A Cypriot Story about Love and Hatred

Małgorzata Dąbrowska

doi:10.2478/texmat-2014-0014

Authors

Małgorzata Dąbrowska University of Łódź

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/texmat-2014-0014

Abstract

The Middle Ages have their great love stories. We owe one of them to Peter I Lusignan, King of Cyprus. Married to Eleanor of Aragon, who bore him a son and a successor, he had a mistress pregnant with his child. The queen decided to eliminate this rival by inducing a premature delivery. The incident was recorded by Leontios Makhairas, a Cypriot chronicler, who described the cruelty of Eleanor and mourned the fate of the baby. But it is not his account which keeps this tragedy alive in Cyprus even today. There is a folk song about beautiful Arodaphnousa, who suffered because of the bad queen. The song is deprived of historical context, but it is a historical source nevertheless. Its remote counterpart is the Catalan story of Eleanor, who was expelled from Cyprus and lived in Aragon for a long time. This story creates an image of a benign, calm lady who was venerated after death by her subjects. The clash between these images makes one think about the black and white PR created in every epoch. But this is not the point of this story. The point is the fate of an innocent child, both the flower and the victim of love. This is a rare motif in medieval literature; children are seldom present on the pages of its manuscripts. The emotion connected with this story deserves the reader’s attention.

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Author Biography

Małgorzata Dąbrowska, University of Łódź

Małgorzata Dąbrowska teaches in the Department of Medieval History, University of Łódź. Her lectures concern the history of the Middle Ages, but her seminars and major research interests focus on the late Byzantine Empire (13th–15th centuries). She deals with the matrimonial policy of the Palaiologoi dynasty, the relations between Byzantium and the West, the history of the Empire of Trebizond and the Polish perspective on Byzantium. She has published in Byzantiaka, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Byzantinoslavica, Byzantina et Slavica Cracoviensia, etc. She was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford (2001), and Visiting Professor at Rice University, Houston TX, where she taught for three years (2005–2008). Currently, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Warsaw (2014).

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