Cyprus

Cyprus. - By area (9,283 sq km), it is the third island of the Mediterranean.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Physically a strip of the nearby (75 km away) Anatolia, it consists of a rolling plain (Messaria) enclosed between two mountain ridges; one to the N., which continues into the Karpas peninsula (M. Akromandra, 1029 m.), and one to the S., higher (Troodos, 1953 m.) and broader. It has a mild climate, but with long, hot summers and scant rainfall. There is no lack of agricultural possibilities (cereals, vines, olives) and industrial ones (due to deposits of iron, asbestos, copper, etc.), but the economy has been in a stationary phase for centuries. Of the island's 450,000 inhabitants, slightly less than 3/4 are Greeks; the rest are Muslim Turks.

The island was occupied by Great Britain in 1878, and detached from Turkish dependency in 1914. Since 1 May 1925 it has been a colony of the British Crown, with a Governor appointed by the king. It is divided into 6 districts; the seat of government is at Nicosia (35,000 inhabitants). Other notable population centers are Limassol (23,000 inhabitants), Larnaca (15,000) and Famagusta (2000), though in serious decline.

London 1919; H. W. Flinn, Cyprus. A Brief Survey of its History and Development, Cyprus 1924; R. Storrs, B. J. O'Brien, The Handbook of Cyprus, London 1930; K. Grunwald, Lo sviluppo economico dell'isola di C. dal 1919 al 1930, in Oriente moderno, 11 (1931), pp. 506-17.

II. HISTORY

In ancient times, the fertility and wealth of the soil are attested by classical writers (Strabo, XVI, 6, 5; Ammianus Marc., XIV, 8, 14). The origin of the Greek name Κύπρος, from which the name of copper (cuprum) extracted from the island's abundant mines since the most remote times is derived, is obscure. The use of this metal must have brought prosperity and importance to the country. Some Babylonian cylinders testify to its commercial relations with Mesopotamia as early as the middle of the 2nd millennium.

Under the name of Alashiya it appears in the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III (1470) and in the tablets of el-'Amāmah (letter of the Cypriot king to Amenophis IV in 1385). Later Greek colonies penetrated it, founding Salamis and Paphos. In the Iron Age (1700-600) Greek and Phoenician people still immigrated there. The Greeks gave the island the name of Κύπρος, which already appears in Homer, while the Phoenicians called it Kittim (= Citium), a name adopted by the Bible (Gen. 10, 4; Num. 24, 24 [and Dan. 11, 30]; Is. 23, 1. 12; Jer. 2, 10; Ez. 27, 6).

In the Assyrian annals of Sargon, of whom the island was a vassal, as is evident from an honorary stele erected by Citium with an image and inscription, it is called Iatnan. After the fall of the Assyrian empire (626) it returned for a short time under Egyptian influence and in 526 it was incorporated into the Persian empire, constituting, together with Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine, the V satrapy. In 497 it joined the anti-Persian insurrection; but the true champion of Hellenism against the Phoenician element was Evagoras in the struggles sustained from 394 to 374. The complete Hellenization of the country occurred after the victory of Alexander the Great. Disputed by his successors, C. ended up remaining united with the Ptolemies of Egypt. In 108-88 the Jews began to settle on the island (I Mach. 15, 23; cf. II Mach. 4, 29; 10, 13; 12, 2) and increased when in 58 B.C. the island was annexed by the Romans to Cilicia. Augustus made it an imperial province, governed by a propraetor (Strabo, XIV, 6, 6; XVII, 3, 25); but, having become in 22 B.C. a senatorial province, it was governed by a proconsul also of praetorian rank (Dio Cassius, 54, 4).

After Herod had leased the copper mines from Augustus (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XVI, 129), the Jews settled in all the cities of the island. To escape the persecution that raged in Jerusalem after the martyrdom of St. Stephen, many Christians dispersed to C. (Act. 11, 19-20). Barnabas, a Hellenistic Jew, companion of Paul, was a native of C., from a family of the tribe of Levi (Act. 4, 36). On the first missionary journey Paul, with Barnabas and Mark, evangelized the island, traversing it in all its length from Salamis to Paphos, where the proconsul Sergius Paulus resided - at that time C. was a senatorial province - in whose presence the dispute of St. Paul with the false prophet Bar-Jesus took place (Act. 13, 4-12). After the Apostolic Council, at the beginning of the second missionary journey, Barnabas separated from Paul and returned to the island (Act. 15, 39). St. Paul passed through the sea of C. on the way from Caesarea to Rome (Act. 27, 4).

