Abstract
Among the legends disseminated by the friars of San Francesco in Assisi was an enduring tale that surfaced at the dawn of the sixteenth century, according to which a thirteenth-century queen of Cyprus was buried inside an exuberant Gothic canopied tomb in the convent’s Lower Church. This study examines the queen’s supposed funerary monument, explores the varying permutations of the legend, reveals the presumed gifts she donated to the friars, and unravels the conundrum surrounding her identity and the position of her tomb. In considering the convent-specific and wider contexts of Italy and Cyprus, the paper deconstructs the myth by uncovering new archival sources and offers fresh insights into the identity and activity of the Cypriot queen in Assisi. More importantly, it argues that the legend distorted historical facts as a means to enhance the connection between the Franciscan Order, the convent, and the Holy Land.
What relation could the eminent convent of San Francesco in Assisi have with the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean? The most direct and earliest association of Cyprus with the Franciscans involves a tradition, according to which St Francis (1182-1226) and his companion, Brother Barbarus, lodged in Cyprus between 1219 and 1220, recovering after their participation in the crusade expedition to Damietta.1 This study, however, will not investigate the wanderings of St Francis in Cyprus, but, instead, an underexplored legend that prevailed among the Franciscans of Assisi vis-à-vis the visit, donations, and burial of a queen of Cyprus in the convent of San Francesco. Contrary to the standard belief that King Peter I of Lusignan (1328/1359-1369) was the first Cypriot monarch to have traveled to Western Europe, the Assisi lore goes against the tide and asserts that such a journey took place earlier, in the thirteenth century, by an enigmatic female member of the Lusignan dynasty visiting the newly founded convent in Assisi.2
In what follows, I will probe different variants of this tradition, discuss the impressive Gothic funerary monument in the Lower Church that is assigned to her, examine the gifts she purportedly donated to the convent, grapple with the mystery shrouding her identity and the location of her tomb, and, ultimately, offer new insights by taking into account the convent-specific and wider historical contexts of Italy and Cyprus. By presenting and discussing such a perplexing monument and the traditions surrounding it, and by weighing archival against historical evidence – some of it contradictory – I hope to demonstrate that the Assisi tradition represents a conflation of older monuments and individuals with a more recent historical figure, that of Queen Charlotte of Lusignan, who lived during the fifteenth century and spent several years in Rome as a queen in exile. As I will argue in the last part of this study, the Franciscans were probably inspired by Charlotte’s presence in Assisi to promote their ministry through the Custody of the Holy Land (Custodia Terrae Sanctae) and the order’s long-standing authority over pilgrimage in the holy sites of Palestine.
1 Introduction: A Queen of Cyprus Rests at San Francesco in Assisi
Over the centuries, different writers reiterated that a queen of Cyprus was buried in the Lower Church of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi and identified as her tomb a canopied funerary monument that stands against the east wall of the entrance bay (Fig. 1). In fact, the purported queen’s effigy is laid on a marble sarcophagus, the lower part of which is adorned with an arcaded frieze sheltering a series of identical coats of arms (Fig. 2).3 Two angels frame the effigy of the deceased and pull aside two curtains to reveal it. On the upper level, inside a recess, are sculpted a crowned figure, sitting cross-legged on a lion, and an enthroned Madonna with Child.4 The identity of the tomb’s occupant is as puzzling as the date of its manufacture, its sculptor, and its semiotics, all of which are still vigorously debated. According to early modern authors, such as Giorgio Vasari (1568), the queen of Cyprus’ monument was erected in 1229 and was the work of Fuccio Fiorentino, an artist untraceable elsewhere.5 More specifically, Vasari writes:
and in the Church of S. Francesco in Assisi he made the marble tomb of the Queen of Cyprus, with many figures, and in particular a portrait of her sitting on a lion, in order to show the strength of her soul; which Queen, after her death, left a great sum of money to the end that this fabric might be finished.6
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, east wall of entrance bay, funerary monument of the emperor of Constantinople (once assumed to be that of the queen of Cyprus), late thirteenth / early fourteenth century
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: M. Fedeli, Spoleto / © Archivio fotografico del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiAssisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, east wall of entrance bay, funerary monument of the emperor of Constantinople (once assumed to be that of the queen of Cyprus): detail of the lower right part of the sarcophagus, with the figure of an apostle and the coat of arms of the emperor of Constantinople, late thirteenth / early fourteenth century
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: S. DillerMore recent literature, however, has settled for later dates and proposed other artists as the makers of this tomb. On the one hand, Wilhelm Valentiner suggested Ramo di Paganello, a Sienese sculptor who plied his trade in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in different places, including Siena, Orvieto, and, perhaps, Naples.7 On the other hand, Edgar Hertlein argued that the monument was made between 1326 and 1328 by a transalpine master with experience in Siena and Orvieto and influenced by Tino di Camaino.8 A few decades later, Elvio Lunghi opined that the funerary monument should be placed between 1283 and 1295, and that it was the opus of Master Rubeus, an artist active in Umbria in the late thirteenth century.9 Supporting Lunghi’s view, Gert Kreytenberg considered Rubeus as the craftsman of the tomb, but maintained that the whole project was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio.10 Enrica Neri Lusanna, who has offered an excellent literature review on the monument, is equally in favor of Rubeus and of a creation date in the last fifteen years of the Duecento.11
The identity of the deceased is also a vexed question that remains unanswered. The earliest reference to the tomb comes from Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa (†1401), who wrote ca. 1390 that the Latin emperor of Constantinople, John of Brienne (ca. 1170/1229-1237), a devout Franciscan tertiary and friend of St Francis, was buried in Assisi. Bartolomeo da Pisa noted a seated sepulchral portrait of John, in which he donned his regalia.12 In addition, in a notarial act dated 4 August 1418, the tomb was defined as “sepulcrum quod vocatur sepulcrum d. imperatoris constantinopolitani” (the tomb which is called the tomb of the lord emperor of Constantinople).13 Conversely, from the late fifteenth century onwards, different sources variously reported on two royals (a male and a female) as lying there. For instance, in 1509 the sacristan of the Basilica, Galeotto dei Bistocchi, compiled a register of inhumations (sepultuario), in which he recorded that John of Brienne and his daughter, Isabel II of Jerusalem (ca. 1212-1228), the wife of Emperor Frederick II, were interred there.14 Lastly, some sources referred to the sepulcher as exclusively belonging to a woman. In a notarial deed drawn up by Ieronimus de Portella on 3 August 1489, a “sepulcrum Imperatricis Constantinopolitane” (sepulcher of the empress of Constantinople) was noted, while, in the early twentieth century, Beda Kleinschmidt contended that the occupant of the tomb is Maria of Antioch (ca. 1220-1307), the claimant to the throne of Jerusalem who sold her rights to Charles I of Anjou in 1277.15 It has also been posited that the tomb is not in its original position and that, initially, there were two separate monuments, one destined for the Latin emperor of Constantinople and the other for the queen of Cyprus (Figs. 3, 4:26).16 Be this as it may, the latest scholarship has established that the funerary monument on the east wall of the entrance bay (or atrium) was destined for a royal male, either John of Brienne or Philip I of Courtenay, the Latin emperor of Constantinople from 1273 until his death in 1283.17 It has also been conclusively demonstrated that the coats of arms decorating the tomb were not associated with Cypriot royalty, but with a Latin emperor of Constantinople.18
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, view of the entrance bay towards the chapel of St Catherine. On the right, the tomb of the emperor of Constantinople and the Nepis Chapel
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: M. Fedeli, Spoleto / © Archivio fotografico del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiThese developments notwithstanding, it is truly arresting that almost all testimonies from Galeotto dei Bistocchi’s Sepultuario (1509), which refers to “il corpo della Regina de Cipro,” up to the nineteenth century link the tomb in question to the queen of Cyprus. If we are to give credence to early modern authors, the presence of the Cypriot queen in Assisi was not confined to her funerary monument. Galeotto relates that the queen bequeathed 40,000 scudi and the holy water stoup, which stood at the entrance to the church.19 Surprisingly, a few decades later, in Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga’s Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco in Assisi (1571), we are told that the queen’s name was Eugubea, that she was Venetian, and that she was queen of Cyprus, which kingdom was part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.20 According to Pietralunga, the queen was ill and made a vow to St Francis that, if she recovered, she would go to his grave and church.21 The generous Eugubea fulfilled her obligation and furnished the convent with a porphyry vase, full of 200,000 gold and silver ducats, which were used for the raising and adornment of the Upper Church.22 In the sixteenth century, the basin still stood at the portal of the Lower Church and contained blessed water, which, to believe Pietralunga, had been that vase’s function and position ever since its arrival in Assisi.23 As an author who liked precision, Pietralunga also provided the exact spot of the stoup near the entrance: “when you reach the entrance of the church, on your left hand, the vase is placed between the first and second pilaster” (Figs. 4:22, 5).24 Likewise, in 1586, the Franciscan historian Pietro Ridolfi da Tossignano, bishop of Venosa and Senigallia, related a variant of that story: the “Regina Cypri” was buried in Assisi and had left the convent 200,000 gold coins and a beautiful porphyry vase lacking its base, the latter located at the entrance and used as a container for holy water.25 Among the many registers commissioned by the minister general of the order in 1597, Filippo Gesualdo, one cites information found in the Libro delle Memorie (1505) and states that the “serenissima regina di Cipri,” whose name here is spelled “Iugubea,” had donated to the convent 40,000 scudi and the porphyry vase, replete with “colore azzurro” (color azure), with which both churches (i.e., the Upper and Lower Churches) were painted. This donation was made without any obligation, except that the friars were to commemorate the queen annually and lead a procession to her sepulcher (Fig. 6).26 In the Annales Minorum (1625-1654), compiled by Friar Luke Wadding, the story is retold; in fact, it is a carbon copy of Ridolfi’s description, but this time the Irish Franciscan situates the events in 1235.27
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, ground plan indicating monuments, chapels, and locations discussed in the text
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Plan: M. GrimaldiAssisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, view from the entrance bay towards the nave and the high altar. On the left-hand side, the fresco of St Christopher and, below, a stoup (the original spot of the queen’s vase)
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: S. DillerList of Masses performed for individuals who had made contributions to the convent of San Francesco, including the Regina di Cipri, Eugubea, August 1597. ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: Archivio del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiIn the section “Sepolture et Cimiterio” of MS 148, an unidentified seventeenth-century author provides an account of the events that aligns well with those furnished by Vasari and Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga. According to this source, the body of the queen of Cyprus, whose name was Eugubea and who was Venetian, was situated in the middle of the church, in front of the main entrance. Eugubea experienced a severe illness, and, after her recovery was facilitated by St Francis, she was determined to help in the construction of the church. She made a generous donation of 40,000 scudi (on the margins of the folio, this is rectified to 2,000 scudi) and, in addition, presented the porphyry vase, which served as an acqua santiera. The anonymous author also notes that her own tomb was made in 1229 by the Florentine artist Fuccio Fiorentino. Subsequently, the author proceeds to offer a description of the monument in a manner reminiscent of Vasari.28 Also in the same manuscript, there is a folio that lists the “Oblighi et indulgenze” (obligations and indulgences) assigned to the basilica, and at the top of the page is the Cypriot queen. The text reports that, every morning, the friars celebrated at least one Mass for the soul of the queen of Cyprus, who brought so many dinars to the church, and aided in its construction.29 According to later authors, such as Niccolò Papini (ca. 1751-1834), the queen’s donation was made in 1270 and not 1229. Papini notes that the queen was a great supporter of the convent and, accordingly, the friars commemorated her annually with a solemn office.30 To complicate matters, in his work Collis Paradisi Amoenitas (1704), Father Francesco Maria Angeli da Rivotorto (1632-1697) refers to “Aecubea Suessana Regina Cypri.”31 Angeli also takes up the tale of the queen who fell ill in Ancona (this time in 1240), made a votum to go to Assisi (“ex voto Assisium venit”) and was finally buried there with all proper Masses, having left a large amount of money to the convent.32 He also describes her tomb at length, largely following Vasari’s text. In this instance, we learn that, surprisingly, in addition to being Venetian, the queen of Cyprus was held to be “Suessana,” that is, coming from Suessa (Sessa Aurunca), a town in the province of Caserta in Campania. This is a very specific origin and it should have yielded an easy identification for that legendary sovereign; however, I have not succeeded in tracing a queen of Cyprus originating from Suessa. The Cronicon Suessanum, which covers events related to Suessa from 1103 to 1348, remains silent when it comes to such a historical figure. It only mentions the Holy Roman Empress Constance of Aragon (1179/1220-1222), the first wife of Frederick II, who visited Suessa in 1220, where she was received with magnificent honors during a stay of 37 days.33 In my opinion, it is more likely that “Suessana” is a transcription error, and the intended word was “Serenissima.” However, I should emphasize that in the 1704 and 1752 editions of the text, the word reads as “Suessana.”
2 Eugubea of Cyprus’ Gifts to the Franciscans
Reading through the textual sources, one is struck by the allusion to the porphyry volute crater that was filled with precious materials, a donation from the queen of Cyprus to the mother church of the Franciscans. It is fascinating that this artifact can still be seen today above the funerary monument of the Florentine family of the Cerchi (Fig. 7). The crater dates from the fourth century CE and is carved out of breccia porphyry.34 The appreciation of Roman antiquities was widespread in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and similar vases hewn out of precious rocks, especially porphyry, are to be seen in other churches in Italy, such as in the cathedrals of Pisa and Amalfi.35 In Cyprus, antique objects were not unknown, not least tangentially related to a queen. A jasper sarcophagus, which was kept in the cathedral of Sancta Sophia in Nicosia, was associated with the erotic affair of Venus and Mars and was later obtained by Cypriot merchants to receive Christ’s body. The sarcophagus was probably brought from Jerusalem in the fifteenth century and was so prized that many pilgrims over the centuries included it in their accounts. Its fame is encapsulated in the desire of Queen Caterina Corner (1454/1474-1510) to use it as a tomb for her late husband, James II, in 1473, a request that was denied by the cathedral chapter.36 In addition, vases like that of Eugubea in Assisi, to which stories were attributed relating to Christ’s life and which were used as water stoups, were extant in the churches and convents of Cyprus. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century travelogs describe hydriae made either of stone or stoneware, which were on display in the cathedral of Nicosia and also at the church of the Franciscans in Famagusta.37 Various travelers recorded that the vases were those used by Christ in his Miracle at the Wedding in Cana. Nevertheless, as Lorenzo Calvelli aptly suggests, some of these containers were possibly archaeological finds, which, like the jasper sarcophagus in Nicosia, were accorded a venerable Christian past, and they perhaps came in various shapes.38 All things considered, the donation of an antique vase to Assisi by a Cypriot queen would not be out of place, if we consider that comparable objects were admired and sought after by royalty in Cyprus.
