160 Coureas
that the inhabitants of Siphnos, chiefly women, were following the Latin rite
despite their ignorance of Latin.37
The Properties and Incomes of the Latin and Greek Churches
Two persistent myths regarding the Latin conquest of formerly Byzantine
Greek lands are that the Greek Church lost all its property, and that it was
all given to the incoming Latin Church. As will be seen, the Greek Church
did retain property, while the appropriation of those properties taken from
it was a bone of bitter contention between the Latin Church and the Latin
secular powers, as was the payment of those ecclesiastical revenues known as
tithes. In Cyprus, the Latin archdiocese of Nicosia received the two villages of
Aphendia and Ornithi as well as tithes of eight Greek sees that now formed
the new Latin archdiocese, while the three suffragan sees also received tithes
and properties outright, the see of Famagusta receiving the village or casale of
Kouklia for example. By the end of the 13th century the archdiocese of Nicosia
had seven casalia acquired by donation or purchase, as well as incomes from
another three. The Latin diocese of Limassol possessed three casalia by 1367
as well as some urban properties and incomes. The extent of the properties
of Latin dioceses in Cyprus and Latin Greece was limited compared to those
of the major cathedral churches in western Europe, although a letter of Pope
Innocent iii of 13 February 1209 confirming the properties of Bérard the Latin
archbishop of Athens enumerated around 40 casalia, of which 25 belonged
to the archbishopric and the remainder to the suffragan bishoprics. From the
outset the nobles refused to pay the tithes, or at least to pay them in full, while
the properties of the Greek Church confiscated after the Latin conquest, as
well as those of the Byzantine emperor and secular lords, had been given to
the Lusignan crown and the Latin nobles who came to settle in Cyprus, chiefly
from Latin Syria.38
37 Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus, 1:57–59; Wolff, “Organization,” p. 43; Luttrell, “Smaller Aegean
Islands,” p. 153.
38 Coureas and Schabel, Cartulary, nos. 8 and 87; Coureas, Latin Church 1195–1312, pp. 11–31
and 47–55; Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, “Relations between East and West in the Lordship of
Athens and Thebes after 1204: Archaeological and Artistic Evidence,” in Archaeology and
the Crusades: Proceedings of the Round Table, Nicosia, 1 February 2005, ed. Peter Edbury and
Sophia Kalopossi-Verti (Athens, 2007), pp. 7–8; Jean Richard, “The Papacy and Cyprus,”
in Bullarium Cyprium: Papal Letters concerning Cyprus, ed. Christopher Schabel, 2 vols.
(Nicosia, 2010), 1:16–17.