ABSTRACT
Since antiquity, the islands of the Mediterranean basin have attracted settlers and formed centres of commercial activity for peoples of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.1 During the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance two islands in particular were of primary importance in the commercial and cultural exchanges between East and West, between the Christian and the Islamic worlds: the first of these was Sicily, and the second, the more selfcontained Cyprus. Both were located at commercial crossroads, something which had adverse repercussions on their political stability. Sicily was considered the pearl of the Tyrrhenian Sea, coveted by both France and Spain. Meanwhile Cyprus, situated in an area that witnessed a new surge of Ottoman expansion in the early sixteenth century, experienced political volatility, and found itself the object of the conflicting ambitions of the Genoese, Catalans and Venetians. Within this broader historical context the Lusignan kings sought to maintain a precarious equilibrium by containing the ambitions of these competing powers, something that they were increasingly less able to achieve.