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, east wall of entrance bay, Cerchi monument, the queen of Cyprus’ volute crater, fourth century CE (?), breccia porphyry (79cm × 67cm)
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: M. Fedeli, Spoleto / © Archivio fotografico del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiIn addition to the crater, we are informed that the same queen had donated to the convent of Assisi an altar frontal (paliotto) and a cope (piviale) that depicted St Francis in ecstasy and the Stigmatization of St Francis, respectively. It seems that the queen’s gifts were still preserved at the convent in 1648, when they were reproduced in the form of engravings by the Assisian painter Giovanni Paolo Zampa (Figs. 8-9). These engravings were included in Fra Niccolò Catalano’s treatise Fiume del terrestre paradiso (1652), the focal point of which was the original form of the Franciscan habit.39 Zampa was little interested in rendering the actual style of the figures and followed the aesthetic conventions of his own time, thereby making the precise dating of the textiles impossible. The iconography also displays certain unusual traits, as, in the Stigmatization, no sign of either the seraph or the crucifix from which the rays normally emanate is discernible amid the parting clouds; furthermore, while the companion of St Francis, Brother Leo, commonly appears in the scene, he is typically shown as either asleep or absorbed in reading rather than engaged in prayer, seemingly unaware of the miracle unfolding next to him (Fig. 9). A comparable gesture is made by Leo in a fresco of the same subject by Spinello Aretino in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, dated ca. 1390, where, however, Leo’s reaction to the miracle is one of surprise rather than apathy, as in the queen’s cope.40 On a more intriguing note, it is likely that Brother Leo was first incorporated into the iconography of the Stigmatization in the cycle of the Upper Church in Assisi in the 1290s, thus giving us a clue as to when our cope was created. That is to say, the cope could not have been made in the early/mid-thirteenth century, which some sources identify as the queen’s lifetime, but more likely at a later date.41
Giovanni Paolo Zampa, Palliotto della Regina di Cipro, 1648-1652, engraving in Catalano, Fiume del terrestre paradiso, 482
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: Su concessione del Ministero della cultura © Biblioteca Nazionale di NapoliGiovanni Paolo Zampa, Piviale della Regina di Cipro, 1648-1652, engraving in Catalano, Fiume del terrestre paradiso, 483
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: Su concessione del Ministero della cultura © Biblioteca Nazionale di NapoliCatalano, who was at pains to defend the veracity of the queen’s existence and her offerings to Assisi, reveals that this “divotissima prencipessa” (extremely pious princess) bequeathed not only the two aforementioned vestments, but also “piviali, pianete, e altre suppellettili in servizio della chiesa” (copes, chasubles, and other furnishings at the service of the church).42 Nevertheless, the five earliest known inventories of the Sacro Convento’s sacristy, which span the years 1338 to 1473, make no reference to such gifts to the convent.43 On the contrary, the inventories record donations to Assisi by other queens and illustrious people: for example, the inventory of 1338 lists a red corporale (corporal) showing the crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St John on one side, and the Virgin and Child on the other, a gift of Queen Maria of Hungary (†1317).44 The same inventory contains a gold and silver orphrey (aurifrigium) exhibiting the legend of St Francis, embroidered and studded with pearls, an exquisite textile hanging offered to the friars by Pope Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pontiff (1227/1288-1292).45
My research in the convent’s inventories dating from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries has not succeeded in tracing citations of the gifts given to Assisi by the Cypriot sovereign. The only exceptions are two entries of a kindred nature found in two inventories of the sacristy compiled in ca. 1710 and 1714. These entries appear under the section “Piviali rossi” (red copes), along with other vestments of the same type, and they read as follows: “three ancient copes (piviali) with gold brocade, two of them having various birds within circles, and the other with various figures and its frieze ornamented all’antica, the other two without frieze, and all of them without a hood, which they say were donated by the queen of Cyprus.”46 One such ancient vestment, ornamented with animals inscribed within medallions, calls to mind the early-thirteenth-century paliotto/dossale (altar frontal) donated to the friars by John of Brienne. However, the Brienne frontal is decorated not only with birds but also with griffins, all of which are enclosed in multilobed medallions instead of round ones.47 Although one might be tempted to identify the queen’s textile donations with those of John of Brienne, this idea should be rejected outright, since the nature of the vestments (paliotto and piviale) and their decoration do not match. As already stated, apart from the two aforementioned early-eighteenth-century entries, the convent’s inventories between 1487 and 1723 do not contain any references to antichi piviali, nor to paliotti or pianette offered by the queen of Cyprus. Moreover, the inventories repeatedly record the generosity of specific named individuals, a few of whom are worthy of mention, such as “suora Monica,” the “Duchessa di Toscana/Firenze,” the “regina Giovanna di Napoli,” and the “Signor Monaldo” (Pope Sixtus V), whereas the queen of Cyprus remains anonymous in the two inventories in which she appears.48 What is more, on the margin of the inventory for 1714, and next to the entry for the queen’s copes, is found the word “esitati” (hesitant to accept), perhaps demonstrating that the friars who composed the inventory were doubtful of the veracity of this information, and possibly, by extension, of this nebulous tradition.
Of course, one should bear in mind that the convent’s treasury had all too often fallen victim to theft and looting already in the early fourteenth century and up until the nineteenth, meaning that the gifts of the Cypriot queen might have vanished under such deplorable circumstances.49 However, if that had indeed been the case, why were these objects attested exclusively in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources but not before? How could this discrepancy in the archival record be explained? Were these textiles donated to the convent between 1473 and 1487 and, for this reason, do not appear in the surviving archival documentation? Might there have been in the sacristy a few vestments adorned with Franciscan imagery that, at a later stage, Fra Catalano decided to assign to a specific patron, having in mind the Cypriot queen’s legend and her actual gifts, which, by that time, had been lost? Witness, for instance, the fact that, in a few entries from two inventories dated 1597 and 1600, we encounter “piviali rossi,” “palii d’altari,” and “corporali” bearing the Stigmatization of St Francis, which are not paired up with a donor.50 The fact that Giovanni Paolo Zampa’s engravings do not render the birds, the all’antica frieze, and the medallions described in the sacristy inventories from 1710-1714 does not mean that these motifs did not decorate the vestments. The inventory records and Zampa’s engraving seem to complement each other, at least in the case of the cope.51 The first one provides details on the decorative patterns, while the latter illustrates scenes from the life of St Francis, in what the inventory simply designates as “various figures.” Unless future archival research brings to light further information about Eugubea’s gifts, it seems to me that we should regard them as a conundrum difficult to disentangle.
3 Locating the Queen’s Mysterious Tomb
As for the location of the tomb of the queen of Cyprus, almost all historians identify her sepulchral monument with that of the emperor of Constantinople, which stands in the entrance bay (atrium), yet the original position of this monument is also a matter of debate (Figs. 3, 4:26).52 In the nineteenth century, Niccolò Papini noted that the lower part of the Nepis Chapel, next to the current location of the emperor of Constantinople’s tomb, was once part of a late thirteenth-century sepulcher, which was acquired in the Quattrocento by the Nepis family and partly destroyed. Papini reported that, in his time, this monument was thought to have been either destined for a queen of Cyprus or prepared to receive the remains of Pope Martin IV, who died in 1285.53 We cannot be certain, though, that this was the case, because by the nineteenth century the friars were familiar with the confusion surrounding the burials of these two people (i.e., the emperor of Constantinople and the queen of Cyprus) and might have wanted to offer a reasonable explanation. Earlier sources may give us an inkling about the placement of the queen’s tomb in the Lower Church. To begin with, Pietralunga (1571) provides a description of the queen’s tomb, but, as already mentioned, his text erroneously considers the funerary monument of the emperor of Constantinople to have been Eugubea’s: “in the middle of the aforementioned entrance to the church, when one stands with one’s back to the tomb of St Francis, one sees a very beautiful monument to Queen Eugubea on the façade, at the church’s end point.”54 In other words, Pietralunga’s testimony is of little help vis-à-vis the topographical placement of the queen’s tomb, for, in essence, he is referring to the sepulcher of the emperor of Constantinople.
Sixty-six years before Pietralunga, in a document composed on 4 May 1505, the members of the Confraternity of the Third Order declared that, in the distant past, they used to gather in order to listen to their Rule in front of the tomb of the queen of Constantinople, which was fronted with iron, thus encouraging us to suppose that the confraternity described a different monument than that in the atrium, namely one that had an iron grille.55 Yet, in his detailed description of Eugubea’s tomb (i.e., the emperor of Constantinople’s tomb), Pietralunga explains that it was equipped and adorned with an iron grate and that, in the period of the perdono, the penitents stood there with batons in hand.56 Galeotto dei Bistocchi (1509) could, perhaps, give us an answer concerning the name and placement of both the emperor of Constantinople’s tomb and that of the queen of Cyprus. In his registry of burials, Galeotto commences his list with the tomb of St Francis, which is located below the high altar, the point of reference inside the Lower Church (Fig. 4:1).57 He then indexes tombs that belonged to significant people interred in the transept of the church, among them the companions of St Francis. In that catalog of transept monuments, the author includes the tomb of John, emperor of Constantinople, and his daughter.58 Regardless, the possibility that this monument would have once been placed in the transept seems untenable; for one thing, this is the only tomb among those Galeotto describes for which he does not indicate the exact spot and he simply writes: “item nella ditta ecclesia iace Giovanni” (also in the same church lies John). This vagueness on Galeotto’s part suggests that he was unsure of the whereabouts of the emperor’s sepulcher, and, as Giuseppe Abate posits, he would have been puzzled by the change of the tomb’s identification that occurred between 1488 and 1509.59 In the part “Sepolture et Cimiterio” of MS 148, in an entry recording Emperor John’s tomb, the anonymous seventeenth-century author relates that some people believe John of Brienne to have been interred with his daughter, the child of Emperor Frederick II, while others claim that the emperor was buried “in quel monumento del pulpito di pietra, dove è l’altar di San Stanislao”; for all that, he then specifies that Fra Ludovico da Castello (i.e., Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga), in his book C (fol. 7), reports that John was buried in Santa Maria degli Angeli, and that his portrait was included in his tomb.60 If we accept the veracity of this testimony, then a possible placement of the emperor’s tomb near the cantoria (or chapel of St Stanislas), which was refurbished in 1337-1338 by the Soldani family, could give us a terminus post quem for the move of the tomb to the entrance bay, which means that the remaking of the cantoria might have necessitated the removal of the tomb to a different site. The information is hazy, however, and further investigation of the issue will need to be carried out in the future. All things considered, it would have been difficult for a lay woman to be interred in the transept of the church, among the companions of St Francis. A comparable confusion occurs in a notarial deed dated 10 May 1521, wherein the tomb is simply called the sepulcher of a “certain queen,” the topographical context of which is given as close to the Nepis Chapel, thus making it identifiable with the tomb of the emperor of Constantinople.61
At any rate, after noting John’s tomb, Galeotto continues with burials found in the north part of the church (e.g., at the altar of St Elizabeth, in the chapels of St Valentine and St Anthony of Padua), and then proceeds to the south (Fig. 4:11). He mentions the tomb of Jacoba dei Settesoli, a good friend of St Francis and a major benefactor of the convent, who died in 1239 and was buried “nel mezzo della ecclesia sotto lo pergolo” (in the middle of the church beneath the pergolo).62 By using the phrase “nel mezzo della ecclesia,” Galeotto meant the nave, whereas, with the expression “sotto lo pergolo,” he denoted the chapel of St Stanislas (alias cantoria; Fig. 10), and not the famous pergola that framed the altare maggiore and the subterranean tomb of St Francis.63
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, view from the high altar towards the east; at the far end, the tomb of the emperor of Constantinople and the Nepis Chapel; on the right, the St Stanislas Chapel (cantoria) and next to it a fresco of Jacoba dei Settesoli on the spot where her tomb was once located
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: M. Fedeli, Spoleto / © Archivio fotografico del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiTo sum up, Jacoba was buried not far from St Francis, but outside the transept and the area of the altar, on the south part, near the chapel of St Stanislas.64 Most interestingly, the tomb entry in the registry that comes after Jacoba is that of the queen of Cyprus, who was buried “nel mezzo della ecclesia avanti la porta” (in the middle of the church in front of the door). Was Galeotto referring to the present location of the emperor of Constantinople’s sepulcher, or was he indicating a place not far from Jacoba’s tomb? The entry makes reference to a “porta,” but where would that door have been? Should we direct our attention to the opening of the aforementioned pergola towards the nave? The pergola, which was probably constructed in the early fourteenth century, screened off the high altar platform by means of elegant, wrought-iron grates installed between twelve columns carrying an architrave (Fig. 11).65 Could the proximity of the Cypriot queen to Jacoba’s tomb in the list of burials indicate a topographical vicinity as well, perhaps not far from the high altar?66 One cannot help but think that the phrases “nel mezzo della ecclesia sotto lo pergolo” and “nel mezzo della ecclesia avanti la porta” resonate with the phrase “in medio ecclesiae,” an expression usually denoting the area in front of the rood screen, especially when bearing in mind that the Lower Church actually had such a screen that exhibited three narrow doors and was dismantled around 1300. Consequently, one wonders whether Galeotto’s use of the phrase “sotto lo pergolo” implies that the tombs were located in the area of what used to be the rood screen. Could Galeotto’s burial list echo older, non-extant sources, the specifications of which had been made redundant following the reconfiguration of the interior of the Lower Church?67
Assisi, Santa Chiara, pergola around the high altar. The pergola in San Francesco must have been similar
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Photo: AuthorIn my view, this is not the case. The use of the terms “pulpito” and “pergolo” to refer to the cantoria (or chapel of St Stanislas) may have to do with the fact that Cosmati panels from the dismantled rood screen were reused in its construction. In addition, the cantoria also took over many functions of the aforementioned screen, thus explaining why authors continued to use these phrases when mentioning the cantoria.68 Besides, Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga makes it plain that Jacoba’s pavement tomb was near the chapel of St Stanislas, which is said to have comprised a “pergolo.”69
The same goes for the funerary monument of the queen of Cyprus, for which I believe the specified position in Galeotto’s Sepultuario is the current one, corresponding to where the emperor of Constantinople’s tomb lies. This is established by the item listed next to the Cypriot queen’s entry in the Sepultuario, a funerary slab in low relief at the foot of the queen’s funerary monument that belonged to Abbot Ugolino, today removed to the adjoining cemetery.70 Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga comes to our aid again and corroborates that Galeotto referred to the same tomb: after he dedicates a long paragraph to a description of the “queen’s” tomb in the atrium, which we know that Pietralunga considered to be the one today assigned to the emperor, he simply cites the inscription “Dominus Ugulinus abbas hic iacet” (Lord Abbot Ugolinus lies here), leading us to conclude that, with his phrase “nel mezzo della ecclesia avanti la porta,” Galeotto meant, as did Pietralunga, the emperor’s tomb in the entrance bay, since both Galeotto and Pietralunga cite Ugolino’s grave immediately next to the “queen’s tomb.”71 More importantly, in a ground plan of the chiesa inferiore sketched by another unidentified seventeenth-century author in MS 148, various tomb spots belonging to friars are indicated. The queen of Cyprus’ monument is shown opposite the entrance to the nave of the Lower Church and her porphyry crater is drawn to the left of this entrance, thus corroborating all the previously discussed primary sources (Figs. 12-13). Despite the hasty nature of the drawing, its creator places special emphasis on features that allow us to recognize the Gothic canopy tomb, such as the crowned figure mounted on the lion and the enthroned Virgin and Child.72 As it stands, despite the topographical clues provided by these testimonies, the location of the Cypriot queen’s tomb prior to the sixteenth century stubbornly refuses to reveal its secrets, and it appears that the proximity of Jacoba and the Cypriot queen in Galeotto’s inventory of burials is due to their gender, as these two were the only prominent women believed to be interred in the convent.
Assisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, ground plan by unidentified seventeenth-century hand. ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fols. 20v-21r
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: AuthorAssisi, San Francesco, Lower Church, ground plan by unidentified seventeenth-century hand, detail showing the tomb and crater of the queen of Cyprus (both circled in red). ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fols. 20v-21r
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo and modifications: Author4 Demystifying a Tenacious Legend
By establishing that the actual occupant of the canopied tomb was a man, the existence of a Cypriot queen in Assisi has been relegated to the sphere of fantasy, a product of fiction by older historians. But is she indeed a fictional character? If so, why do sources harp on about her? And, in any case, who was that queen of Cyprus? The name Eugubea/Iugubea does not appear among the royal women of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Cyprus.73 Scholars have put forward several interpretations of the name “Eugubea” as a variant of “Hecuba,”74 “Elísabea,”75 or “Échive.”76 To begin with, the name Elísabea is more suitable for a medieval queen and can be read as Isabel. A candidate who lived in the thirteenth century might be Isabel of Ibelin (1252-1282), the wife of King Hugh II of Cyprus (1253-1267), who acted as queen for only two years, although she kept the title for eighteen.77 Isabel was also lady of Beirut from 1264 until her death in 1282.78 On the other hand, Échive of Ibelin (1253-1312), Isabel’s sister, is known to have prayed to the Virgin in front of an altar at the church of St Francis in Glarentza, Greece, but, again, she was not a queen, as she was married to Guy of Lusignan (†1302/1303), the constable of Cyprus. She died in Nicosia and was buried in the cathedral of Sancta Sophia.79 A second Queen Isabel eligible for consideration could be King Hugh III’s wife, who was also descended from the House of Ibelin. Isabel was born in 1241 and became queen in 1267, when Hugh III was crowned king. Following Hugh’s death in 1284, Isabel would have been styled queen until her own death, which was not until 1324, while she remained queen-mother to Henry II, a staunch Franciscan supporter. But we know that Isabel was buried in the Franciscan church in Nicosia.80
Another candidate for the role of the queen of Cyprus, although named neither Isabel nor Échive, could be Maria of Bourbon (ca. 1315-1387), empress of Constantinople. Maria wedded Guy of Lusignan (1315/1316-1343), first son of King Hugh IV of Lusignan and heir to the throne of Cyprus, in Nicosia on 31 January 1330, and they had a son, Hugh of Lusignan (ca. 1335-1385/1386). Following Guy’s death, Maria married Robert II of Anjou-Taranto (1319/1326-1364), titular Latin emperor of Constantinople, in Naples on 9 September 1347. Guy’s half-brother, Peter I of Lusignan, rose to the throne of Cyprus in 1359, resulting in Maria’s son, Hugh, disputing Peter’s right to the throne with the support of John II, king of France (1319/1350-1364), since his mother was related to the French royal family. Yet, when Maria died in 1387, she was buried at Santa Chiara in Naples, not in Assisi.81
What is more, a Venetian origin for a thirteenth-century queen of Cyprus, alleged by Pietralunga in his work Descrizione della Basilica di San Francesco, would be perplexing;82 in this context, it is interesting to observe that in a register dated 1645 in Assisi, a Mass is documented for the “Regina di Cipro,” who was Venetian and from the family of the Corner or Cornaro.83 It is likely, therefore, that the older traditions relating to Assisi’s Cypriot queen merged with the persona of the renowned Caterina Corner, the last (and exiled) queen of Cyprus, whose fame and residency in Italy perhaps gave rise to such attributions. Caterina died in 1510 and, even though she might have been placed in her coffin dressed in the Franciscan habit, she was first buried in the church of Santi Apostoli in Venice.84 The Mass recorded for Caterina in the early modern period might have had to do with her devotion to the Franciscans. In addition to donning the Franciscan habit at her death, Caterina’s loyalty to the Franciscans may also be echoed in a panel by Lorenzo Lotto at the National Museum in Krakow depicting the Holy Family with St Francis and St Catherine (ca. 1506-1508), where the latter was rendered with Caterina Corner’s facial features.85 In any case, the information divulged by Pietralunga and the register of 1645 nudges us in a different direction, one in which we should be looking for a queen living at the time of Caterina Corner, i.e., in the fifteenth century, and not in the thirteenth.
I contend that the appearance of another queen of Cyprus in Italy, if not in Assisi, had instigated the proliferation of tales about her. Charlotte was the last legitimate Lusignan queen of Cyprus (1444-1487) and spent most of her life in exile between Rhodes, Italy, and Savoy.86 Charlotte was the only surviving child of King John II of Lusignan (1418/1432-1458) and his second wife, Helena Palaiologina (1428/1442-1458), the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1350/1391-1425).87 Although an heiress to a Frankish throne, Charlotte was perceived by her Italian contemporaries as Greek; her mother tongue was Greek and she had Latin and French documents translated for her.88 So eloquently did she speak Greek that Pope Pius II (1405/1458-1464) characteristically pointed out that “her conversation was engaging and in true Greek fashion came pouring out like a torrent.”89 Following the death of her father, Charlotte was recognized by the island’s elite as his legitimate successor and was crowned queen of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Armenia on 15 October 1458. In 1460, after several plots against her, Charlotte’s half-brother James sought the help of the sultan of Egypt to seize the throne and have his sister and her second spouse, Louis of Savoy (1436/1437-1482), ousted, which led to their seeking refuge in the castle of Kyrenia (Cerines). The besieged couple and their supporters remained there only for a few years, after which Charlotte began roaming Italy, Savoy, and Rhodes to drum up the support of the Hospitallers, the pope, and the court of Savoy, from which her husband had originated. In spite of dedicating herself to reclaiming the Cypriot crown for almost fifteen years, Charlotte’s efforts were unsuccessful. After several voyages, she ultimately realized that her throne would not be easily recovered, and she put down roots in Rome from June 1475 until her death. It is worth noting in that regard that, although Charlotte failed to win back her kingdom, many of her international peers acknowledged her as the true “queen of Cyprus.”
In the following paragraphs, I will focus specifically on her life in Rome. In doing so, I will attempt to establish, among other things, the connections she fostered with a Franciscan pontiff, which may have facilitated the development of her relations with Assisi. In this context, I will also examine her burial in Rome and argue that her generosity towards the church of St Peter in the Vatican may have extended to Assisi as well. Charlotte remained active in Rome, where she resided for more than a decade in the palace later known as Convertendi in Trastevere.90 Moreover, on 27 March 1478 she became a member of the Confraternity of Santo Spirito in Sassia and was the first monarch to be registered in the Liber Fraternitatis. She signed “I, Charlotte, by the grace of God queen of Jerusalem, of Cyprus and of Armenia … to obtain the indulgence.”91 In 1485 she formally ceded the Kingdom of Cyprus to the House of Savoy on the condition that she would retain the title of queen of Cyprus until her death. According to Johannes Burchard (ca. 1450-1506), master of ceremonies in the papal court and an eyewitness of the events, Charlotte passed away on 16 July 1487 at the age of forty-three, after suffering a stroke that paralyzed her for several months. She was buried on the same day below the pavement of the south aisle in the Old Basilica of St Peter, close to the monument of Cardinal Ercoli, and her funeral Mass was sung on 31 July.92 Ten days before the Mass, on 21 July, Pope Innocent VIII (1432/1484-1492) wrote to Charles I, duke of Savoy (1468/1482-1490), as her next of kin, to announce her death and inform him that he would cover the expenses of her funeral, suggesting at the same time that the duke erect an honorific monument for her.93 The sarcophagus that we see today in the crypt of St Peter’s is not the original one (Fig. 14). In the early seventeenth century, when restoration works were undertaken in the basilica’s south aisle, Charlotte’s tomb was opened (25 February 1610) and her remains were transferred to the Grottoes. The queen’s bones were enclosed in a marble coffer that was covered with a fragment of the lower half of the original fifteenth-century tomb slab.94 The tomb’s misadventures were far from over, though, as, in the 1940s, during archaeological work initiated by Pope Pius XII (1876/1939-1958), the original slab of her grave was replaced with the sarcophagus we see today. On the wall next to her sarcophagus is exhibited the allegedly original funerary slab, on which are still discernible the lower part of a robe and pointed shoes.95
Vatican City, Vatican Grottoes, the marble sarcophagus of Charlotte of Lusignan, 1940s? On the left, the lower part of the original fifteenth-century tomb slab
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: AuthorFortunately, Charlotte’s complete funerary slab was included in Spanish Dominican Alfonso Chacón’s (1530-1599) celebrated book Vitae et res gestae pontificum Romanorum et S.R.E. cardinalium, completed by his disciple, Francisco Morales Cabrera, and published posthumously in 1601 (four supplementary editions of the book followed in 1630, 1677, 1751, and 1787).96 The woodcut image of her funerary slab and information on her death were only added in the 1677 redaction, which was edited by the Jesuit Agostino Oldoino (Fig. 15).97 Although Chacón was an artist himself and painted hundreds of portraits of illustrious individuals and monuments of antiquity and his own era, the rendition of Charlotte’s funerary slab does not seem to have been made by him. Be that as it may, Elías Tormo believes that the “iconographic program” of all the seventeenth-century editions must have been laid out by Chacón himself.98
Woodcut depicting Charlotte of Lusignan’s funerary slab in the Vatican, in Chacón, Vitae et res gestae pontificum Romanorum, 3:col. 123
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Photo: Su concessione del Ministero della cultura © Biblioteca Nazionale di NapoliIn any event, the woodcut featured in Chacón’s work presents Charlotte en face, with her head resting on a pillow, and faintly inclined to her right. Her long hair falls behind her shoulders and she is clad in a dress with long sleeves complemented by a mantle. She also bears a crown and has her hands crossed at the level of her abdomen. A girdle around her waist completes her outfit. As we learn from Pierre Monod (1586-1644), her funeral robes were silken, and her girdle had a gilded buckle. Below her effigy, a crowned, oval-shaped escutcheon carved with the new Lusignan arms (introduced in 1393) was flanked by the following inscription: “To Christ the Savior / Karola Queen of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Armenia / died 16 July 1487 AD // under Innocent VIII Supreme Pontiff.”99 The woodcut is supplemented by some additional information, namely that the pope, his cardinals, and all the papal court attended Charlotte’s funeral, and that, during her sojourn in Rome, she lived in the “Xenodochio S. Spiritus.” The text also gives a quotation by (or inspired by) the humanist Bartolomeo Platina (1421-1481), which claims that, although the queen had been stripped of her kingdom and fortune, she received copious munificence and kindness from Pope Sixtus IV.100 Chacón’s woodcut does not seem to align with the surviving funerary slab, the lower part of which ends with the queen’s feet abutting the relief frame, and is thus devoid of any armorials or inscriptions (Figs. 14-15). Were these added below the royal effigy on a different piece of marble or was Chacón’s a loose rendition of the slab?101
5 Charlotte of Lusignan in Assisi: a Tentative Hypothesis
But why should one be bothered with this information about Charlotte in the present context, since we know that she was inhumed in the Vatican and her cadaver was unearthed in 1610? In his seminal work on the history of Cyprus, George Hill notably remarks that the Cypriot Dominican friar Steffano Lusignano / Estienne de Lusignan (1537-1590) “goes curiously astray in saying that her [Charlotte’s] body was taken to Assisi and buried in the church of the Friars Minor.”102 In his Chorograffia (1573), the Dominican father indeed recounts that, when the queen passed away, she was transferred to Assisi and interred in the convent of the Franciscans; he repeats the information in his Description de toute l’isle de Cypre (1580).103 Regrettably, Lusignano does not provide any particulars about the location of Charlotte’s tomb in Assisi, as he simply states that she was buried in the church wherein the body of St Francis reposes. From what we have examined so far, it becomes apparent that Steffano Lusignano’s assumption was not completely baseless, as Hill opined, and that he must have been aware of the Franciscan tradition regarding the queen of Cyprus and Assisi. Nonetheless, Lusignano’s words were challenged by critics as early as 1633. For instance, Pierre Monod underlines that the information Lusignano imparted is erroneous.104 He is also cognizant of the friars’ custom to show visitors a very rich tomb and relay that it belongs to a queen of Cyprus, whom they call Eugubea. Monod emphasizes that the coats of arms on this monument are different from those of the Lusignan, and he criticizes this “incerta traditione” (uncertain tradition) by resorting to the testimony of Johannes Burchard, who affirmed that Charlotte’s tomb had always been in Rome.105 Likewise, Samuel Guichenon (1607-1664), in his opus of 1660, discusses the mistake made by Lusignano in relation to the burial place of Charlotte in Assisi by arguing that her tomb in Rome was intact until 1610, when it was opened and removed from its original position.106
My exploratory hypothesis is as follows: as already mentioned, when Pope Innocent VIII wrote to Charles I of Savoy to communicate the queen’s passing, he advised him to construct a monument for her. The actual, simple funerary slab that covered her grave might not have been what the pope had in mind. Having said this, we do not know whether the duke of Savoy did, in fact, heed the pontiff’s suggestion and raised a monumental sepulcher for Charlotte. Writing in 1633, about two decades after Charlotte’s tomb had been opened, Pierre Monod was not sure whether the surviving marble slab was commissioned by Charles I of Savoy. Monod attributes the commission of the slab to the duke’s generosity towards the queen while she was alive; but, of course, Monod’s attribution cannot be objective as he was a protégé and ambassador of the duke of Savoy.107 On the contrary, Monod’s contemporary, Guichenon, implies that the marble slab was placed above her tomb on the day of her funeral, thereby prompting us to ponder whether the duke might have been interested in putting up a monument (perhaps a cenotaph?) for the queen in Assisi at a later stage.108 But, again, the documents in Assisi do not confirm such a thought, which should remain pure speculation.
The relationship of Charlotte with Assisi is not restricted to a single fleeting comment by Steffano Lusignano but actually emerges in the archives of the Sacro Convento. The aforementioned register of 1645 directs our attention again to Charlotte. In the entry for 3 September 1648, a Mass is recorded “per la serenissima Regina de Cipro di natione grega” (for the most Serene Queen of Cyprus, Greek by nation).109 Giuseppe Abate perspicaciously observed that the entry concerns Charlotte of Lusignan, who, as already noted, was perceived by her contemporaries as Greek – her mother, Helena Palaiologina, was Greek and Charlotte herself behaved in the Greek manner, despite her self-promotion as the last descendant of the Lusignan dynasty. Even more tellingly, in a document of 1597, which I have already mentioned, the familiar story with the vase and the queen of Cyprus is rehearsed again, but this time the queen is introduced as “Regina di Cipri chiamata Iugubea Veneziana” (the Queen of Cyprus called Iugubea the Venetian). But what is most revelatory is that in a marginal note, perhaps by a contemporary hand, it is specified that “This anecdote is not to be trusted. The Venetian queen was called Charlotte [and lived] in the time of [Pope] Sixtus IV”110 (Fig. 16). Even though the commentator misidentifies Charlotte as Venetian, he gives the correct timeframe of her activity, that is, during the pontificate of Sixtus IV (1414/1471-1484). Furthermore, in MS 148 a commentary on Pietralunga’s text, most likely inserted at a later date, states: “Reverendo Sig(nor) Don Iacomo Grimaldi Clerico Beneficiato di S(an)to Pietro di Roma cercha la nazione di questa regina di cipri.”111 Notably, Giacomo Grimaldi is the fifteenth-century notary of the Curia and cleric in the Vatican Library on whom Monod based his information about Charlotte’s tomb in the Vatican, as we saw above, thereby confirming that “questa regina di cipri” in MS 148 is Charlotte of Lusignan.
