Easily subdued and exploited as they were in other respects, the Cypriotes, when it came to an attack on their religious institutions, showed once more the same obstinacy which had defended the autocephaly of their Church from the assaults of Antioch. The differences between the Greek and the Latin Churches may have been irreconcilable; but had there been any chance of union, the agents of the Roman See were too often tactless though sincere bigots, the last persons likely to find a bridge for the gap, especially when they had to deal with opponents of very similar character. The power of passive resistance of the Greeks, the common sense occasionally shown by the Popes who tried to restrain the extravagances of their representatives, the equally sensible tendency of the kings and regents to hinder the complete destruction of the Church of their Greek subjects, the revival of Cypriote nationalism from the time of Helena Palaeologa—these factors would suffice to account for the eventual disappearance of Roman Catholicism from the island, even had Turkish policy not dictated its expulsion. We have already followed the vicissitudes of the two Churches in the course of the history of the earlier Lusignan rulers; we shall now deal specially with the struggle between them from the convention of Lemesos in 1220 to the Turkish conquest.