CYPRUS. [Vili. from the West and arms from Constantinople, to obtain alternate alliances by royal marriages, and ecclesiastical freedom by regular variations between the two poles. For this latter policy the position of the Armenian Church was peculiarly fitted. It was so far schismatic as not to be integrally a portion of either Roman or Byzantine obedience, and so little heretical that its alliance was courted by both communions. Hence its importance in the conciliar history of the middle ages; an importance which has no sufficient parallel in the secular history of Armenia. The origin of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus is less obscure and more romantic. Cyprus had been seized by the Arabs in the early days of Islam (cir. 700-cir. 963), but recovered for the empire by Nicephorus Phocas, and ruled by dukes down to the reign of Manuel Comnenus. Its population was a mixed one ; there were Griffons or Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Maronites, native Cypriots, Greek parceci, emancipated slaves, the descendants of Albanian soldiery of the empire, and of Venetian emigrants of the first Crusade. But the land was fertile, and they had dwelt together in peace. In the reign of Manuel the happy days of Cyprus ended and the period of calamity began. According to the anchorite Neophytus, who wrote the tract ' de Calamitatibus Cypri,' the native authority for the conquest by Richard Cœur de Lion, Isaac Comnenus, a nephew of the emperor Manuel, had been appointed by him to rule the Armenian frontier ; he had quarreled with the Armenians, been taken prisoner and sold to the Latins ; that is, to Bohemond III of Antioch, whose step-father, Reginald of Châtillon, had many years before ravaged the isle of Cyprus in revenge for the hostility of Manuel Comnenus. He was ransomed from captivity by the emperor Andronicus, and, about the year 1184, came to Cyprus and set up an independent tyranny. He called himself /WiXew, but ruled as a despot of the