A Neglected Relationship: Leontios Makhairas’s Debt to Latin Eastern and French Historiography

Abstract

The historiographical tradition of medieval and early modern Cyprus occupies an exceptional place in the literary history of the Latin-and Ottoman-ruled Greek world, thanks to its continuity, variety, and volume.¹ The change from one period to the other of the language used for these histories of Cyprus (French, Greek, or Italian) reflects historical mutations, intercultural relations, and linguistic evolution on the island as well as the process of the formation of ethnic identities.² The composition in the fifteenth century of the chronicle attributed to Leontios Makhairas marked perhaps the most important phase of Cypriot historiographical production. Written in the Greek