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The first part of this study is a documented outline of the activity and literary work of the Ecumenical Patriarch Germanos II [1223-1240] and of his essential role in the Orthodox recovery in the troubled age of foundation of the Latin Empire of Constantinople and of the competing Greek empires of Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus. The second part is a discussion of the complex ecclesiastical relations between the Orthodox and Latin hierarchies and jurisdictions in the context of the religious and confessional tensions of the crusader occupation and administration of Greek Orthodox territories and populations. It focusses on the critical situation of the Greek Orthodox bishops in the Latin Kingdom of Cyprus revealed by the two important letters written for them by Patriarch Germanos II in 1223 and 1229, as well by the letter written in 1231-1232 to the Byzantine Emperor in Nicaea by Archbishop Neophytos of Cyprus. The discussion is followed by a Romanian translation of the letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is a documented discussion of the martyrdom of the thirteen Greek antiunionist monks from Kantara Panagiotissa Monastery, Cyprus, killed and burnt in 19 May 1231 in Nikossia by the Frankish rulers of the Latin kingdom created in 1198 by the crusaders for resisting the attempts of liturgical Latinisation of the Orthodox Cypriots by the Latin Church by publicly condemning the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Their martyrdom is presented on the complex historical background of the troubled ecclesiastical relations between the Orthodox and Latin hierarchies and jurisdictions in the context of the religious and confessional tensions generated by the crusader occupation and administration of Greek Orthodox territories and populations in Middle East in general, and in Cyprus in particular, through the forced submission of the Orthodox clergy under the jurisdiction of the Latin Church. The discussion is followed by the first Romanian translation of the dossier of the martyrdom of the thirteen Cypriot monks including the Greek Diegesis surviving in two Byzantine fourteenth century manuscripts, their confession of faith, an ancient Synaxarion note, a poem written by on of the martyred monks and a short unknown contemporary Greek history of the progressive rupture of the relations between the Latins and the Eastern Orthodox up to the Latin crusader occupation of East and the dramatic martyrdom of the Cypriot monks in May 1231. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]