336 Georgopoulou
publications written from the point of view of western medievalists. Recently,
the emphasis has been placed on micro-history and the local. For instance,
Heather Grossman and others have proposed terms that insist on the local char-
acter of forms that came about in a colonial setting, like Moreote architecture;25
Teresa Shawcross, has insisted on using the specific Greek term “Frangokratia”
rather than its translated form “Frankish rule” which isolates phenomena
that are not unique to 13th-century medieval Greece and de-emphasises the
broader colonial paradigms which are at play here.26 The use of ideologically
loaded terms that posit the domination of a foreign group over Greeks is not
necessarily helpful when trying to understand and appreciate the nuances of
the intermingling of various cultural forces on the ground.
Further cultural associations have hindered the nuanced understanding of
the artistic production of this era in Greece.27 Medieval European art history
has been traditionally dominated by a French perspective: the 13th century has
been synonymous with the Gothic style of the Ile-de-France and the majes-
tic monuments sponsored by celebrated kings like St Louis of France (1214–
70) and Charles of Anjou in Naples (1226–85).28 The connections of these
monarchs with the crusades and the establishment of Latins in the Eastern
Mediterranean including the Lusignan of Cyprus, overlaid a web of associa-
tions that had a great impact on the French colonial establishments in Greece
and Cyprus.29 Whereas the cathedral of Famagusta and the Bellapais abbey
display interesting Gothic tracery and flying buttresses that betray their close
1997” Conference 7, ed. Guy De Boe and Frans Verhaeghe (Bruges, 1997), pp. 203–13; and
Livingston Vance Watrous et al., The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the
Mesara Region of Crete (Los Angeles, 2004). See also Peter Lock and Guy D.R. Sanders,
eds. The Archaeology of Medieval Greece (Oxford, 1996); Timothy Gregory, A History of
Byzantium (Chichester, 2010); and John Bintliff, The Complete Archaeology of Greece: From
Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th century A.D. (Oxford, 2012).
25 Heather E. Grossman, “Building Identity.”
26 Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea.
27 Bouras, “The Impact of Frankish Architecture,” pp. 247–62.
28 Caroline A. Bruzelius, “Ad Modum Franciae: Charles of Anjou and Gothic Architecture in
the Kingdom of Sicily,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50 (1991), 402–20;
and eadem, “Charles of Anjou and the French National Style in Italy,” in Kunst im Reich
Kaiser Friedrichs ii. von Hohenstaufen, Bd. 2: Akten des zweiten International Kolloquiums
zu Kunst und Geschichte der Stauferzeit, (Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, 8. bis 10.
Dezember 1995), (Munich, 1996), pp. 146–53.
29 Enlart, Gothic Art and Architecture in Cyprus; and Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Correlative
Spaces: Art, Identity, and Appropriation in Lusignan Cyprus,” Modern Greek Studies
Yearbook: A Publication of Mediterranean, Slavic and Eastern Orthodox Studies 14/15
(1998/99), 59–80.