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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2015
Modern church historians have roundly accepted the ancient pedigree of imperial regalia privileges exercised by the archbishops of Cyprus, yet new research has shown that their origins are actually to be found in the mid-sixteenth century and within a decidedly western intellectual and ecclesial orbit. This article builds on such findings by documenting the modern history of these privileges and their relationship to the emerging political role of the archbishops of Cyprus as ethnarchs as well as archbishops of the Cypriot community under both Ottoman and British empires. Travelling across the boundaries of western and non-western cultures and employing a rich interdisciplinary array of evidence (chronicles, liturgy and liturgical vestments, hagiography, iconography, insignia, painting, cartography, diplomacy, and travel literature), this article presents a coherent reconstruction of the imperial regalia tradition's modern historical evolution and its profound impact on modern Cypriot church history. This study integrates the often compartmentalized English, French, Italian, German, and Greek scholarship of many subfields, producing a new holistic understanding of how the archbishop's ethnarchic aspirations could produce a spiritual culture in which St. Barnabas, the island's founding patron saint and once famous apostolic reconciler, became transformed into an ethnarchic national patriot and defender against foreign conquerors.
1 Alexander the Monk, Hagiographica Cypria: Sancti Barnabae laudatio auctore Alexandro monacho et Sanctorum Bartholomaei et Barnabae vita e menologio imperiali deprompta, ed. Peter van Deun [Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 26] (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 83–122; for a German translation see Alexander Monachus, Laudatio Barnabae: Lobrede auf Barnabas, eds. Bernd Kollmann and W. Deuse [Fontes Christiani] (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
2 In their fully developed form these regalia privileges are symbolic of temporal power freighted with imperial sovereignty: the right to carry a gold-orbed scepter in lieu of a pastoral crozier, to wear a robe in the imperial purple rather than the monastic black, and to sign official documents with imperial red (cinnabar) ink.
3 E. Morini, “Apostolicità ed autocefalia in una chiesa orientale: la leggenda di san Barnaba e l'autonomia dell'arcivescovato di Cipro nelle fonti dei secoli V e VI,” Studi e ricerche sull'Oriente Cristiano 2 (1979): 23–45; John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus from the Coming of the Apostles Paul & Barnabas to the Commencement of the British Occupation (London: Methuen and Company, 1901; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1972), 24; Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1940–1952, rpt. 2010), I: 277–278; Downey, Glanville, “The Claim of Antioch to Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over Cyprus,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 102 (1958): 224–228Google Scholar; Markus Öhler, Barnabas. Der Mann in der Mitte (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), 170–173; Marios T. Stylianou, Apostle Varnavas: the Founder and Protector of the Church of Cyprus (Nicosia: Stylianou Publishing, 2005).
4 Huffman, Joseph P., “The Donation of Zeno: St. Barnabas and the Origins of the Cypriot Archbishop's Regalia Privileges,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66, no. 2 (April 2015): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Florio Bustron, Historia overo commentarii de Cipro, eds. R. de Mas Latrie and Theodore H. Papadopoullos [Kypriologikē vivliothēkē 8] (Nicosia: Politistikon Hidryma Trapezēs Kyprou, 1998), 32. These imperial privileges are described very broadly here as the right to carry an imperial scepter with a finial orb (pomum aureum) instead of a pastoral crozier, the right to wear a cape with a red cross, “and many other immunities for the perpetual honor of this blessed and holy island.”
6 Florio Bustron was beyond doubt aware of the intense debates in Renaissance Italy and elsewhere about the Donation of Constantine in his own day, as well as of the ecclesial regalia of the pope from which he anachronistically fashioned the archbishop of Cyprus's supposedly ancient imperial staff with finial orb.
7 Bishop Victor of Tunis, Chronicon continuans ubi prosper desinit (Patrologia Latina), 68, col. 947.
8 Jacobus of Voragine, Golden Legend, ed. Christopher Stace (London: Penguin Classics, 1998), 134: “The blessed Dorotheus, however, says: ‘Barnabas first preached Christ in Rome, then became bishop of Milan.’”
9 Vetus Martyrologium Romanum (June 11), derived from the Martyrologium Romanum, cum notationibus Caesaris Baronii (Rome 1589).
10 Leo Allatius, De ecclesiae occidentalis atque orientalis perpetua consensione libres tres, (Cologne: Jodocus Kalcovius, 1648), 424–430.
11 The Synodicum Nicosiense and other Documents of the Latin Church of Cyprus, 1196–1373, ed. Christopher David Schabel [Cyprus Research Centre Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus 39] (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2001); Bullarium Cyprium: Papal Letters Concerning Cyprus. Volume 1: 1196–1261 and Volume 2: 1261–1314, ed. Christopher David Schabel [Cyprus Research Centre Texts and Studies of the History of Cyprus 64] (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2010); Volume 3: 1316–1378, eds. Charles Parrat, Jean Richard, and Christopher Schabel [Cyprus Research Centre Texts and Studies of the History of Cyprus 68] (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 2012). The Bulla Cypria appears in the first collection cited here, pages 311–320, no. 25.
