Christianity came to Cyprus with the arrival from Palestine of the apostle Paul in AD 45. He was joined by Barnabas, who was to become the first Cypriot saint.
In the same year, they converted the Roman governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus. The new religion spread slowly, until it was adopted as the state religion by Emperor Constantine. His edict of 313 granted Christianity equal status with other religions of his empire. St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, stopped in Cyprus on her way back from Jerusalem, where she had found fragments of the True Cross. She founded Stavrovouni monastery, which is said to house fragments of the cross.
The official division of the Roman realm into an Eastern and Western Empire, in 395 AD naturally left Cyprus on the eastern side of the divide, under the Byzantine sphere of influence.
As is explained in 'Open Letters from Cyprus' by Raymond Hiscock, the Roman State as one whole empire became ungovernable from Rome alone and in 284 AD when Diocletian came to power it virtually split into West and East Empires. Twenty-nine years later, Constantinus I became Caesar of the whole empire, but being a very shrewd military commander, he soon realised that the western half of the empire based in Rome was becoming increasingly difficult to defend against hoards of barbarians who were constantly making fresh inroads. So he moved his centre of power to Byzantium in the east and renamed it Constantinople.
As Raymond Hiscock goes on to explain, Constantine's early conversion to Christianity along with all of his family, was a major turning point in history and his edict enforcing Christianity as the only permitted religion was in fact the birth of the Christian Orthodox Church with its centre of power in Constantinople. The western empire completely collapsed in AD 493 when an Ostrogothic Kingdom was established in Italy. The eastern empire (Byzantine Commonwealth) kept up Roman institutions and continued to use Latin in its court but Greek superseded Latin as the general language.
The 5th and 6th centuries were flourishing times. The centres of pagan culture linked to the cults of Aphrodite and Apollo (Paphos and Kourion) lost importance, while the role of Salamis increased. Renamed Constantia, it became the island's capital. New towns also arose, such as Famagusta and Nicosia and vast basilicas were built.
Beginning around 647, the first of a series of pillaging raids by Arabs took place. In the course of the raids, which continued over three centuries, Constantia was sacked and many maginificent buildings were destroyed.
Raymond Hiscock paints a vivid picture of this time in history, by mentioning that the Orthodox found the Latin mind tortured and legalistic, viewing the soul too much in the colours of darkness and damnation. "Among the small Orthodox Churches to be found tucked way in the Troodos mountains, there is Lagoudera with its icons and frescoes in a dazzling Byzantine style where the prophets do not stare in that familiar wide eyed anguish. Instead they are fleshly and susceptible, their foreheads scarcely ruffled and they move and gesture with courtly breeding" as Colin Thubron writes.
Hiscock explains that the Cypriots are naturally attracted to the dazzling, hybrid Byzantine art and in earlier Medieval times, Cypriot nobles sent their sons to Constantinople to be educated as they felt that the Greek mainland was harsh and unsympathetically masculine.
No comments:
Post a Comment