Marginal note identifying Eugubea with Charlotte of Lusignan, August 1597 (?). ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r
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Photo: Archivio del Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in AssisiDespite the strong evidence that Charlotte’s body lay at St Peter’s, I argue that the Cypriot queen was somehow related to the convent in Assisi. Is it fortuitous that the first reference to a female royal being buried in Assisi was made in 1489, only two years after Charlotte’s death? Nevertheless, there is no evidence for any direct or particular affiliation of Charlotte with the Franciscan Order. We know that her first spouse, John of Coimbra (1431-1457), was interred in the church of the Franciscans in Nicosia, but there is no indication as to the religious preferences of the queen herself.112
An investigation of the bonds she cultivated with Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan pontiff, shows that she may have been acquainted with the Franciscans of Assisi. After Charlotte had settled in Rome in 1475, she was amiably received by Pope Sixtus IV and benefited from his continuous support. Between 1481 and 1484 she was granted an annual pension of 20 ducats, or 100 aurei, by the pontiff.113 It is even said that on 23 November 1483, when Charlotte, accompanied by her interpreter, had an audience with Sixtus, she was allocated a seat of almost the same height and prominence as that of the pope, consequently scandalizing some of the onlookers.114
Pope Sixtus IV was so sympathetic towards Charlotte that he had her depicted in the main ward (Corsia Sistina) of the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, as part of the reconstruction campaign carried out there under his auspices.115 The fresco cycle, which was probably painted between 1476 and 1478, represents thirty-four scenes from Sixtus IV’s life, in addition to seven episodes from the legendary establishment of the hospital by Pope Innocent III (1161/1198-1216). The paintings would have been viewed by a diverse audience, since that ward of the hospital was accessible to the public, including pilgrims and the sick.116 One of the program’s panels displays Sixtus IV receiving Charlotte and some members of her court (Fig. 17).117 The enthroned Sixtus IV blesses the queen, who is portrayed kneeling and wearing her crown as a mark of her authority. The fortress to the left of the scene has been identified with the Castel Sant’Angelo, where the pope offered her a place to live. Two individuals represented in the queen’s retinue have been identified as Hugh Langlois of Nicosia and Ludovico Podocataro.118 The frescoes of the Corsia Sistina were paired with large inscription panels that were placed below each composition. Among these features the extract by Bartolomeo Platina for Charlotte’s fresco, which was afterwards inserted into Chacón’s edition of 1677 and reads:
Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus, deprived of her kingdom and all her riches, turns to Sixtus as a suppliant, accompanied by the most pious brothers Cristoforo della Rovere, Castellan of Sant’Angelo, and by Domenico, private [papal] chamberlain. She is greeted kindly and encouraged to hope for the best. With high praises, she exalts the munificence and good will of the pope towards the illustrious family of Savoy.119
Unidentified painter, Charlotte of Lusignan before Sixtus IV, ca. 1476-1478, fresco on the north wall of the main ward in the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome
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Photo: AuthorThe inclusion of Charlotte in one of the most important moments of Sixtus IV’s biography demonstrates her importance to him and the esteem in which he held her.120 Charlotte was also painted in the middle register of the Sistine Chapel, which was built between 1477 and 1481/1482 within the Vatican Palace.121 The Cypriot queen appears in the scene of the Sermon on the Mount, a fresco that is attributed to Florentine artist Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507) and was made between 1481 and 1482. In that painting, as in effectively all the fifteenth-century frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, several contemporary members of the papal court were included, among them Charlotte and her husband, Louis of Savoy, who are seen on the left side of the fresco, in the crowd taught by Christ. If that identification is correct, then Charlotte and Louis’ inclusion must have been at the pope’s request.122
Charlotte was supported by Popes Pius II, Sixtus IV, and Innocent VIII, but it is Sixtus who is commemorated as a great donor to Charlotte in different sources. Just as in the marginal comment in the Assisian Register 24, Alfonso Chacón, Pierre Monod, Luke Wadding, the English Robert Flemmyng (ca. 1417-1483), and the Franciscan chronicler Nicolaus Glassberger (1450-1508) all commemorate Charlotte as being active under Sixtus IV and not under Pius II or Innocent VIII, who were also sympathetic towards the Cypriot potentate.123 It is probable, therefore, that Charlotte held Sixtus IV in great esteem and was influenced by him rather than by the other popes with whom she coincided in Rome.
No less significant is that Pope Sixtus IV, alias Francesco della Rovere, was an ardent supporter of the Franciscan Order, which he had joined at the age of nine. Before he was elected a cardinal and then pope, in 1464, Fra Francesco della Rovere was appointed minister general of the Franciscans, the highest office a friar could assume within the order.124 From the beginning of his pontificate, Sixtus IV favored the Franciscans, and he attributed his election to the Apostolic throne to Francis and Anthony of Padua, the order’s foremost saints.125 Accordingly, it is thought that Sixtus continued to wear his Franciscan habit under his papal dress, and that he requested to be buried with it.126 It is no wonder that between 1471 and 1477 Sixtus IV carried out extensive restorations and embellishments of the convent of San Francesco in Assisi, and he even had an enormous statue of himself installed on its exterior. The pope also placed his papal coat of arms in prominent spots in different parts of the convent.127 For the Lower Church, Sixtus IV ordered an altar dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, which was erected below Cimabue’s fresco of the Virgin Mary in Maestà.128 The pope also donated a Flemish tapestry depicting the Franciscan Tree and an altar frontal showing St Francis displaying his stigmata to him, designed by Antonio Pollaiuolo and completed between 1476 and 1478, as well as other ecclesiastical artifacts.129 In November 1472, he also encouraged pilgrims via a bull to travel to the convent of San Francesco in Assisi, granting indulgences of 240 days to those visiting and financially supporting the church on the feast days of SS Francis, Bernardine, Damian, and the Assumption of the Virgin. In August 1476, he also conceded plenary indulgences to the faithful who would visit the convent on the feast day of the Translation of St Francis’ body and give alms for the completion of the restoration campaign.130
Sixtus IV visited Assisi in late August of 1476, staying in the papal residence at the convent. We are told that he was accompanied by cardinals and ambassadors, and that on 29 August he was shown relics of St Francis (not the sacred body) from which he extracted small pieces that he gave away to some people in his entourage.131 It is likely that Charlotte of Lusignan was among the papal retinue who visited Assisi in 1476, and it was, perhaps, on that occasion that she donated to the Franciscans the holy vestments recorded by Niccolò Catalano. This hypothesis is further bolstered by Niccolò Papini, who enumerates the famous people of times past having witnessed the uncorrupted state of St Francis’ body, even though he casts some doubt on the veracity of those stories, considering that Francis’ tomb was only uncovered in 1818. Among them are mentioned Pope Gregory IX, Pope Nicholas IV, Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, and also Pope Sixtus IV and “una Regina di Cipro” (a queen of Cyprus).132 Undoubtedly, Sixtus IV did not see Francis’ holy cadaver, yet he venerated and touched relics of the saint in the company of his cardinals and other representatives, among whom Charlotte should be numbered.133 Prior to Papini, various authors furnished fictitious accounts of the pope and his associates witnessing the uncorrupted remains of Francis. In his Franceschina, Giacomo Oddi went as far as to narrate a nocturnal secret worship of Francis’ corpus and his stigmata by Sixtus IV, along with a cardinal and a man of his guard.134 Such tales simply spiced up actual events to make them seem more exciting, as was also the case with the myth of Eugubea of Cyprus; or, even more conspicuously, with the imaginary but unwavering conviction about the existence of a third church, built below the Upper and Lower Churches, inside which the uncorrupted body of St Francis was deposited standing upright; and also with the tradition regarding the secret chambers that led to Francis’ tomb.135 For all we know, of course, Charlotte need not have gone in person to bestow the gifts on the friars, but her documented interest in indulgences, as in the case of the Santo Spirito in Sassia, suggests that she might have wished to attend the feast of the Perdono in August 1476, which carried a plenary indulgence. That she did not visit the convent in person might explain why the documentary evidence does not mention her by name but only by title.
Bearing in mind the relationship between Charlotte and Pope Sixtus IV and a possible visit of hers to Assisi, it is not unreasonable to suggest that she offered the Franciscans of Assisi some gifts. The queen may not have donated the friars of the Sacro Convento a precious porphyry vase loaded with ultramarine and ducats, but she may have given them precious textiles, possibly those attested by Catalano and depicted by Zampa.136 That these gifts do not appear among the inventories of the Sacro Convento should not seem strange, because, as already mentioned, the treasury of the convent suffered several thefts, plunder, and misappropriations ever since 1320, and it is thus possible that any donations were lost.137 Note also that the last published inventory dates to 1473, namely three years before the suggested visit of Charlotte to the convent, while the unpublished inventories that I was able to research start in 1487, therefore leaving a gap during which the offering and disappearance of these gifts might have occurred.138
However destitute Charlotte may seem in various accounts, Pierre Monod contends that, after abdicating in 1485, the queen dedicated herself to charity. Thanks to some jewelry she had recovered from her “shipwreck” – perhaps Monod meant the goods stolen from her by the Venetians – she was able to help the impoverished.139 Every Friday, Charlotte distributed bread and wine to those in need in her Roman neighborhood. She also made over gifts to the basilica of St Peter in the Vatican: a very beautiful chasuble (pianeta), a dalmatic (dalmatica), and a tunicle (tunicella), finely brocaded with gold and enriched with highly “noble” ornaments; two more silken chasubles, with corresponding altar cloths, and four pounds (lire) of pure silver.140 Monod goes on to describe a very expensive Greek manuscript containing the Acts of the Apostles (Praxapostolos), written in gold letters on parchment and adorned with resplendent miniatures, that the queen gave to Pope Innocent VIII. The Jesuit wastes no time in remarking that the manuscript displayed the coats of arms of the pope and the queen, the latter bearing at its center the shield with the cross of Savoy (escutcheon in pretence).141 Monod’s description of the book is precise, as this manuscript is actually kept in the Vatican (Vat. gr. 1208) and the coats of arms he mentions feature in the first folios of the codex (1v and 2r).142 A second manuscript also preserved in the Vatican, which escaped Monod’s attention and was also donated to the same pope by the queen, is the Gospel Vat. gr. 1158, which also includes coats of arms (on fols. 1v and 2r).143 Both Vat. gr. 1158 and Vat. gr. 1208 are luxurious manuscripts created in late-thirteenth-century Constantinople and commissioned by a female member of the Palaiologan dynasty who would have been an ancestor of Charlotte of Lusignan, most likely Empress Theodora Doukaina Komnene Palaiologina, the wife of Michael VIII Palaiologos.144 As such, they constitute the finest Palaiologan decorated codices in the Vatican collection and must have been offered to the pope between Innocent VIII’s ascent to the throne of St Peter in 1484 and Charlotte’s death in 1487.145 It is also purported that Charlotte presented Innocent VIII with a relic of the True Cross that she had brought from Cyprus (perhaps one of the relics that she seized from churches in Nicosia?). Ten years after her death, we can trace the relic of the Cross to the hands of Franceschetto Cybo, illegitimate son of Innocent VIII, who was trying to sell it to the Signoria in Venice.146 Finally, another luxurious manuscript dated to around 1300, the so-called Hamilton Psalter, now held in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett 78.A.9; Hamilton 119), contains an ex libris note on fol. 1v: “This book [belongs to] Queen Charlotte of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Armenia” (Fig. 18).147 In 1750 the manuscript was tracked down in Venice, but it is impossible to determine how it turned up there, and whether it was a gift she made herself to a certain person, or if it ended up in Venice following her death.148 To recapitulate, all of the above vestments, relics, and manuscripts that Charlotte gifted to the Vatican demonstrate that offerings of analogous value could possibly have been made to Assisi by the same queen.
Ex libris note of Charlotte of Lusignan, ca. 1300. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 A.9, Hamilton Psalter 119, fol. 1v
Citation: Frankokratia 5, 2 (2024) ; 10.1163/25895931-20040004
Photo: Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin6 The Myth of a Queen of Cyprus in Assisi
In sum, this article has surveyed the documentary and artistic evidence pertinent to the myth shrouding one of the most bewildering funerary monuments in San Francesco in Assisi. The foregoing discussion has ascertained that the canopied tomb was made for an emperor of Constantinople and established that its association with a female occupant only began in 1489; from that date onwards, the topographical references to the burial place of the Cypriot queen consistently allude to the aforesaid emperor of Constantinople’s Gothic monument in the atrium. The exact placement of Queen Eugubea’s sepulcher is still obscure, assuming there ever was, in fact, a physical sepulchral monument dedicated to her. I have also explored the gifts that the queen offered the friars and, more importantly, suggested that the lore surrounding the queen in Assisi was grafted onto a later Cypriot ruler, Charlotte of Lusignan.
