This first study of the late medieval Greek churches in Cyprus investigates over 300 buildings. It addresses the historical and artistic context of these churches, the first part containing more traditional methodological approaches such as the analysis of stylistic developments – the exchange between Western, Gothic and Eastern, Levantine architectural idioms and their formal impact on local Byzantine traditions. The second part discusses individual and collective identities and their negotiation through architectural works within the multicultural Cypriot society. The study contributes to the apprehension of dynamics of cultural exchange in late medieval eastern Mediterranean.
In Cyprus, over 300 Greek churches built or altered between 1300 and 1571 are preserved or known through documents. This material legacy was now for a first time systematically recorded and documented in photographs and drawings. This documentation, forming the catalogue volume, is art-historically evaluated and interpreted in the text volume. In addition to more traditional methodological approaches such as building archaeology and the analysis of stylistic developments, the study follows the guiding key words indicated in the title: “tradition” and “identity”. Of interest was, among others, the question of how individual and collective identities were negotiated with the help of architectural works within the multicultural and multiconfessional Cypriot society of the high and late medieval period. Thus, the study constitutes an important contribution to the apprehension of dynamics of cultural exchange in late medieval eastern Mediterranean.
Thomas Kaffenberger, born in 1985, studied Art History, Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Art History as well as Comparative Literature at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. He turned towards the church architecture of Cyprus in his MA thesis in 2010, a topic further expanded in his PhD written at the King’s College London and the JGU Mainz between 2011 and 2016. During this period, he held various stipends and fellowships (e.g. PhD stipend of the Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, PreDoc residency at Dumbarton Oaks, various travel and conference grants). After several teaching appointments at the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg, he is, since 2016, doctoral assistant to the chair of medieval art history at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland.
His research and publications focus on the medieval art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus (in particular ideas of tradition, identities, interaction as mirrored in the respective material legacies), aspects of interplay between space, image and beholder in the medieval art, as well as traditionalist-modern architecture and design in the early 20th century.
Die Buchreihe „Scrinium Friburgense“ umfasst Editionen, Monographien und Kolloquiumsbände aus allen Bereichen der Mediävistik, von der Kodikologie, Paläographie und Epigraphik über die mittelalterliche Geschichte, Philosophie- und Kunstgeschichte und die lateinische, deutsche, englische, französische, italienische und spanische Literatur des Mittelalters bis zur Byzantinistik. Besonders willkommen sind Arbeiten interdisziplinären Zuschnitts.