182 Coureas
are instances of converts from the Greek rite to the Latin. Salient examples
are the Syrian Melkite Thibaut de Belfarage in Cyprus, a favourite of Queen
Eleanor who was later executed, and whose death the 15th century Cypriot
chronicler Leontios Makhairas regarded as divine punishment for his deser-
tion of the Greek rite.72 In 15th-century Crete the Dominican friar Simon of
Candia, a native of Crete, was active in proselytising people to the Latin rite,
and among the Greek clerics of the late 14th and early 15th century working
on Crete to promote adhesions to the Latin rite were Maximos Chrysoberges,
Demetrios Cydones and Manuel Calecas. In Rhodes the Dominican Andreas
Chrysoberges, a Greek convert to Roman Catholicism and archbishop of the
island from 1431 until 1447, worked assiduously to promote the Latin rite.
Fluent in both Latin and Greek, he preached numerous sermons in Greek with
the consent of Pope Eugenius iv, and Greek replaced Latin in the celebration
of the divine offices in the Latin churches of the town of Rhodes, presumably
so as to facilitate conversion from the Greek rite to the Latin. One successful
instance of conversion was Constantine Habibi, whom this pope praised for
having left the Greek rite for the Latin after attending numerous sermons con-
ducted by Andreas Chrysoberges. Habibi, whose name betrays his Syrian ori-
gin, was however, a servant of the archbishop, who emancipated him in 1438,
although he continued to serve his former master at least until 1445, something
which suggests that his motives for embracing the Latin rite were not wholly
disinterested.73
The opposite phenomenon, of Latin Christians crossing over to the major-
ity Greek rite, or even of Greeks who had adopted the Latin rite subsequently
reverting to the Greek rite, was encountered far more frequently in formerly
Byzantine Greek lands under Latin rule. As early as 1251 Hugh of Fagiano,
the Latin archbishop of Nicosia, published regulations on Cyprus forbidding
Greeks who had been confirmed and married according to the Latin rite, as
well as their descendants, from receiving any sacraments in future according
to the Greek rite on pain of excommunication, unless it were for reasons of
dire necessity. In 1353 Archbishop Philip de Chamberlhac of Cyprus decreed
that persons of the Greek and Latin rite wishing to be joined in matrimony
had to be married in a Latin Church and had to raise their children as Latins,
that persons of these rites could only receive the sacraments from priests of
72 Coureas, Latin Church 1313–1378, pp. 63–66, 181–82 and 443–44; Leontios Makhairas,
Recital concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus entitled ‘Chronicle’, ed. and trans. Richard M.
Dawkins, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1932), 1:§§575–79.
73 Tsirpanlis, Κληροδότημα, pp. 42–51; idem, Ανέκδοτα Έγγραφα, pp. 211–13; Giorgio Fedalto, ed.,
Acta Eugenii iv, pc/cico, (Rome, 1965), nos. 730 and 1323.