Before I conclude, however, it remains for me to broach the question of how the plausible presence of Charlotte in Assisi gave rise to legends that related her to a thirteenth-century queen named Eugubea. It is interesting to note that the name Eugubea conjures up the name Jacoba/Jacopa and, more specifically, the aforementioned Jacoba dei Settesoli. Jacoba was a Roman noblewoman, who was a very dear friend to St Francis and, on her death in 1239, was buried in Assisi – recall that some historians claim that the “Regina di Cipro” died either in 1229 or 1240.149 It should also be remembered that, in Galeotto’s list of burials (1509), Jacoba’s tomb is listed immediately before that of the queen of Cyprus, and therefore one cannot help but wonder whether their listing in successive entries in the registry may have resulted in a confusion of the two women in subsequent accounts. Nevertheless, this is not a line of inquiry that the current study will venture to explore.150
In any case, why did the friars settle on a queen of Cyprus of all contemporary rulers? The choice was probably dictated by the visit and/or the gifts of Charlotte of Lusignan to Assisi, but also, and more crucially, by her status as queen of Jerusalem and Cyprus – as we will see below, the Franciscan Order had a long-established presence in the Holy Land, including during the fifteenth century. It is noteworthy that among the gifts Eugubea gave to the convent was the “colore azzurro,” which may refer to azurite (blue basic copper carbonate), but most likely to ultramarine (ground lapis lazuli and binding substances), also known as “azzurro oltramarino,” “bleu d’Outremer,” or “azur d’Acre.”151 This precious pigment was already in use in Italy in the late thirteenth century and was imported to the peninsula from the Middle East via Venice.152 According to an anonymous mid-fifteenth-century Bolognese author, who composed a book of recipes entitled Segreti per colori, Cyprus and Damascus were famous places whence “azzurro” was extracted.153 As the color of sapphire, the second foundation stone of the Heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21:19), resplendent blue was an integral part of the celestial holy city.154 That this valuable azure was said to have been an offering from the queen of Cyprus (and Jerusalem), and the fact that its name and qualities were connected to Cyprus and “Outremer” reveals the importance the Franciscans attached to their role as the official Custodians of the Holy Land (Custodi di Terra Santa), the links they sought to maintain with the bearers of this eminent title, and their mission as guardians of the bygone crusader kingdom.155 Intriguingly, in 1496, a date more or less tallying with our Assisian documentation of 1489 (the first time the lore about a queen appears in the sources), the Order of the Holy Sepulcher was recognized as an independent order by Pope Alexander VI (1431/1492-1503). Between 1496 and 1516, papal acknowledgment was formally granted to the office of the Franciscan custos (guardian), who oversaw and officiated over the knighting ritual in the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, the roots of which go back to the first crusader ruler of Jerusalem, Godfrey de Bouillon (1060/1099-1100).156
Moreover, the fact that the murals of the Lower and Upper Churches were painted, according to the legend, with the queen’s “azzurro” lends an additional dimension to the image of Assisi as a holy site associated and commensurate with the religious sites in the Holy Land; besides, St Francis himself was understood to be a living avatar of Christ. Among other examples, in the convent of Assisi, Francis’ rock-cut tomb, the murals displaying scenes from his life, the portal of the basilica, with the campanile, as well as the fourteenth-century transformation of the transept in the Lower Church, were meant to evoke Christ’s life and tomb, the sacred topography of Jerusalem and its buildings, and, in particular, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.157 So, too, the story of the Cypriot queen, her interment, and gifts to the friars provides an extra layer of meaning to the perception of Assisi as a new Jerusalem, and to the vocation of the Franciscans as keepers of the holy places in Jerusalem.
Behind each myth a truth is hidden, and from what has been discussed in this article, it is evident that the legend of the queen of Cyprus distortedly mirrors historical facts. Questions remain, despite the answers that the current study has afforded, but it has certainly opened up new avenues of research with regard to the tale of the Cypriot queen in Assisi. This is the first work to have stitched together the apocryphal story of the Cypriot queen and the permutations given by different authors. In so doing, it has posited Charlotte of Lusignan as the queen evoked by this legend, and asserted that the fable itself aimed at enhancing the position of Assisi as an embodiment of Jerusalem and of the Franciscan Order as its custodian. Ultimately, the present article has offered new readings that see through the myth, shed fresh light on known and unknown archival sources, and interpret them based on textual and visual evidence, through the consideration of the material culture and historical backdrops of the convent of Assisi, Rome, and Cyprus.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Frankokratia, Michalis Olympios and Chris Schabel, whose insightful comments, constructive criticism, and suggestions have made this a better study. The elegant ground plan of the Lower Church was drawn by Matilde Grimaldi, whom I warmly thank. I am enormously grateful to the people of the Biblioteca del Sacro Convento in Assisi for being so welcoming and supportive during my visits to the library, and for allowing me to publish photographs of documents held in their archives – special gratitude is owed to Father Carlo Bottero (OFMConv), Stefano Cannelli, and Cristina Roccaforte. Last, I wish to thank Patrizia Ricca from the Biblioteca Lancisiana, Rome for granting me access to the Corsia Sistina and for allowing me to take pictures of the fresco displaying Charlotte of Lusignan.
Appendix: Transcript of ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r
12. Primo s’è ritrovato nel libro delle memorie che †*
13. la sereniss(im)a Regina di Cipri chiamata Iugubea
14. Veneziana donò al Sacro Con(ven)to quaranta mila
15. scudi per far la chiesa di sopra et portò quel
16. vaso di porfido che sta nell’ingresso della porta
17. mag(istra) della chiesa inferiore et portò il colore
18. azzurro il quale fur(on)o dipinte le chiese
19. senza alcun obligo però tanto li padri
20. antichi del Sacro Con(ven)to quanto li presenti
21. con il preposto locale se determinarono e deter-
22. minano chi si faccia un officio di morti
23. l’anno con venti messe per l’anima di d(etta) regina
24. e si vada in processio(ne) al suo sepolchro.
* † may refer to Iugubea.
In mid-July 1219, Francis, in the company of twelve brothers, must have first touched on Crete and Cyprus before arriving in Acre; see G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano, 5 vols. (Florence: Quaracchi, 1906-1927), 1:92-93; A. Nicolaou-Konnari and C. Schabel, “Limassol under Latin Rule 1191-1571,” in Lemesos: A History of Limassol in Cyprus from Antiquity to the Ottoman Conquest, eds. A. Nicolaou-Konnari and C. Schabel (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 195-361, at 228-229, 232. For early tangible evidence of Franciscan presence in Limassol, see C. Georgiou,
The foundation stone of the convent was laid in 1228, only two years after the prospective saint’s death. For more on the construction and progress of works in the Lower and mainly in the Upper Churches, see D. Cooper and J. Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); S. Nessi, La basilica di S. Francesco in Assisi e la sua documentazione storica (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1994), 19-107. On Peter’s journeys, see A. Nicolaou-Konnari, “‘Le roy de Chippre de renon’: The Depiction of Peter I of Lusignan in French Literature and Historiography,” in Crusading, Society, and Politics in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of King Peter I of Cyprus, eds. A. Nicolaou-Konnari and A. Beihammer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 273-319; A. Andronikou, Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 204-243.
The coat of arms in question is repeated eleven times on the monument: eight shields occupy the arches of the lower frieze, while a ninth appears on the canopy gable and another two are placed above the openwork tracery on the canopy’s narrow north and south sides: see G. Gerola, “Chi è il sovrano sepolto in San Francesco d’Assisi?,” Dedalo 8 (1927), 67-81, at 67-68.
The tomb underwent repairs in 1702/1703 and has probably lost some of its original features. For the marble monument, more citations will follow, but see selectively I.B. Supino, La basilica di San Francesco d’Assisi: illustrazione storico-artistica (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1924), 68-72; E. Hertlein, “Das Grabmonument eines Lateinischen Kaisers von Konstantinopel,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 29/1 (1966), 1-50; Nessi, La basilica, 173-176, 391-393, 419-420; G. Kreytenberg, “La tomba dell’imperatore latino di Costantinopoli ad Assisi,” Studi di Storia dell’Arte 8 (1997), 9-48. In December 1703, Maestro Francesco Antonio and his companion were paid around 13 scudi for the repair of the queen’s tomb, which was in an almost ruinous state; see Nessi, La basilica, 362.
For the probable sources having inspired Vasari’s comments on the pictorial cycles of Assisi, see P. Scarpellini, “La decorazione pittorica della Chiesa Superiore nelle fonti fiorentine e nella tradizione assisana fino agli inizi del diciassettesimo secolo,” in Il cantiere pittorico della Basilica Superiore di San Francesco in Assisi, eds. G. Basile and P. Pasquale Magro (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 2001), 311-328; V. Picchiarelli, “Vasari e Assisi. Dalle fonti fiorentine al confronto con la tradizione storiografica locale nei casi esemplari di Cimabue, Giotto e Puccio Capanna,” in Giorgio Vasari tra capitale medicea e città del dominio, eds. N. Lepri, S. Esseni, and M.C. Pagnini (Florence: Edifir Edizioni, 2012), 179-201.
This testimony is contained in the second edition of Vasari’s Vite; see G. Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari, trans. G. du C. De Vere, 10 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912-1914), 1:30. Information on Master Fuccio Fiorentino and the date 1229 are also found in a marginal note in Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga’s work (1571), apparently taken from Vasari; see L. da Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco in Assisi,” ed. G. Cristofani, Bollettino della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria 28 (1927), 1-87, at 13, 15; Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 68. It should be noted, however, that the year 1229 put forward by Vasari does not take into consideration that the body of St Francis was only transferred from the church of San Giorgio to the Lower Church on 25 May 1230. On this topic, consult G. Zaccaria, “Diario storico della Basilica e Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in Assisi (1220-1927), I,” Miscellanea Francescana 63/1 (1963), 75-120, at 81. As we shall see, the queen suffered from an illness and wished to be buried in the same place as the tomb of Francis. In Assisi, Archivio del Sacro Convento (henceforth ASC), Fondo Moderno (formerly in Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale), MS 148, fol. 63v (the newer foliation is cited here and below), an anonymous seventeenth-century author also imparts the information about Fuccio and cites Vasari as his source.
W.R. Valentiner, “The Master of the Tomb of Philippe de Courtenay in Assisi,” Art Quarterly 14 (1951), 3-18, at 4-9, 13.
Hertlein, “Das Grabmonument,” 23-26, 34. Jürgen Wiener also espouses the idea of Italian masters active in Siena and Orvieto and influenced by the work of Tino di Camaino, but he believes that the tomb was made in the 1340s: J. Wiener, “Das Grabmal des Johann von Brienne in San Francesco in Assisi,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 31 (1996), 48-91, at 63-67, 87-88.
E. Lunghi, “‘Rubeus me fecit’: scultura in Umbria alla fine del duecento,” Studi di Storia dell’Arte 2 (1991), 9-23, at 15-16.
Kreytenberg, “La tomba,” 11-24, esp. 24.
E. Neri Lusanna, “La scultura in San Francesco,” in La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. G. Bonsanti, 4 vols. (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2002), 2.1:209-230, at 217-221; Idem, “Transetto d’ingresso. Seconda campata. Parete est. Rubeus (doc. 1270-1300 ca). Monumento funebre di Filippo di Courtenay, imperatore di Costantinopoli (†1283),” in La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Bonsanti, 2.2:302-304.
After describing John’s devotion to the Franciscans and his death, the author adds that “Hic sepultus est Assisii, etsi super sepulturam in habitu regali sit sculptus”: Bartholomaeus de Pisa, De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, liber I, fructus VIII, pars 2, 2 vols. (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1906-1912), 1:347.
G. Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte della Basilica di S. Francesco in Assisi,” Miscellanea Francescana 56 (1956), 3-36, at 18; C. Cenci, Documentazione di vita assisana 1300-1530, 3 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1974-1976), 1:398, from which the Latin is taken.
“Item nella ditta ecclesia iace Giovanni re di Jerusalem et imperatore Constantinopolitano, il quale fo fra minore e il sua figliola la quale fo moglie de Federico imperatore secundo.” See B. Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika San Francesco in Assisi, 3 vols. (Berlin: Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1915-1928), 3:65. For the theory that this is John of Brienne and his daughter Maria (Papini erroneously provides details of her life that are actually related to Maria of Antioch, not Maria of Brienne), see N. Papini, Notizie sicure della morte, sepoltura, canonizzazione e traslazione di S. Francesco d’Assisi e del ritrovamento del di lui corpo. Raccolte e compilate da un religioso minor conventuale presso alla tomba del suo gran padre (Foligno: Tomassini, 1824), 330-331. Supino suggests that the tomb only belongs to the emperor, but was erected by means of his daughter, Maria of Brienne, the wife of Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople; see Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 71.
For the notarial deed, see Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 18, who gives the date 1488; Cenci, Documentazione, 2:836. For Maria of Antioch, see Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 1:154-156. Kleinschmidt’s view had already been dismissed as early as 1924 in Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 71.
In Galeotto’s list (1509), two distinct tombs are cited in different entries: the one as belonging to John of Brienne and his daughter (“Item nella ditta ecclesia iace Giovanni re di Jerusalem … e il sua figliola …”) and the other to the queen of Cyprus (“Nel mezzo della ecclesia avanti la porta sta il corpo della Regina de Cipro”); see Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:65.
Gerola, “Chi è il sovrano,” 70, 79; Kreytenberg, “La tomba,” 18-19, 21-22, 24 argues that the funerary monument for Philip I was commissioned by his father-in-law, Charles I of Anjou, between 1283 and 1284. Gerola, who first advocated for Philip I, later changed his mind and also embraced the theory that the tomb was John of Brienne’s last resting place. His body, Gerola maintains, was translated from Constantinople to Assisi by means of John’s great grandnephew, Walter VI of Brienne, who was an equally great benefactor of the Franciscans. On all this, see G. Gerola, “Giovanni e Gualtieri di Brienne in S. Francesco di Assisi,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 24 (1931), 330-340, at 338-340; R.L. Wolff, “The Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Franciscans,” Traditio 2 (1944), 213-237, at 236-237. Gerola’s second view is also followed by Hertlein, “Das Grabmonument,” 33-37, who, nevertheless, writes of a cenotaph; by Wiener, “Das Grabmal,” 52, 88-89; and by Guy Perry, John of Brienne: King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, c.1175-1237 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 183-188. Valentiner argues for Philip I of Courtenay, “The Master,” 4, 7, 11-12. This last identification has also been accepted by more recent literature; see Neri Lusanna, “Transetto d’ingresso,” 303; M. Mignozzi, Disjecta membra. Madonne di pietra nella Puglia angioina (Bari: Adda Editore, 2013), 34-40.
The first scholar to establish this was Giuseppe Gerola in his article of 1927, “Chi è il sovrano,” 67-80. Before Gerola, Pierre Monod (1586-1644) and Niccolò Papini (ca. 1751-1834) had already ruled out the possibility that the arms could have been those of the Kingdom of Cyprus: P. Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni del Reame di Cipri appartenente alla corona dell’altezza reale di Vittorio Amedeo duca di Savoia, prencipe di Piemonte, re di Cipri (Turin: Heredi di Gio. Dominico Tarino, 1633), 40; Papini, Notizie, 329-331.
“… Regina di Cipro, quale porto ed dette alla ditta ecclesia quaranta milia scuti ed il vaso dell’acqua benedetta, il quale sta nella intrata della ecclesia.” See Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:65; Hertlein, “Das Grabmonument,” 1-2, from which the Italian is taken.
“… della Regina Eugubea, quale fu cioè era venitiana, quale era Regina de Cipro, il qual regno è nello hierosolimitano verso il levante, che si trova quando se va in Ierusalem il detto regno”: Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 15. The Lusignan king/queen of Cyprus also assumed the title of the king/queen of Jerusalem in 1268 and retained it despite the recapture of the lands of Latin Syria by the Muslims in 1291; see P.W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 36.
Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 15-16. Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:10, in his transcription of ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, reads the name as Elísabea, not Eugubea. However, a careful examination of the relevant passage in fol. 85v clearly shows that the name is Eugubea.
Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 14, 16; Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:10. The amount of money she bequeathed varies from source to source. For instance, in Galeotto’s registry (1509), 40,000 scudi are mentioned: Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:65.
He also informs us that the vase had a foot made of a different stone: Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 14.
Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:10; Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 14: “Intrato che serai nella chiesa, poi rivolta in su la mano stanca. Presso la prima over seconda pilastra gli è quel vaso de porfiro che portò quella Regina de Cipri pieno de oro et argento.” The location mentioned by Pietralunga is also confirmed by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century notarial deeds, for which see Cenci, Documentazione, 2:1106 (27 October 1522). In ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 27r appears a special paragraph dedicated to the vase, which gives details about its location and specifies that it was a gift from the queen, filled with gold and silver. The description it provides is almost identical with that of Pietralunga and dates to the seventeenth century.