Donato Baldi

After these first notices history ceases and one is faced with legend, which, although it may have a substratum of truth, gives no certainty: it centers above all on Barnabas, and also on John Mark and on Heraclides, the first Cypriot bishop ordained by Paul or by Barnabas. The first historical notices are had again with the persecution of Diocletian (Palestinian Christians exiled to C. [Eusebius, De martyr. Palaest.: PG 20, 1513]) and with the Council of Nicaea (325), to which three Cypriot bishops subscribed (H. Gelzer, Patrum Nicaenorum nomina, Leipzig 1898). At the beginning of the 5th century the metropolitans of Antioch begin to advance their claims for the election of the Cypriot metropolitan (certainly in memory of the fact that Antioch had been the capital of the imperial diocese of the East) and Pope Innocent I himself (415) leaned in favor of Antioch, but the Council of Ephesus tacitly recognized the independence (autocephaly) of the Church of C. and for the time being all was silent. The question having arisen again at the time of the emperor Zeno, it was resolved in favor of C., thanks to the discovery made by the metropolitan of Salamis, Anthemius, of the tomb of St. Barnabas. From the whole of the facts, however, it seems that this discovery, although presented as sought for a definite purpose, conceals no deceit or fraud. In 645 the metropolitan Sergius, condemning the Monothelites, openly attests the Roman primacy in a letter to Pope Theodore I (Mansi, X, 913-16). C., already subject from 632 to Arab invasions, was gradually conquered by them. The Byzantine reconquest began in the middle of the 9th century and ended in the middle of the 10th. C. thus ended up under the Comneni, whose government, at first good, degenerated into tyranny, creating favorable ground for the Latin occupation. In fact in 1191 Richard the Lionheart took possession of the island, which he ceded to the Templars; from these it passed to Guy of Lusignan.

As for its orthodoxy, the fact that the Greek schism did not occur all at once, but gradually and principally for reasons of politics and antagonism rather than doctrinal rebellion, and the other fact that the Cypriot Church always remained independent lead one to hold that it substantially maintained Catholic orthodoxy. This was perhaps not understood by the Latin rulers, whose preoccupation was to convert the Cypriots, Latinizing them. Hence that painful period of struggles which unfortunately drove the Greek Church of C. ever more decisively toward the Eastern schism. In the struggle against the Greeks the cardinal legate Pelagius, bishop of Albano, was most tenacious.

The Latin hierarchy, introduced into the island from the beginning of the 13th century, was always in struggle against the Greek hierarchy and clergy, and almost always had the upper hand. The conditions of the Greeks improved somewhat under Innocent IV, who recognized the election of the Greek metropolitan Germanus II and attempted to calm the imprudent zeal of the Latin metropolitan Hugh of Fagiano. This work of pacification, conducted above all by the prudence of the cardinal legate Eudes of Châtearoux, lasted very little; the disputes between Greeks and Latins reopened and Alexander VI settled them with his bull of 3 July 1260, according to which the Greek dioceses had the same boundaries as the Latin ones, the bishops the same honors, and had to swear fidelity to the Roman Church and not to the Latin metropolitan, as had previously been imposed; the metropolitan, however, had to be single and of the Latin rite. This bull satisfied neither Greeks nor Latins, and remained largely a dead letter; indeed the Greek Church, by then definitively slipped toward schism, flourished again under Queen Helena Palaiologina, wife of John II (1442). In 1498 C. passed to Venice, and for the Greeks the bad times began again, so much so that they greeted the Turkish occupation of 1571 with enthusiasm. But only briefly, since the Turks began to persecute Latins and Greeks ferociously; once the storm had passed, there was a relative quiet from the religious point of view, but from the social and economic point of view the conditions of the Cypriots were harsh and barely alleviated by the care of the metropolitans. In 1821, when the Greek revolution broke out, the bishops of C. and the notables of the island were massacred at Leucosia by the Turks. With the English occupation (1898, under the metropolitan Sophronios, d. 1900), Protestantism began to infiltrate the Cypriot Church, displaying the greatest respect for it. At present, of ca. 450,000 inhabitants, 300,000 are schismatic Greeks and their metropolitan resides at Nicosia; the other Greek dioceses are: Larnaka, Pafo and Kerynia. There are 60,000 Maronite Catholics (v. CIPRO DEI MARONITI); 855 Latins (Catholics) depend on the patriarchate of Jerusalem. The rest of the population is mostly Muslim. Each confession has its own elementary schools and the religious peace of the island today is complete.

