Dear Conference Organizers,
Following instructions, I am accompanying my proposed abstract, submitted below, according to
your deadline of today, September 30, with this cover letter.
The paper topic I propose concerns the end of the Lusignan reign in Cyprus, the waning
importance of French identity and French cultural markers in that context, and the implications
for the an understanding of an early “Francophonie” in the Outremer regions. My interest in this
stemmed from an aspect of my main work, which is on the 15th-century Burgundy court.
Your last announcement mentions that you have had an overwhelming response to the
conference, which is wonderful, as it sounds very exciting. Should the present proposal end up
being in a crowded field, I would just like to mention that I had originally contemplated anothery
topic, on the episode of the False Baldwin in early 13th-century Flanders in relation to the
imagination and political import of Outremer in a European context, and could formulate that
instead—assuming either of these proposals would be of interest to you.
Sincere regards
Francesca Canade Sautman
Professor of French, Hunter College and The Graduate School of CUNY
Deputy Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in French
Director, Henri Peyre French Institute, The Graduate Center of CUNY
fsautman@gc.cuny.edu
or 201-709-4892
Waning Cultural French Identity, Political Strife and the Last Lusignan Rulers of Cyprus.
Francesca Canadé Sautman—Hunter College and Graduate Center of CUNY
As Peter Edbury has shown, despite the unequal status of local populations, the Frankish
Lusignan regime in Cyprus, established when Richard of England sold the rights to the island to
Gui de Lusignan in 1181, was remarkably durable. Lusignan rule ceased abruptly after 1474
when Cyprus devolved to Venice, its complete master after 1489, after brief and unstable reigns
by the last two Lusignan monarchs, the half-siblings Charlotte (1444-1487) and James II
[Jacques] (c. 1449-1473) of Lusignan, respectively daughter and illegitimate son of king John II
of Cyprus. Cyprus was an essential strategic position for the Crusaders and Western colonists
and it elicited conflict and covetousness from warring international and local factions.
This paper examines the destructive conflict between Charlotte and James of Lusignan as a
reflection of a waning of French control and of a French (or Francophone) cultural identity in the
region, as French monarchical interests shifted elsewhere and as complex regional geopolitics
changed who had the upper-hand. However, the paper focuses on the breakdown of identity in
individual life narratives, exemplified by Charlotte, James, and their aunt Anne of Lusignan,
Duchess of Savoy (1418-1462), rather than on broad political processes.
Indeed, a once dominant Frankish/French “identity” (a mix of ancestry, familial connections,
language, religion and legal status), crossed with other cultural elements (chiefly Greek,
Armenian and Italian), became either irrelevant or insufficient (or inefficient) to the last heirs of
the late 15th-Century Lusignan dynasty in the throes of their internecine struggles for power.
Charlottte and James were both Greek through their mothers, but their French ascendancy was
strong, through their Lusignan father and repeatedly through his own maternal line.
Nevertheless, it seemed to have played no role in the strife. If any, “French” involvement in
these events was indirect, through two duchies that were both ambiguously French culturally and
politically independent—Burgundy and Savoy. The 1456 political marriage of Philip the Good’s
nephew by marriage, Joao of Coimbra, to Charlotte of Cyprus, was disastrous--Joao was quickly
murdered, a casualty of heightened conflict (that had been subdued by Lusignan policies for
centuries) over the prerogatives of the Greek and Latin Churches of Cyprus. Charlotte’s second
marriage, to her cousin Louis of Savoy, brought with it Savoy troops unpopular in Cyprus and
opinion turned in favor of her half-brother, James of Lusignan. Fleeing from James’s troops,
Charlotte and her husband did not turn to France as a land of exile and comfort, but to Rome,
where she died a guest of the Pope. James unseated Charlotte (in 1463) with the help of the
Egyptian Sultanate, and then, turned to Venice for support, marrying the Venetian heiress
Catherine Cornaro, only to soon die in suspicious circumstances (as did his young son) probably
murdered by agents of Venice, which then took control of the island until the Ottomans wrested
it from them. The paper thus addresses the breakdown of identities and affiliations along cultural
and linguistic lines chiefly reflected in these two figures during this time,