P. Ridolfi, Historiarum Seraphicae Religionis libri tres (Venice: Apud Franciscum de Franciscis, 1586), 249b.
ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r. The relevant passage was also cited and partly transcribed in Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 70-71, who thought that the donated amount was in dinars and that the color was “azzurro oltramarino” (ultramarine). For a transcript of the whole passage, see the appendix to this study.
L. Wadding, Annales Minorum seu Trium Ordinum a S. Francisco Institutorum, 16 vols. (Rome: Bernabò, 1731-1736), 2:400, no. XIII.
ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 24r.
ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 54r: “In questa chiesa ogni matina si celebra almeno una messa per l’anima della Regina de Cipri, che porto tanti denari, da quali fu edificata questa chiesa.”
Papini, Notizie, 296-297. Nevertheless, in the immediately following paragraph, he contradicts himself by claiming that the funerary monument of that same queen was made in 1240 by Fuccio Fiorentino. In any event, it seems that the friars kept their word and commemorated the queen in their Masses as late as 1600: ASC, Registro 77, fol. 121: “Per li ser(enissi)mi Principi particolarm(ente) p(er) la Regina de Cipro, et per li s(ignori) Orsini.”
His work dates to 1692 but was published posthumously: F.M. Angeli, Collis Paradisi Amoenitas seu Sacri Conventus Assisiensis Historiae Libri II (Montefiascone: Ex typographia Seminarii, 1704), 67, 73, 75.
Angeli, Collis, 73. Papini was convinced that Maria of Brienne and “Eucubea” were one and the same person: Papini, Notizie, 330-331; Nessi, La basilica, 393 n. 55.
“Cronicon Suessanum,” in Raccolta di varie croniche, diarj, ed altri opuscoli così italiani, come latini appartenenti alla storia del Regno di Napoli, ed. A.A. Pelliccia, 5 vols. (Naples: Bernardo Perger, 1780-1782), 1:52.
The dimensions given by Pietralunga are congruent with the actual dimensions of the crater: “il ditto vaso, la profundità sua cupito 1. et il vano cupito uno et quasi un terzo.” Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 14. The actual diameter of the vase without the handle is 67cm. Given that one cubit is around 47.7cm, the diameter (vano) noted by Pietralunga is around 63.5cm. For the porphyry vase of Assisi, see R. Delbrueck, Antike Porphyrwerke (Berlin: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1932; repr. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2007), 194, 205-206, table 99; Nessi, La basilica, 177, 418.
For the reuse of marble antiquities in medieval Italian contexts, see M. Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 364-446; F. Barry, Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 129-207. For the craters in Pisa and Amalfi, see Delbrueck, Antike Porphyrwerke, 205, 208-209, pl. 99.
On the jasper sarcophagus, see the rich study by L. Calvelli, “Un ‘sarcofago imperiale’ per l’ultimo re di Cipro,” in Caterina Cornaro: Last Queen of Cyprus and Daughter of Venice, eds. S. Rogge and C. Syndikus (Münster: Waxmann, 2013), 311-354.
Visitors also note that more of these vases were found in another church in Nicosia and in a Greek church in Famagusta; see L. Calvelli, Cipro e la memoria dell’antico fra medioevo e rinascimento: la percezione del passato romano dell’isola nel mondo occidentale (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2009), 30-31, 36-37, 78, 87, 106-107. See also the more recent study of the hydria once in the Famagustan Greek church by R. Labrusse, Le vase arabe du royaume de Suède (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2017).
Calvelli, Cipro, 37 and n. 147.
By citing Vasari, Catalano comments on the antique tomb of the queen, executed in 1229, a fact that concurrently confirms the antiquity of the images on the textiles, according to the author; see N. Catalano, Fiume del terrestre paradiso diviso in quattro capi, o discorsi (Florence: Stamperia d’Amadore Massi, 1652), 482-484. On 12 January 1648, Zampa had his images authenticated by a notary: Catalano, Fiume del terrestre paradiso, 484; R. Bonito Fanelli, M.G. Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto, et al., Il tesoro della basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1980), 15.
For the scene in Arezzo, see D. Cooper, “The Franciscan Genesis of Sassetta’s Altarpiece,” in Sassetta. The Borgo San Sepolcro Altarpiece, ed. M. Israëls (Florence – Leiden: Villa I Tatti and Primavera Press, 2009), 1:285-303, at 295-296, fig. 242.
R.B. Brooke, The Image of St Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 401-404, at 403; Cooper, “The Franciscan Genesis,” 286 n. 10.
Catalano, Fiume del terrestre paradiso, 539-540, 548-549.
The inventories are preserved in Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 337 and were compiled in 1338, 1370, 1430, 1441, and 1473: F. Pennacchi and L. Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari della sacristia del Sacro Convento di Assisi (1338-1473). Bibl. Com. di Assisi, cod. 337,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 7 (1914), 66-107 and 294-340, at 72-73.
Pennacchi and Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari,” 81 (no. 109); Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 17.
Pennacchi and Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari,” 81; Nessi, La basilica, 387. For more details on the orphrey and an analysis of Nicholas’ other gifts to the Mother Church of the Order, see Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, 36-39; C. Frugoni, Quale Francesco? Il messaggio nascosto negli affreschi della Basilica superiore ad Assisi (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2015), 163-168. Additionally, in the section “De Pluvialibus” no mention exists of a cope gifted by a queen of Cyprus, even though there are references to copes given by Queen Maria of Hungary and Queen Sancha of Mallorca: Pennacchi and Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari,” 84 (nos. 176, 184).
ASC, Registro 44, fols. 216v and 244r: “Tre piviali antichi di ricamo d’oro due di diversi ucellami, dentro cerchi, e l’altro con varie figure con i freggio ornato all’antica, l’altri due senza fregio, e tutti tre senza capuccio, che li dicono, donati dalla Regina di Cipro.”
Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 14, 78-81, XC-XCI, Pls. 14-15. Interestingly, John of Brienne had also granted the convent three dossals: the one mentioned above, in yellow silk, embroidered in gold and emblazoned with parrots and griffons; the second, in red silk, decorated with golden tendrils; and a third, red again, bearing leopards within roundels woven in gold. This last item has not survived and is absent from the inventories drawn up after 1370.
For instance, in an inventory of the “pluviali rossi” of 1641 in ASC, Registro 44, fol. 16r there is no mention of any queen of Cyprus, although the “Gran Duchessa di Fiorenza” turns up instead.
For the thefts and the selling of the treasury’s utensils, see Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 17-23; Nessi, La basilica, 397-405.
ASC, Registro 38, fols. 27r, 32r; ASC, Registro 41, fol. 94r.
The inventories list three copes, whereas Catalano makes reference to an altar frontal and a cope. Note that Catalano also includes other dress items, which were not rendered by Giovanni Paolo Zampa.
The monument was displaced and recomposed, probably during the construction of St Catherine’s chapel in 1343: Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 17. Another testimony to this is that the tomb destroyed the thirteenth-century frescoes behind it. It has even been advanced that the monument merges two different tombs, perhaps that of the emperor of Constantinople and that of the queen of Cyprus. See Nessi, La basilica, 174-175, 392-393; P.M. Della Porta, E. Genovesi, and E. Lunghi, Guide to Assisi: History and Art (Assisi: Minerva, 1992), 34. Another opinion is that the tomb could not have stood in one of the chapels of the nave and the transept, because most of the chapels were completed by 1300, and maintains that it was situated in one of the heads of the transept, near St Francis’ tomb: Lunghi, “‘Rubeus,’” 16. A placement to the north-east wall of the first bay, where the chapel of St Catherine is, has been argued by Hertlein, “Das Grabmonument,” 6-7. Of a different view is Kreytenberg, who suggests that the monument was built in its current location ab initio and that it is not the outcome of the fusion of two monuments; it simply formed a single sepulcher since its conception: Kreytenberg, “La tomba,” 17, 19, 22-24.
Papini, Notizie, 331; Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 15-16; Nessi, La basilica, 178 n. 64, 459-460. Nessi, La basilica, 178, 459 dates the geometric inlay stonework on the base of the Nepis sepulchral chapel (i.e., the Tribuna Nepis) to the late thirteenth or the first decades of the fourteenth century.
Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 15: “al mezzo della ditta entrata della chiesa, che viene ad essere il capo della chiesa, voltandosi però con le spalle alla sepoltura di S. Francesco, nella facciata vi è uno assai bello sepulcro della Regina Eugubea.”
Cenci, Documentazione, 2:947; Nessi, La basilica, 419: “Ante sepulcrum ferratum regine constantinopolitane.” In another document of 1523 (Cenci, Documentazione, 2:1112), the tomb of the empress of Constantinople is mentioned again: “ante sepulturam imperatricis constantinopolitane.”
Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 16: “et è munito et ornato con una grata di ferro.” The iron fence was removed in ca. 1670; see Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 23.
The tomb of St Francis itself became veiled in great mystery and gave rise to several fictitious allegations about its form and exact position. For the saint’s tomb, see the rigorous article by D. Cooper, “In loco tutissimo et firmissimo: The Tomb of St. Francis in History, Legend and Art,” in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy, ed. W.R. Cook (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 1-37. On this topic, also consult the seminal work by I. Gatti, La tomba di S. Francesco nei secoli (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1983).
Lunghi, “‘Rubeus,’” 16 argues that the original location of the monument was not in one of the side chapels but in one of the two extremities of the transept, facing the tomb of St Francis.
The tomb was subsequently considered as that of the empress or queen of Constantinople; see Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 19.
ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 24v. Pietralunga’s book C, which is cited by the anonymous author as containing the information about Santa Maria degli Angeli, no longer exists. For a concise and lucid summary of the problems surrounding the sepulchral monument in question and the interpretations so far given by scholars, consult the editorial commentary by Pietro Scarpellini on Fra Pietralunga’s Descrizione della Basilica. See Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga, Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri santuari di Assisi. In appendice Chiesa Superiore di Anonimo secentesco, ed. P. Scarpellini (Treviso: Edizioni Canova, 1982), 183-190, at 184; also, Nessi, La basilica, 175-176 n. 59.
Cenci, Documentazione, 2:1096: “sepultura sive depositum cuiusdam regine, cappella domus Nepis et alia latera.”
For Jacoba dei Settesoli see below, note 149.
This becomes clear in Papini, Notizie, 161, 317: “Sotto il Pulpito è il Sepolcro della B. Giacoma Frangipani di Roma”; see also Gatti, La tomba, 139; Nessi, La basilica, 361, 403-404, 439. It should be noted that Jacoba’s remains, along with those of Francis and his first companions, were transferred to the crypt, built in the early nineteenth century by Ugo Tarchi, only in 1932: Gatti, La tomba, 397.
A seventeenth-century fresco depicting Jacoba can be seen near the place of her first grave, and it replaced an older image of hers. In 1618, painter Cesare Sermei was contracted to complete the painting; see Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 1:160, fig. 175; Nessi, La basilica, 361.
The pergola in the Lower Church was dismantled in 1870-1871 and thus we do not know whether it had a wrought-iron gate. Judging from an engraving of 1771 and by the surviving analogous pergola in the Basilica of Santa Chiara, it is certain that the San Francesco pergola only sported an opening, not a gate: M. Bigaroni, “Origine e sviluppo storico della chiesa,” in La Basilica di S. Chiara in Assisi, eds. M. Bigaroni, H.-R. Meier, and E. Lunghi (Ponte S. Giovanni/Perugia: Quattroemme, 1994), 13-80, at 24-30; M. Righetti Tosti-Croce, “La chiesa di Santa Chiara ad Assisi: architettura,” in Santa Chiara in Assisi. Architettura e decorazione, ed. A. Tomei (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2002), 21-41, at 35-36; Cooper, “In loco tutissimo et firmissimo,” 25-30.
Although in the first part of his list Galeotto follows a more structured sequence, after Jacoba and the queen of Cyprus’ tomb he is less consistent. For instance, after Abbot Ugolino’s grave, he takes us back again to the transept, at the altar of St Elizabeth, and then to the entrance bay, in the chapel of St Anthony, then to St Catherine’s chapel and to that of St Nicholas; see Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:65.
It is also striking that Papini uses the phrase “Sotto il Pulpito” (see note 63). For the terms denoting the rood screen and the tramezzo in the Lower Church of Assisi, see D.A. Cooper, “In medio ecclesiae: Screens, Crucifixes and Shrines in the Franciscan Church Interior in Italy (c.1230-c.1400),” 2 vols., PhD dissertation (University of London, 2000), 1:42-43.
For the repurposing of these fragments and the assumption of some of their functions, see I. Hueck, “Der Lettner der Unterkirche von San Francesco in Assisi,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 28/2 (1984), 173-202, at 174-177, 183; Cooper, “In medio ecclesiae,” 43-46, especially 46.
“Poi l’incontro de dita capella gli è presso il pilastro, il sepulcro de madonna Giacoma romana, quale se ritrovò alla morte di S. Francesco, che viene a essere a ri[s]petto del sepulcro del sopraditto cardinale, che gli sonno parole scritte, dicano cusì: ‘hic requiescit Iacoba sancta nobilisque romana.’ Il qual sepulcro gli è basso presso terra, cioè, al pavimento, et sta positivamente con una pietra quadra. Dirò hora di la capella over, per dir meglio, all’incontro di Santa Maria Magdalena, gli è nel ditto vano, over capella, fabricato un pergolo da fondamenti et tira più della mezza in alto, con tavole de pietra roscia e misc[h]cia lustra: sì il fondamento et sì il parapetto ornato con musaico [con] li fregi. Da un lato di l’arco gli è una altare dedicato a Sancto Staniyzlavi episcopi et martiris, cuius canonizatio facta a papa Innocentio 4°…” See Pietralunga, Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco, ed. Scarpellini, 47-48.
Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:65: “da una banda è il sepolcro de uno abbate vescovo chiamato Ugolino nel muro.” See also Papini, Notizie, 317; Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 22 n. 2; Nessi, La basilica, 419-420.
Pietralunga, “Descrizione della Basilica,” 16.
ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fols. 20v-21r. All tombs are numbered, so there must have been a list identifying each burial, which, unfortunately, seems to have been pulled out of the manuscript. I would like to thank the archivist of the Sacro Convento, Assisi, Cristina Roccaforte, for her advice on this issue.
L. de Mas Latrie, Généalogie des rois de Chypre de la famille de Lusignan (Venice: Imprimerie de Marco Visentini, 1881); W.H. Rudt de Collenberg, “Les Lusignan de Chypre,”
The name Eugubea had been interpreted as Hecuba by earlier scholars, among whom see Angeli, Collis, 73, who calls her “Aecubea”; Papini, Notizie, 297, 331, who names her “Ecubea.” See also Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 71.
In his edition of ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:10 reads the name as “Elísabea,” not “Eugubea.” Kleinschmidt conceded that this is a very difficult manuscript to read and that he based his transcription on a copy forwarded by an archivist in the Vatican (ibid., 8). However, as already mentioned, in ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 24r, the name “Eugubea” can be clearly read in the manuscript, so Kleinschmidt’s suggestion is erroneous.