Francesco Saverio Pericoli Ridolfini

IV. ARCHAEOLOGY

The various occupations of the island by the Byzantines and the Muslims caused the ruin of a great part of the oldest Christian buildings. The memory of the preaching of St. Paul and of Barnabas, a Cypriot, is still alive in various localities of C. Near the church of Hagios Barnabas (Salamis) there is a grotto identified as the tomb of St. Barnabas, whose body, in the 5th century, is said to have been transported to Constantinople.

Of churches earlier than the 6th century there are only traces; remains of one were discovered at Salamis, later Constantia from the name of the emperor Constantius (337-61) and destroyed by the Arabs in 648. Contemporary with bishop Epiphanius (368-404), or slightly later (5th century?), are the ruins discovered of a basilica with five naves with square pillars and a single apse to the east (70 x 49 m); many tesserae of the mosaic decoration found during the excavations suggest that the walls, if not indeed the vaults, were decorated with mosaics (G. Jeffery, in Journal of the Soc. of Antiquaries in London, 8 [1928], pp. 344-49; G. A. Sotiriou, in Κύπρ. Σπουδαί, 1 [1937], pp. 175-87). In an ancient cistern, reused in Christian times as a "haghasma," wall paintings are visible, among them a bust of Christ with a beard and a crossed nimbus, perhaps of the 6th century. Remains of a mosaic floor of the 7th century are at Kerynia. (Report of Dep. Ant. of Cyprus, 1935, p. 4); a baptistery, attached to the 5th-century church of St. Philon on which that of the 14th was later founded, is at Carpasia (ibid., pp. 14-16).

As in the classical period, the Christians of C. too dug tombs in the rock, or occupied those of their predecessors, but traces of open-air cemeteries are not lacking (G. A. Sotiriou, Τὰ παλαιοχριστιανικὰ καὶ βυζαντινὰ μνημεῖα τῆς Κύπρου, in Praktikā [of the Academy of Athens], 6 [1931], pp. 477-90; id., in Κύπρ. Γράμματα, 2 [1936], p. 309 ff.). From them come monograms of Christ and symbols, scattered here and there. The epigraphs are few and rare, one of the 4th century at Lapethos, containing perhaps one of the oldest texts of the Septuagint (Ps. 14; 15 of the Hebrew text). It is uncertain, according to the editors (P. Perdrizet, Notes sur Chypre, in Bull. corr. hell., 20 [1869], p. 349 ff.; E. Michon, Inscr. chrét. de Chypre, in Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 1901, p. 186 ff.), whether it is a Christian inscription, used as a magical text, or whether it comes from a synagogue or from a tomb of Jews.

In the monastery of the Panaghia Kanakaria, near Lythrangomé, there is a Byzantine church with a mosaic in the apse depicting the Virgin with the Child between two angels (end of the 6th century). Earlier than 648 is the mosaic in the apse of the Panaghia Angeloktistós of Kiti near Larnaca with the Madonna with the Child (HARIA MAPIA) and the two archangels Michael and Gabriel. Unpublished remains of a third mosaic with the Madonna are in the church of the Παναγία τῆς Κύπρου (O. Wulff, Altristiche und byzantinische Kunst, Berlin 1911, p. 432).

Among the rare sculptures: various fragments of a marble basin, from Lapethos (according to E. Michon, in Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1908, p. 274 ff., 278; cf. DACL, III, II, col. 3210 ff.), with the sacrifice of Abraham and David with the sling. The goldsmith's objects discovered at Lapethos and in the monastery of Akeripoetos (Kerynia) are dispersed among the museum of Nicosia, the British Museum and the Pierpont Morgan collection. It is a group notable for number and artistic value; a hexagonal censer (?) with sacred figures in relief, 24 silver spoons, small and large missoria, some figured, are products of Syria or of Constantinople or perhaps also local, inspired by foreign models.

In a reliquary box in the monastery of Kikko a small ivory plaque with the representation of St. Peter is inserted on the front: it is of the 6th century (R. P. Griffing, An early christian ivory plaque in Cyprus and Notes of the Asiatic Ampullae, in The Art Bulletin, 20 [1939], pp. 266-79).

Renato Bartoccini