Letter of King Hugh IV of Cyprus and its Interpretation in the 17th-Century Russian Literature

Abstract

This article contains two sources concerning the history of Russia and Cyprus: an unknown and previously unpublished letter of King Hugh IV of Lusignan of Cyprus to Giovanna, Queen of Naples, and a work of an unknown Russian author of the seventeenth century about the victory of the Cypriot Christian army over the Turks. A textual and comparative analysis of both sources carried out in the article proves a borrowing of information by the Russian author from the letter of the Cypriot king. The work of the anonymous author is an almost liberal literary translation of Hugh’s letter. At the same time, the Russian translator did not borrow the plot of the letter directly, but most likely through later Cypriot literature, in which the story told by the Cypriot king was probably extremely popular. The events of the history of Cyprus of different times intertwine in the Russian text in order to show the heroic past of Cyprus. The Russian author dates his story to 552 and connects it with Emperor Justinian I, the most revered and heroic Byzantine ruler. He cannot separate the history of Cyprus from the history of Byzantium, just as the Cypriot and Greek-Byzantine authors of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries could not do it. However, both texts speak of Latin Crusaders, who are fighting against the Turks under the leadership of the King of Cyprus. The Russian author remains faithful to the Orthodox tradition of rejection of the idea of crusades and replaces the idea of martyrdom of a crusader in the name of the Lord with heroic battle scenes traditional for Russian literature. He acknowledges that warriors are fighting for the Christian faith and for the church but denies the idea of guaranteed salvation and eternal life for military feats. At the end of the article, the full text of the letter of Hugh IV of Lusignan based on a manuscript of the fifteenth century kept in the manuscript department of the Bavarian State Library is published.