Stefano Lusignan

Lusignan was born in Nicosia, in Venetian Cyprus, a descendant of the royal House of Lusignan.[2][3] When he was young, Lusignan joined the Dominican Order and studied under an Armenian bishop named Ioulianos. By 1562 he was a priest and worked under two Latin bishops of Limassol, Andrea Mocenigo and Serafim Fortibraccia. By 1570, he was living in a monastery in Naples, in the Kingdom of Naples, where he began writing his best-known work, Chorograffia. In 1571, Cyprus fell to the Ottoman Empire, and after that Lusignan spent much of his time collecting ransom money to buy the freedom of relations who had been captured. In 1572, he moved to a monastery at Bologna, a university city in the Papal States. There, he first published his work named Chorograffia. In 1575 he moved to Padua, under the control of the Republic of Venice, and there he designed a famous map to supplement his book, dedicating it to the last Latin Archbishop of Cyprus, Filippo Mocenigo. The map was engraved by Giovanni Longo and paid for by Lusignan himself.[4]

In the course of his stay in Padua, Lusignan also taught Greek at the University of Padua. During a trip to Rome, he met the French ambassador and with his help moved to Paris in 1577. He lived in a monastery in Paris for ten years. Throughout his stay there he wrote and published many works. He was also involved in literary circles with other Cypriots, including Enrico Caterino Davila. In 1578 Pope Sixtus V appointed Lusignan as Titular Bishop of Limassol. He spent the last years of his life in Rome, where he died in 1590.[4]

• Chorograffia: et breve historia universale dell'Isola de Cipro principiando al tempo di Noè per in sino al 1572 (Bologna: Alessandro Benaccio, 1573)

• Getty Research Institute has two copies
• The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library
• Sylvia Ioannou Foundation

• Leontios Machairas
• Georgios Boustronios
• Venetian Cyprus

• Kitromilides, P., Κυπριακή Λογιοσύνη: 1571-1878 (Nicosia, 2002)