Touring St Barnabas Monastery
Set on the road between Enkomi and the Tombs of the Kings, a signpost announces the monastery and you drive up to the door opposite the attractively carved water fountain. The monastery was functioning until 1976, having been lived in since 1917 by three monks, all brothers, said to be indistinguishable from one another. The youngest, a mere 79,was a painter, producing quantities of tasteless icons which were sold to visitors to drum up money for the repairs needed in the monastery. The other brothers, despite their age, then effected these repairs, adding the new belltower and finishing the rooms and cells around the courtyard. The attractive garden and cloister courtyard contain quantities of carved blocks and capitals from Salamis, and a impressive black basalt grinding mill from Enkomi. Many of the rooms around the courtyard are bursting with pottery from the Enkomi site, much of it in fantastic condition. The courtyard garden is still well-tended, with jasmine and hibiscus flame trees, huge pink flowering cacti and citrus trees, one of which is a hybrid producing oranges, lemons and mandarins from different parts of the same tree. Refreshments are on offer here.
The monastery church itself has also changed since the monks left. The pulpit and wooden lecterns are still in place, though the pews have been removed and the place has now been converted to a gallery for the church"s collection of icons. The newer, crasser ones are the work of the church"s collection of icons. The newer, crasser ones are the work of the prolific brother. A series of four depict the story of how the Cypriots archbishop went to Constantinople to rquest and be granted independence for the Church of Cyprus by the Emperor Zeno. This story is especially pertinent to the monastery, as it was thanks to Barnabas is revered as the real founder of the Cypriot church. Born is Salamis, barnabas is revered as the real founder of the Cypriot Church. Born is Salamis, Barnabas returned here later with Paul and died in his native town, martyred by Jews. A number of his followers who witnessed his murder and watched as his body was dumped in marshland are said to have taken his corpse before his murderers could dispose of it properly, and brought it to this spot. Here it lay undisturbed and forgotten for centuries until its location was revealed to Anthemios in a dream in AD.477. ?ts rediscovery prompted the archbishop to set off to Constantinople and ask that the Cypriot Church be garnted its independence. The Byzantine emperor agreed, persuaded by the gift of the original Gospel of St Matthew, in Barnabas"s own handwriting, allegedly found clasped in the dead saint"s arms. Zeno even donated the funds for this, the first monastery on Cyprus. Today, the self-governing Church of Cyprus ranks fifth in the world of Greek Orthodoxy-after the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, but before the Patriarchates of Russia, Greece, Serbia, Romania.
The monastery as it stands now dates largely to the 18thcentury, as the originally 5th-century building was destroyed in the Arab raids. Of the icons in the church, one, portraying two men and now hanging from the iconostasis, is said to be 1,000 years old. Carved capitals from Salamis peep out from the whitewashed walls, and the blackened pillar inside the painted apse is also from Salamis. Near the altar are wax effigies of an arm, a foot, and even a head from families whose children have illnesses in these parts of the body, hung here for the saint to cure. Pephaps more impressive than the church is the monastery"s museum, housed in the rooms surrounding the courtyard. Among the collection are some wonderfully complete Roman glassware, and some gold jewellery. Outside the monastery, round the side towards the belltower are some older ruined outbuildings, now disused. The tree-lined road straight ahead from the monastery door leads to Barnabas"s tomb the plain domed mausoleum was erected in the 1950s above an old rock tomb, and you can still clamber down the rock steps to see this empty tomb where the bones of Barnabas and his Gospel of St Matthew were said to have been found.