The Latin and Greek Churches in former Byzantine Lands 181
boasts iconographical features associated with crusader art. The homony-
mous church in Athens, constructed in the late 13th century, blends traditional
Byzantine and western features. Its cross-in-square type, building techniques
and the iconographical lay-out of the main church follow Byzantine norms,
but the ribbed cross-vaults of the chapel are Gothic, while the iconography
of the narthex features a Cistercian monk and several unidentified western
saints, a unique feature for a Greek church built in Latin occupied parts of
Greece.70
One arguably unique example of cross-acculturation in the field of canon
law occurred in the early 14th century, when the so-called Greek Laws, surviv-
ing in ms. Paris 1391, were compiled for use in the Greek ecclesiastical court of
Paphos. They contained a complete collection of the laws, mainly concerning
family and private law, to be applied by members of this ecclesiastical tribu-
nal together with a series of procedural models. This collection was partially
derived from sources of Eastern Roman law such as the Procheiron, the Synopsis
basilicorum maior, the legal works of Michael Attaleiates and the Ecloga. Of
the ten fascicules those with odd numbering contain Cypriot regulations while
those with even numbering contain extracts of the Epitome legum compiled
in around 920. Nonetheless the compiler of these laws was seemingly influ-
enced by the western as well as the Byzantine legal traditions, namely by the
Latin summae circulating throughout western Europe from the 12th century
onwards and which reached Cyprus in the wake of the Latin conquest of 1191.
In addition, the totality of the rubrics of Roman canon law composed in the
Latin East by John of Ancona in around 1265–68 exerted influence on the com-
piler of this collection.71
In discussing cross-acculturation one major question is to what extent
Greeks embraced the Latin form of Christianity and vice-versa. As seen above,
in some of the islands of the Cyclades the Latin rite was embraced by a signifi-
cant section of the population, to the extent that a native Latin clergy came
into existence. In general, however, the Latin Church in the formerly Byzantine
Greek lands recruited its members from western Europe, with the proportion
in Lusignan Cyprus for instance being around two-thirds from overseas. There
70 Paul Magdalino, “Between Romaniae: Thessaly and Epirus in the Later Middle Ages,” in
Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean, p. 89; Kalopissi-Verti, “Between East and
West,” pp. 10–12 and 18–20.
71 Dieter Simon, ed., Zyprische Prozessprogramme (Munich, 1973), pp. 1–10; Nicholas
Coureas, trans., The Assizes of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus (Nicosia, 2002), pp. 42–45;
Gilles Grivaud, Entrelacs Chiprois. Essai sur les livres et la vie intellectualle dans le royaume
de Chypre, 1191–1570 (Nicosia, 2009), pp. 137–39.