The island of Cyprus has been a critical, strategic location for millenniums. Since before the Trojan War, it has constituted a stepping-stone in the eastern Mediterranean leading from Europe to the Middle East. It was especially vital during the medieval Crusades, a series of religious wars of conquest between Christians and Muslims, mainly for control of Jerusalem.
During the First Crusade (1096–1099) and Second Crusade (1145–1149), the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox armies of Europe ignored Cyprus and marched over the land route through Constantinople to Jerusalem. After Jerusalem fell to the sultan of Egypt in 1187, King Richard the Lionheart of England set out on the Third Crusade (1189–1192) by sea.
Richard planned to join the king of France and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire in the city of Acre, in what is now Lebanon, but a storm shipwrecked his forces on Cyprus. Richard deposed the local Byzantine prince and used the island to stage his invasion of the Ayyubid Sultanate.
This strategy worked so well that the Holy Roman Empire soon found a way to transform Cyprus into a client kingdom to be used in future invasions. King Richard sold Cyprus to the Knights Templars, and soon thereafter Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (the son of Frederick Barbarossa) arranged for the French noble Aimery of Lusignan to be crowned in 1192 as the first king of Cyprus. For the next three centuries, Cyprus would be ruled as a Christian crusader state and client kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire.
Holy Roman emperors made extensive use of Cyprus in subsequent crusades. King Aimery of Cyprus sent troops to support Emperor Henry’s “German Crusade” in 1197. Aimery’s son and grandson enabled Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II to use Cyprus to stage the Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) and Sixth Crusade (1228–1229), and King Henry I of Cyprus let Louis IX of France use Cyprus to stage the Seventh Crusade (1248–1254).
By 1268, the kingdom of Cyprus had become so important for Catholic control of Jerusalem that King Hugh III of Cyprus was actually coronated king of Jerusalem. Kings of Cyprus continued to rule Jerusalem for 23 years until the Mamluk Sultanate reconquered it.
Once the Crusades ended, the island was under the influence of Genoese merchants until the Turks conquered it in 1571 and annexed it to the Ottoman Empire. But Catholic Europe never forgot the important role the crusader kingdom of Cyprus played in its wars for Jerusalem. Cyprus gaining full membership in the European Union in 2004 is a strong indication that Catholic Europe once again has designs on Jerusalem.