Between the Chronicle of Amadi and the Historia of Florio Bustron: Luca Foscarini’s Genova, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. E.V.15

Abstract Since it was printed in 1891, the so-called Chronicle of Amadi , believed to survive in a single witness in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, has been an invaluable historical narrative concerning Lusignan Cyprus and the Crusader States. This paper demonstrates that a different version of most of the text in the Marciana codex is preserved in a long-neglected manuscript that since the late nineteenth century has been mistakenly thought to contain an abbreviation of another important account of the Kingdom of Cyprus, the Historia of Florio Bustron. In fact, an analysis of this codex, the current Genova, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. E.V.15, which Luca Foscarini claimed to have obtained on an adventurous pilgrimage to Palestine in 1561, reveals that its contents, rather than those of the Marciana codex, are much closer to the corresponding material in Florio Bustron. As a result, we can now pinpoint a preexisting source for passages previously found only in the Historia .