ABSTRACT
The Hospitallers constantly and unwaveringly supported Queen Charlotte during the civil war in Cyprus that took place between 1460 and 1464, and which ended when her illegitimate half-brother James succeeded in wresting the kingdom from her helped by a force of Mamluks. Yet documents from the years 1468–69 preserved in the Livre des Remembrances, the one extant register of acts recorded in the Cypriot royal chancery from James’s reign, show that the Hospitaller Order and its members continued to possess estates and incomes in Cyprus and paid taxes to the crown in cash and kind. As king, James II himself corresponded with the Hospitaller grand master in Rhodes over the ransoming of Muslim captives, and his relationship with the Order was more nuanced than one might suppose in view of the support it was giving his half-sister, the lawful queen of Cyprus. In this paper the evidence from the documents will be examined, and an explanation offered for James’s seemingly harmonious relations with the Hospitallers.
