian Architecture in Famagusta, Cyprus”, Viator: Medieval and Re- naissance Studies 41,
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