Robert Lee Wolff initially thought of Échive of Montfort, the first wife of Peter I of Lusignan, who died in 1353, but he later abandoned this hypothesis, on the basis that she had died “somewhat too late to be buried in the tomb.” Wolff, “The Latin Empire of Constantinople,” 235 n. 21.
Hugh II passed away at the age of fourteen; therefore, their marriage was presumably never consummated. After Hugh’s demise, Isabel married three more times: G. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940-1952), 2:157; W.H. Rudt de Collenberg, “Les Ibelin aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Généalogie compilée principalement selon les registres du Vatican,”
Not to mention that the alternative dates 1229, 1235, and 1240, suggested by early modern authors, do not concern Isabel, who was then as yet unborn. In any case, the suggestion of Isabel, lady of Beirut, was made by Giuseppe Abate and seconded by Silvestro Nessi: Abate, “Per la storia e l’arte,” 25; Nessi, La basilica, 392.
Échive was lady of Beirut from 1283 to 1291. In 1309, when Échive lost the Duchy of Athens to her cousin Walter V, count of Lecce, she knelt and prayed that, if the members of the High Court had passed an unjust judgement, they should die without heirs: W. Miller, The Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece, 1204-1566 (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1908), 221. For the life of Échive, see Rudt de Collenberg, “Les Ibelin,” 137-139; for her journey to Greece, see Chronique d’Amadi, in Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, ed. R. de Mas Latrie, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1891-1893), 1:294-298.
Mas Latrie, Généalogie, 8-9; Hill, A History, 3:285.
Rudt de Collenberg, “Les Lusignan de Chypre,” 125.
For Pietralunga’s belief that the queen was Venetian, see above, note 20.
ASC, Registro 84, fol. 30r: “dopo pr(ima) si canta la Messa per la Regina de Cipro, che era venetiana e di Casa Cornara.” The information pertains to a Mass to be recited for that queen on 2 September 1648, although in the immediately following entry (3 September) another queen of Cyprus is mentioned as Greek (see note 109 below).
M. Sanuto, I diarii, ed. G. Berchet, vol. 10 (Venice: Marco Visentini, 1883), col. 754. Caterina’s body was to be transferred to San Salvador in 1524, according to the wish of her brother Zorzi, but her wall tomb in that church was only completed in 1581 (and her remains were only translated there in 1737). For the afterlife of Caterina’s funerary monument, see M. Gaier, “Falconetto – Palladio – Contin. Tentativi di erigere un monumento alla regina nella Repubblica di Venezia,” in Caterina Cornaro: Last Queen of Cyprus and Daughter of Venice, eds. S. Rogge and C. Syndikus (Münster: Waxmann, 2013), 81-108; H.S. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 216-235.
The panel was probably commissioned by the queen for her private devotion: J. Grabski and J. Wolańska, “The Portrait of Caterina Cornaro in Lorenzo Lotto’s ‘Adoration of the Child’ in the National Museum in Cracow,” Artibus et Historiae 31 (2010), 191-208.
For a vignette into Charlotte’s life and deeds, see K. Herquet, Cyprische Königsgestalten des Hauses Lusignan (Halle am See: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1881), 52-98; Hill, A History, 3:549-620; Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice, 21-29; M. Tymviou, “Charlotte of Lusignan and Caterina Cornaro: The Politics of Queenship and Identity in Cyprus and Italy, 1458-1861,” PhD dissertation (Durham University, 2018), 61-104, 251-269, 295-380.
For Helena Palaiologina’s background, see C. Kaoulla, “Queen Helena Palaiologina of Cyprus (1442-1458). Myth and History,”
Hill, A History, 3:548; Kaoulla, “Queen Helena Palaiologina,” 139.
Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope: The Commentaries of Pius II: An Abridgement, trans. F.A. Gragg and ed. L.C. Gabel (New York: Putnam, 1959), 218; S. Guichenon, Histoire généalogique de la royale maison de Savoye (Lyon: Guillaume Barbier, 1660), 546; L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie impériale/nationale, 1852-1861), 3:115 n. 2; Herquet, Cyprische Königsgestalten, 70-71.
Pierre Monod reports that her residence lay in the Borgo San Pietro, near the Vatican, in the palazzo that had once belonged to Domenico Spinola, auditor-general of the Camera Apostolica, opposite the church of the Madonna della Purità on the Via Alessandrina (formerly Via Saligata and later Borgo Nuovo); see Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 30-31; Mas Latrie, Histoire, 3:114 n. 1. In late fifteenth-century books of ground rent (censuali), Charlotte’s residence was called “the house of the queen of Cyprus”: K.J.P. Lowe, “A Florentine Prelate’s Real Estate in Rome between 1480 and 1524: The Residential and Speculative Property of Cardinal Francesco Solderini,” Papers of the British School at Rome 59 (1991), 259-282, at 261.
For the full content of the signature and an English translation, see E.D. Howe, “Appropriating Space. Woman’s Place in Confraternal Life at Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome,” in Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image, eds. B. Wisch and D. Cole Ahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 235-258, at 245, 255-256 n. 29. For the Latin text, consult “Liber Fraternitatis S. Spiritus et S. Marie in Saxia de Urbe,” in Necrologi e libri affini della provincia romana, ed. P. Egidi, 2 vols. (Rome: Forzani – Nella Sede dell’Istituto, 1908-1914), 2:143.
Burchard mentions that Charlotte’s funeral service took place on 31 July, when her castrum doloris was ready. He also informs us that her arms were affixed to the interior of the Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican, while the funeral Mass was said in the chapel of St George. For all this, see Johannis Burchardi Argentinensis capelle pontificie sacrorum rituum magistri, Diarium sive rerum urbanarum commentarii (1483-1506), ed. L. Thuasne, 3 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1883-1885), 1:272-273. Some of the information is repeated in O. Raynaldo, Annales Ecclesiastici ab anno MCXCVIII ubi Card. Baronius desinit auctore Odorico Raynaldo Taurisino congregationis oratorii presbytero, vol. 19 (1458-1503) (Rome: Varesii, 1663), year 1487 no. 34. The events surrounding the life, death, and funeral of Charlotte are also described by Filippo Lorenzo Dionisi (1712-1789), theologian and cleric in the Vatican: Philippo Laurentio Dionysio, Sacrarum Vaticanae Basilicae cryptarum monumenta aereis tabulis incisa (Rome: Typis et Sumptibus Archangeli Casaletti, 1773), 98-100.
“Ut aliquod sepulchrum honorificum construatur”: Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 36-37, 39; Guichenon, Histoire, 545. See also A. Segre, “Delle relazioni tra Savoia e Venezia da Amedeo VI a Carlo II (III) [1366-1553],” Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 49 (1900), 1-46, at 24 nn. 5-6.
Monod remarks that her tomb was intact until 1610. Relying on Giacomo Grimaldi, cleric of the Vatican Library and notary in the Curia, he states that, when her tomb was opened, her skull and bones were collected. Her silk robes were not completely in tatters (“Non era ancora afatto incenerita la sua veste di seta”), and only the gilded buckle of her girdle was preserved: Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 39-40.
R.U. Montini, “Tombe regali in Roma, II,” Studi romani 4 (1956), 393-412, at 395-397, pl. LXXIV; M. Zalum, “Grottoes. Tomb (20th century) of Charlotte of Lusignan (1440-1487),” in The Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican, eds. A. Pinelli and M. Beltramini, 4 vols. (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2000), 4 (Notes): 890, no. 1752.
A. Tallon, “L’histoire ‘officielle’ de la papauté du XVe au XVIIe siècle, les Vitae Pontificum Romanorum de Platina, Panvinio, Ciaconius: critique et apologétique,” in Liber, gesta, histoire: écrire l’histoire des évêques et des papes, de l’antiquité au XXIe siècle, eds. F. Bougard and M. Sot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 199-213, at 211-213; M. Pattenden and A. Witte, “The Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals,” in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, eds. M. Hollingsworth, M. Pattenden, and A. Witte (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 435-452, at 438-440.
Vitae et res gestae pontificum Romanorum et S.R.E. cardinalium ab initio nascentis Ecclesiae usque ad Clementem IX. P.O.M. Alphonsi Ciaconii Ordinis Praedicatorum & aliorum opera descriptae: cum uberrimis Notis, ed. A. Oldoino, 4 vols. (Rome: De Rubeis, 1677), 3:col. 123. In the 1630 edition, even though the editors mention the queen of Cyprus, they do not allude to her tomb.
E. Tormo, “Charlas académicas. El Padre Alfonso Chacón el indiscutible iniciador de la Arqueología de la Arte Cristiana,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 111 (1942), 151-199, at 167.
The original text reads as follows: “Chr(ist)o Sal(vatori) / Karola Hierus. / Cypri, et Armeniae / Regina. Obiit XVI. / Iulii Anno Dom. / MCCCCXXCVII // Sedente Innocentio VIII. P. M.” In addition, above her pillow appears the inscription “+ In no(m)i(n)e d(omi)ni am(en) a(n)no) // in pace am(en).” Vitae et res gestae, 3:col. 123.
As we shall see, the inscription accorded with the text in the painting displaying Pope Sixtus IV receiving Charlotte in the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia. For the inscriptions in Santo Spirito and their probable authorship by Platina, see E.D. Howe, Art and Culture at the Sistine Court. Platina’s “Life of Sixtus IV” and the Frescoes of the Hospital of Santo Spirito (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2005), 39-40, 196.
According to Edith Brayer, the extant slab showing part of a dress and shoes does not belong to Charlotte’s tomb: E. Brayer, P. Lemerle, and V. Laurent, “Le Vaticanus latinus 4789: histoire et alliances des Cantacuzènes aux XIVe-XVe siècles,” Revue des études byzantines 9 (1951), 47-105, at 51 n. 5.
Hill, A History, 3:613 n. 6. Conversely, George Jeffery, a contemporary of Hill, was familiar with the Assisian tale and thought that this “may very possibly be a mistake arising from some endowment she may have left to the friars who certainly celebrate even in modern days a solemn requiem for her soul”: G. Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus: Studies in the Archaeology and Architecture of the Island (Nicosia: Government Printing Office, 1918), 444.
Steffano Lusignano, Chorograffia et breve historia universale dell’isola de Cipro al tempo di Noè per insino al 1572 (Bologna: Alessandro Benaccio, 1573), fol. 74r: “Morì dipoi la Regina, et fù portata in Assisi, et sepolta nella Chiesa de’ Fra Minori Conventuali”; Etienne de Lusignan, Description de toute l’isle de Cypre (Paris: Guillaume Chaudiere, 1580), fol. 186r: “laissa ce monde, & fut son corps enterré en la ville d’Assisi, en l’Eglise où repose le corps de saint François.”
Steffano Lusignano is notorious for making false or inaccurate statements on many occasions, but, in this case, it seems probable that he was aware of the Assisian legend. For Lusignan’s inaccuracies, see C. Schabel, “Étienne de Lusignan’s Chorograffia and the Ecclesiastical History of Frankish Cyprus: Notes on a Recent Reprint and English Translation,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 18-19 (2002-2003), 339-353; Idem, “A Knight’s Tale. Giovan Francesco Loredano’s Fantastic Historie de’ re Lusignani,” in Cyprus and the Renaissance (1450-1650), eds. B. Arbel, E. Chayes, and H. Hendrix (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 357-390.
Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 40.
Guichenon, Histoire, 545-546.
Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 36-37, 39.
Guichenon, Histoire, 545. Herquet believed that such a monument was never constructed, since the dukes of Savoy were not supportive of Charlotte when she was alive, let alone when dead: Herquet, Cyprische Königsgestalten, 96-97.
ASC, Registro 84, fol. 30r: “dopo pr(ima) si canta la Messa per la sereniss(ima) Regina de Cipro di natione grega.”
ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r: “Non è da / fidarsi / di questa / storiella. / La Regina / Veneziana / chiamossi / Carlotta a’/ tempi di / Sisto IV.” The marginal note has gone unnoticed by previous scholarship, even by Supino, La basilica di San Francesco, 70-71, who transcribed excerpts from the main text.
ASC, Fondo Moderno, MS 148, fol. 85v.
P. D’Aveiro, Itinerario da Terra Sancta e suas particularidades (Lisbon: Simáo Lopez, 1593), 33; H. Giblet, Historie de’ re’ Lusignani, libri undeci (Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1647), 592.
J. Volterranus, “Diarium Romanum: Liber secundus et annus X. Pontificatus Sixti,” in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. L.A. Muratori, Vol. 23 (Milan: Societatis Palatinae, 1733), 109-198, at 162.
Volterranus, “Diarium,” 192; Hill, A History, 3:611.
The panel with Charlotte and the pope is located on the north wall, near the main entrance; see the ground plan of Corsia Sistina by D. Bullen Presciutti, “The Visual Rhetoric of Foundling Care at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly 64/3 (2011), 752-799, at 758, fig. 3. Also consult Howe, Art and Culture, 75.
The Corsia Sistina’s painting program was executed by a group of unidentified painters. Five scenes on the north wall of the eastern wing (making a total of thirty-nine scenes dedicated to Sixtus’ life) were added in 1599. E.D. Howe, The Hospital of Santo Spirito and Pope Sixtus IV (New York: Garland, 1978), 123; Howe, Art and Culture, 73-75, 110, 133, 138; Bullen Presciutti, “The Visual Rhetoric,” 756-757.
Hill, A History, 3:603 n. 2; Howe, The Hospital, 120, pl. 38.
Howe, Art and Culture, 88, 90, fig. 40; Tymviou, “Charlotte,” 265-266.
The original inscriptions were lost and replaced in 1642, but fortunately they had been copied in manuscripts: Bullen Presciutti, “The Visual Rhetoric,” 759 n. 11: “Karoleta Cypri regina, spoliata regno fortunisque omnibus, supplex ad Sixtum confugiens, comitantibus Cristophoro Rovvere castellano Sancti Angeli et Dominico cubiculario secreto fratribus pientissimis, benigne suscepta et bene sperare Iussa, pontificis munificentiam et gratiam summis laudibus extollit ob inclytam Sabaudiae familiam.” My English translation is based on that of Howe: Howe, The Hospital, 373; Howe, Art and Culture, 196.
The pope considered Charlotte the legitimate ruler of Cyprus. It has also been argued that the queen’s depiction in this cycle echoed the diffusion of crusade propaganda on the part of Sixtus IV, as one of the priorities of the early years of his pontificate was an expedition against the Turks, who were threatening Charlotte’s kingdom: G. Vespignani, “Il matrimonio di Zoe Paleologhina con Ivan Vasil’evič, gran principe di Mosca (1472) in un affresco sistino dell’Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia a Roma,” Porphyra 20 (2013), 91-118, at 92-93, 96.
J. Monfasani, “A Description of the Sistine Chapel under Pope Sixtus IV,” Artibus et Historiae 4 (1983), 9-18, at 14, 18.
E. Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, 2 vols. (Munich: F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1901-1905), 1:404-408, fig. 185. It is generally accepted that Sixtus was the deviser of the chapel’s program: R. Goffen, “Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel,” Renaissance Quarterly 39/2 (1986), 218-262, at 231 n. 56; Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice, 25-26.
