The Latin and Greek Churches in former Byzantine Lands 169
his alleged complicity in a plot to overthrow Queen Caterina, the widow of
King James ii. A plan to take over the largest Greek monastery in Cyprus, St
George of Mangana near Nicosia, was conceived in 1308 by Hayton of Corycos,
an Armenian noble who had entered the Praemonstratensian monastery of
Bellapais. In 1306, moreover, Pope Clement V had instructed the Latin bishop
of Paphos to send Latins to the Georgian monasteries of St Savvas, Kellia and
Lacrona near Yiallia on the north-west coast of Cyprus, founded in the late
12th century. Neither initiative was put into effect. One observes that even
when Greek monasteries were granted to Latin religious establishments
this did not invariably entail expulsion of the Greek monks. When the leg-
ate Cardinal Benedict donated the famous Greek monastery of Our Lady of
Evergetes to the Benedictines of Monte Cassino it was stated that this donation
should not result in the expulsion of the Greek monks. Likewise Cardinal John
of Colonna did not dispossess the Greek monks of a monastery granted to the
prior of the Pisans of Constantinople.53
Such donations were intended to secure additional incomes for Latin reli-
gious houses rather than to displace Greek monks by Latin ones, and their
Latin priors’ main task was to direct their surplus income to their own con-
vents. This in itself, however, must have caused resentment on the Greeks’ part,
and in 1210 the clergy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre complained to Pope
Innocent iii that the abbot and monks of the Greek monastery of St Luke in
Phokis, central Greece, were disrespectful towards them. Some Greek mon-
asteries, such as that of Akapnoi in Thessalonica or St Margaret of Agros and
St George of Mangana in Cyprus, secured papal protection of their properties
and serfs during the 13th and 14th centuries. The four abbeys and 17 monaster-
ies mentioned in Pope Innocent iIi’s letter of February 1209 as being under the
jurisdiction of the Latin archbishop of Athens would have included Greek as
well as Latin establishments and in 1218 Pope Honorius iii placed some mon-
asteries near Athens under his protection, including that of Hosios Meletios,
the privileges of which Pope Gregory ix re-confirmed in 1236. Papal protection
was also solicited by major Greek monasteries outside the former Byzantine
lands but with estates within them, such as of St Theodore in Palestine and
St Catherine on Mt Sinai, which possessed extensive holdings in Cyprus and
Crete. In this respect parallels can be drawn with the Greek-rite monasteries
of southern Italy and Sicily, notably that of the Holy Saviour located on the
53 Coureas, Latin Church, 1195–1312, pp. 314–16; idem., Latin Church 1313–1378, pp. 391–405;
George Boustronios, A Narrative of the Chronicle of Cyprus 1456–1489, trans. Nicholas
Coureas (Nicosia, 2005), §§ 206, 234 and 258 and note 375; Richard, “Latin Church in
Constantinople,” pp. 51–54; Claverie, Honorius iii, pp. 183–86.