ABSTRACT
To understand why the military orders were established on Latin Cyprus right from the outset, one must be mindful of their dual role. The orders participated in the various crusades launched from Cyprus, which served as a supply base and as a springboard for several crusading expeditions during the thirteenth century , although on Cyprus their activities were largely confined to managing the estates they acquired there, until the fall of Acre in 1291. They a lso reinforced the small Western presence in the nascent Lusignan kingdom, populated mostly by a recalcitrant and potentially rebellious Greek population, whose secular loyalties lay with the Byzantine empire and whose religious affiliation was to the Orthodox church. The Military orders bunressed the kingdom of Cyprus against internal as much as external threat. Nonetheless, as institutions recruited from Latin Europe, they were unavoidably drawn into European power politics, such as the conflicts between the papacy and the Holy Roman empire, or the political ambitions of European monarchs. Such conflicts were ultimately to determine the very future of the orders based on Cyprus, but meanwhile they served to bring certain of them into conflict with the crown of Cyprus, first the Teutonic Order and then the Order of the Temple . As a result the orders which had initially been brought to Cyprus to reinforce the crown's posicion came to undermine it , although their energetic and undoubtedly invaluable participation in expeditions against the Muslims launched from Cyprus, especially after the fall of Acre in 1291, justified their continued existence on the island. This was borne out during the trial of the Templars on Cyprus in 1310. Given the great variation between the orders, in their importance. their differing attitudes towards the crown, and in the narure of the evidence for them. both quantitative and qualitative, it is best to deal with them separately while never losing sight of those circumstances and developments that affected them all.