Wadding, Annales Minorum, 14:143-144, no. X; Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 28-29. Flemmyng’s long poem titled Lucubraciunculae Tiburtinae was printed in Rome in 1477: V. Pacifici, Un carme biografico di Sisto IV del 1477 (Tivoli: Società tiburtina di storia e d’arte, 1921), 19. Nicolaus Glassberger’s chronicle was compiled between 1506 and 1508: “Chronica Fratris Nicolai Glassberger,” Analecta Franciscana 2 (1887), 1-579, at 456.
E. Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978), 11-12, 18-45. See also Goffen, “Friar Sixtus,” 218-227, with further bibliography.
Both saints were favorites of the pope, who included them in his coronation medal. The saints in question were also depicted in the Hospital of Santo Spirito as appearing in the dream of Sixtus’ mother, foretelling that her son would be born a Franciscan. Sixtus also built a chapel (Cappella del Choro) in Old St Peter’s in Rome and had the saints painted in the apse along with his portrait and those of Peter and Paul at the feet of the Virgin: L.D. Ettlinger, “Pollaiuolo’s Tomb of Pope Sixtus IV,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953), 239-274, at 242, 268-269, 274; R. Weiss, The Medals of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1961), 13, 16; Goffen, “Friar Sixtus,” 220-221; Howe, Art and Culture, 140-146.
Goffen, “Friar Sixtus,” 220.
For a detailed account of Sixtus IV’s renovation campaign in Assisi, see J.E. Blondin, “Pope Sixtus IV at Assisi. The Promotion of Papal Power,” in Patronage and Dynasty: The Rise of the Della Rovere in Renaissance Italy, ed. I.F. Verstegen (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2007), 19-36. See also Nessi, La basilica, 356-357.
For the altar, which is no longer extant, see Kleinschmidt, Die Basilika, 3:20-21 (Pietralunga’s description); I. Hueck, “Die Kapellen der Basilika S. Francesco in Assisi: Die Auftraggeber und die Franziskaner,” in Patronage and Public in the Trecento, ed. V. Moleta (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1986), 81-104, at 87-88; Nessi, La basilica, 428. For the portable artifacts, see Blondin, “Pope Sixtus IV at Assisi,” 28.
Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 81-85, no. 19; 161-165, no. 99; P. Lurati, “No. 43: The Franciscan Tree” and “No. 44: Altar Frontal of Sixtus IV,” in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, eds. G. Morello and L.B. Kanter (Milan: Electa, 1999), 152-156. Plenty of other gifts presented to the convent by Sixtus IV are recorded in the sources, an example of which is a large silver tabernacle weighing 5.5kg: Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 21.
G. Zaccaria, “Diario storico della Basilica e Sacro Convento di S. Francesco in Assisi (1220-1927): II-III,” Miscellanea Francescana 63 (1963), 290-361, at 347 (26 November 1472) and 351 (25 August 1476).
The relics venerated by the pope and his associates were the shoes and tunic of St Francis that were made for him by St Clare when he received the stigmata: Zaccaria, “Diario storico,” 351 (29 August 1476); Gatti, La tomba, 131; Blondin, “Pope Sixtus IV at Assisi,” 23. Other writers averred that Sixtus took with him a tiny portion of the saint’s hair, which he later deposited in the Basilica of San Giovanni at the Lateran: G. Zaccaria, “Visite vere e visite fantastiche alla tomba di S. Francesco,” S. Francesco Patrono d’Italia 53 (1973), 39-46, at 42-43.
Papini, Notizie, 205. Papini refers to Wadding, Annales Minorum, 14:145-146, no. IV. A similar story is told by Mariano da Firenze, who reports that the pope came to Assisi with all his Curia and saw the body of St Francis: M. da Firenze, “Compendium chronicarum fratrum minorum (continuatio),” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 4 (1911), 318-339, at 323.
It should be stressed, however, that Papini lists the queen together with individuals who lived in the thirteenth century, perhaps influenced by the tales alleging her presence in the convent at that time: Papini, Notizie, 205. Various writers refer to a visit by Pope Gregory IX to Assisi in 1234 to verify Francis’ stigmata, an episode that is questioned by some scholars and embraced by others: Zaccaria, “Visite vere,” 40; Gatti, La tomba, 481; Nessi, La basilica, 384.
For the secret visit of Sixtus IV according to the Franceschina, see La Franceschina. Testo volgare umbro del sec. XV scritto dal P. Giacomo Oddi di Perugia, ed. N. Cavanna, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1931), 2:195-196 (no. 57); Cooper, “In loco tutissimo et firmissimo,” 10.
Zaccaria, “Visite vere,” 39; Gatti, La tomba, 115, 124-125, 131; Cooper, “In loco tutissimo et firmissimo,” 10-12.
Charlotte was certainly not affluent enough to offer the Franciscans ultramarine azurite and an antique porphyry vase, and also shower them with an excessive amount of money. Since her confinement to the citadel of Kyrenia and her subsequent exile, Charlotte and her husband relied on the good will of others, or they used the power of their royal titles to secure funding. See Hill, A History, 3:587; Tymviou, “Charlotte,” 86. For example, when her brother seized the throne in 1460, Charlotte sold her jewels and sought the help of the Dominicans in Nicosia, imploring them to hand over precious silver objects, reliquaries, ornaments of the convent, and other treasures. Among the objects the queen took with her were twelve silver apostles, chalices, thuribles, reliquaries, crosses, other silverware, and two precious garnets (escarboucles). Charlotte gave the friars a precious pax she wore as a pendant, which cost more than 200 ducats, as collateral: Lusignano, Chorograffia, fol. 33r-v; Lusignan, Description, fols. 173v-174v; Hill, A History, 3:579 n. 3, 580 n. 1.
Nessi, La basilica, 39-40, 398-399. In 1320 Muzio di Francesco, the leader of the Ghibellines in Assisi, raided the basilica and stole great quantities of gold and silver from the papal treasure kept in the Upper Church, which was in the custody of the friars. He also snatched several precious utensils that belonged to the treasury of the Sacro Convento. Other thefts and spoliations followed, for example, in 1492, 1703, and so on. For all of the above, see U. Gnoli, “Il Tesoro di San Francesco di Assisi - I,” Dedalo 1, anno II (1921), 421-441, at 422-424; Pennacchi and Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari,” 71-72, 74; Fanelli et al., Il tesoro della basilica, 18-23.
Pennacchi and Alessandri, “I più antichi inventari,” 106-107. Additional notes to the main entries list donations of objects that took place in 1483-1508, yet nothing concerns Charlotte; be this as it may, not all gifts were necessarily cataloged in those additions.
In 1461, when Charlotte was travelling with a cohort of galleys to either the pope or the sultan to broker a peace agreement, the Venetians stole the money, goods, and presents that she and her entourage were carrying with them. The Venetian Senate gave the queen 2,000 ducats and her husband 600 ducats in recompense: Mas Latrie, Histoire, 3:119 n. 3 (17 February 1462), 129-133 (6 June 1465), 137-139 §7 (1466); Herquet, Cyprische Königsgestalten, 70; Hill, A History, 3:581-582.
For the delivery of bread and wine, Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 30-32 cites the Libro de’ Tesori nascosti di Roma by Ottavio Pancirolo and for the donations to the Vatican he refers to page 99 of the manuscript with the benefactors of the basilica in the Vatican. For Pancirolo’s actual text, see O. Panciroli, I tesori nascosti nell’alma città di Roma (Rome: Luigi Zannetti, 1600), 488. Charlotte’s presents to the Vatican are also cited by Filippo Lorenzo Dionisi: Dionysio, Sacrarum Vaticanae Basilicae, 99. An inventory of the basilica’s sacristy for 1489 lists only one chasuble, one dalmatic, and the tunicella, brocaded in red, as gifts by the queen of Cyprus; see E. Müntz and A.L. Frothingham, “Il Tesoro della basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano dal XIII al XV secolo con una scelta d’inventari inediti,” Archivio della società romana di storia patria 6 (1883), 1-137, at 131.
Monod, Ristretto delle rivolutioni, 32 provides the registration number of the manuscript: “Registrato al numero 1208.”
H. Buchthal and H. Belting, Patronage in Thirteenth-Century Constantinople. An Atelier of Late Byzantine Book Illumination and Calligraphy (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1978), 6-7, 117-118, no. 12; R.S. Nelson, “A Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Miniature in the Vatican Library,” Gesta 20/1 (1981), 213-222, at 216. On folio Ir, an inscription with greyish ink reads: “dono di Carlotta di Cipro.” For an image of folio 2r, visit the relevant webpage of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1208 (last accessed 6 April 2024).
Charlotte’s coat of arms emerges once again in another manuscript also held at the Vatican (Vat. lat. 4789), which belonged to the Cypriot nobleman Hugh Bousac: Brayer, Lemerle, and Laurent, “Le Vaticanus,” 50-52.
R.S. Nelson and J. Lowden, “The Palaeologina Group: Additional Manuscripts and New Questions,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), 59-68, at 67; R. Nelson, “The Italian Appreciation and Appropriation of Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts, ca. 1200-1450,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 209-235, at 233.
G. Mercati, “I Mss. Biblici greci donati da Carlotta di Lusignano ad Innocenzo VIII,” Storia e cultura ecclesiastica 4/6 (1906), 337-338; repr. in Idem, Opere Minori. 2: 1896-1907 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1937), 480-481; Brayer, Lemerle, and Laurent, “Le Vaticanus,” 51-52; Buchthal and Belting, Patronage, 116-117, no. 11.
M. Sanuto, I diarii, ed. F. Stefani, Vol. 1 (Venice: Marco Visentini, 1879), col. 751. George Hill associated the wooden piece with the relic of the Cross in Stavrovouni, but this is not something that can be proven, as other churches in Cyprus also possessed relics of the True Cross. For Hill’s rationale, see A History, 2:482 n. 2 and 3:613 n. 6.
The ex libris note reads: “Isto libro la Regina Char / lotta de Jerousalem de / Chipre et Armenie.”
In 1789 the manuscript is documented in the Dominican library of Santa Maria del Rosario in Venice, which, in turn, received it as an inheritance from the poet Apostolo Zeno after his death in 1750: A. Rahlfs, Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des Alten Testaments (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1914), 34; C. Havice, “The Marginal Miniatures in the Hamilton Psalter (Kupferstichkabinett 78.A.9),” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 26 (1984), 79-142, at 79-80; M. Zorzi, “Le biblioteche a Venezia nel secondo settecento,” Miscellanea Marciana 1 (1986), 253-324, particularly 258-259; M. Zorzi, La Libreria di San Marco. Libri, lettori, società nella Venezia dei Dogi (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1987), 324, 373-374. Zeno was also very interested in the Cypriot nobleman Pietro de Nores and owned manuscripts containing his works: A. Nicolaou-Konnari, “
B. Kleinschmidt, “Nova et vetera de Iacoba de Septemsoliis,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 9 (1916), 443-444. Her death is placed in 1236, in 1239, or in 1273 (based on a document citing two notarial testament transactions of 1258 and 1273 mentioning a certain Jacoba de Roma). The date 1273 is also in line with one of the suggested death dates of the queen of Cyprus (1270). See also É. D’Alençon, “Jacqueline de Settesoli,” Études Franciscaines 2 (1899), 5-20, and 227-242, at 229-230, 238. Gatti, La tomba, 403 n. 203 rejects the 1273 date and adopts 1239 as the year of Jacoba’s death.
A daughter of James I of Lusignan (1334/1382-1398) was named Zacca (in Italian that would be Jacopa), but she lived in the late fourteenth century and her biography is virtually unknown to us. Mas Latrie identifies her with James I’s daughter Échive (Civa), who died in around 1386: Mas Latrie, Généalogie, 38 (no. 10).
The medieval term “azure” as a color designation was applied to lapis lazuli and ultramarine: G. Frison and G. Brun, “Lapis Lazuli, Lazurite, Ultramarine ‘Blue,’ and the Colour Term ‘Azure’ up to the 13th Century,” Journal of the International Colour Association 16 (2016), 41-55, at 42. The Assisian register (ASC, Registro 24, fol. 68r) does not specify if this was “azzurro” della Magna (or Tedesco) – a natural pigment that, along with ultramarine, was the most familiar to early Italian painters –, azzurro di Terra, or any other type of blue pigment: M. Merrifield, Original Treatises Dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth Centuries on the Arts of Painting, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1849), 1:cxcvi-ccii; 2:327; J. Plesters, “Ultramarine Blue, Natural and Artificial,” Studies in Conservation 11/2 (1966), 62-91, at 62-63.
However, ultramarine was used parsimoniously as it was much more expensive than azurite: D.V. Thompson, The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 145-150; C. Hoeniger, “The Identification of Blue Pigments in Early Sienese Paintings by Color Infrared Photography,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 30/2 (1991), 115-124. In antiquity, azurite was imported from Armenia (lapis armenus), Cyprus (caeruleum cyprium), and Mount Sinai: M. Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 22. As for Assisi, technical analysis has verified that azurite was the pigment used for most of the blues in paintings by Cimabue, together with some low-quality ultramarine: H. Flora, Cimabue and the Franciscans (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2018), 32, with further bibliography.
The author must have meant the azzurro della Magna, a pigment extracted from blue copper ore: Merrifield, Original Treatises, 1:ccxi-ccxvi; 2:325-327, 374-377.
M. Ward, “True Blue: The Connection between Colour and Loyalty in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 46/2 (2020), 133-155, at 136-137. However, the biblical mentions of sapphires do not always refer to the gemstone but to lapis lazuli: Pastoureau, Blue, 21, 44.
The Franciscans were allowed to reside at the Holy Sepulcher shortly after 1244 and by 1342 the order was recognized as the official representative of Latin Christians in Jerusalem’s holy sites: G. Golubovich, Serie cronologica dei reverendissimi superiori di Terra Santa (Jerusalem: Convento di S. Salvatore, 1898), XX-XXVI, 128-130, 197, 249-260; X.J. Seubert, “Franciscans in Jerusalem: The Early History,” in Jerusalem 1000-1400. Every People under Heaven, eds. B. Drake Boehm and M. Holcomb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 240-241.
In an early seventeenth-century account of a knighting initiation into the order, the knights-to-be were led by Franciscan brothers to the cenotaph of the Holy Sepulcher, and there the Franciscan custos held the sword of Godfrey de Bouillon and patted their shoulders: M.C. Armstrong, The Holy Land and the Early Modern Reinvention of Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 121-122, 170, 174. See also Golubovich, Serie cronologica, XXVI. Curiously, the idea that the Order of the Holy Sepulcher was founded by Godfrey has been debunked as yet another early modern myth; in fact, the earliest attribution of the order’s foundation to Godfrey only goes back to the mid-sixteenth century. For more on this and the reception of Godfrey de Bouillon in Cyprus, with further bibliography, see M. Olympios, “When Venus Met Godfrey: The Evocation of Gothic Antiquity in the Architecture of Venetian Cyprus,” in Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture, eds. A.I. Sullivan and K.G. Sweeney (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 314-345, at 332.
The idea of St Francis as alter Christus (another Christ) is a vast topic, with an extensive bibliography, and will not be covered here. For more on the topic, see Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, 123-151. For the promotion of the convent of Assisi as a pilgrimage destination alternative and equal to the Holy Land, consult K. Blair Moore, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 117-129.