12 C. E. Bosworth et al., eds., The Encylopedia of Islam, New Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), V: 305. See also: Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1977), 47.
13 Michalis N. Michael, “Introduction: the Unchanging ‘Turkish rule,’ the ‘Fair Ottoman Administration’ and the Ottoman period in the history of Cyprus,” in Ottoman Cyprus: A Collection of Studies on History and Culture, eds. Michalis N. Michael, Matthias Kappler, and Eftihios Gavriel (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 2009), 9–24, especially 20–21.
14 Halil Fikret Alasya, “The Privileges Granted to the Orthodox Church of Cyprus by the Ottoman Empire,” Proceedings of the First International Cyprological Conference (Nicosia: Society for Cypriot Studies, 1973): III: 23–26.
15 Sia Anagnostopoulou, “The Terms Millet, Genos, Ethnos, Oikoumenikotita, Alytrotismos in Greek Historiography,” in The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-States, ed. Sia Anagnostopoulou (Istanbul: Isis, 2004), 37–55; Paraskevas Konortas, “From Ta'ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms for the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community,” in Orthodox Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, eds. D. Gondicas and C. Issawi (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1999) 173–174: “The Ottomans preserved the preexisting traditions in many fields of social and institutional organization in order to facilitate the integration of their new subjects . . . The Ottomans neither abolished its polycephalous system nor modified the traditional territorial jurisdiction of the patriarchs and autocephalous archbishops.”
16 John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 197–198; Gilles Grivaud, “Δίκαιον-Οικονομία/Law-Economy, ” in Ιστορία της Κύπρου vol. F: Τουρκοκρατία/History of Cyprus, vol. F: Ottoman Era, ed. Theodoros Papadopoulos (Nicosia: Ίδρυμα Αρχιεπισκόπου Μακαρίου Γ΄, Γραφείον Κυπριακής Ιστορίας /Archbishop Makarias III Foundation, Cyprus History Office, 2011), 269–378.
17 George Thomas Kurian, ed., The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), I: 655.
18 Kyprianos the Archimandrite, Chronological History of Cyprus, in Excerpta Cypria. Materials for a History of Cyprus, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham (New York: Cambridge University, 1908; rpt. London: Ulan, 2011), 353–354.
19 Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches, Anno Christi 1678 (London: John Starkey, 1679); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 234. Rycaut was in Istanbul in 1660 as private secretary to the British ambassador, and later served as British consul of Smyrna. His first book, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (London: John Starkey, 1668; rpt, New York: Arno, 1971, Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1995) has been a bestseller in several languages, and Rycaut indicated in this second book that his account of the Greek and Armenian Churches was written “at the command of his majesty Charles II.”
20 Christodoulos Hadjichristodoulou, “A Map of Cyprus in a Post-Byzantine Cypriot Icon,” in Eastern Mediterranean Cartographies. Tetradia Ergasias, eds. Dimitris Loupis and Giorgos Tolias (Athens: Institute for Neohellenic Research, 2004), 337–346.
21 Ibid., 339.
22 Ibid., 340: “The presence of a map in an icon is, in the present state of our knowledge, a unique phenomenon in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting of Cyprus.”
23 Andreas and Judith Stylianou, The History of Cartography of Cyprus (Nicosia: The Cyprus Research Centre, 1980), 234, entry 53.
24 Veronica della Dora, “Windows on Heaven (and Earth): the Poetics and Politics of Post-Byzantine Cartographic Icons,” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 38, no. 1 (January 2012): 96: “. . . the icon of Saint Barnabas is a hybrid, multilayered object. It is a container of different stories. Here Eastern Christian tradition, post-Byzantine technique, and Western cartographic skills merge in paint, on a recycled plank of a chest that bears a Venetian coat of arms belonging to an unidentified family of the sixteenth century, which Leontios imitates next to his signature.” See also Christodoulos Hadjichristodoulou, “Saint Barnabas,” in Cyprus, the Holy Island: Icons through the Centuries, 10th-20th Century, ed. Sophocles Sophocleous (Nicosia: Leventis Foundation, 2000), 209.
25 Néophytos Rodinos, Peri hērōōn, stratēgōn, philosophōn, hagiōn kai allōn onomastōn anthrōpōn, hopou evgēkasin apo to nēsi tēs Kyprou [Kypriologikē vivliothēkē 16] (Rome: Para tō Maskardō, 1658; rpt. Nicosia: Grapheion Kypriakēs Historias, 2007); see also Bruce Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), 92 and Stavroula Varella, Language Contact and the Lexicon in the History of Cypriot Greek (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 57.
26 Veronica della Dora, “Windows on Heaven (and Earth),” 93; Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, 337; Claude Delaval Cobham, The Patriarchs of Constantinople (New York: Cambridge University, 1911), 18; John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 212.
27 I. K. Peristianis, Γενική ιστορία της νήσου Κύπρου [General History of the Island of Cyprus], ed. Theodoros Papadopoullos (Nicosia: Epiphaniou, 1910; rpt. Nicosia: Epiphaniou, 1995), 758.
28 Marios Hadjianastasis, “Consolidation of the Cypro-Ottoman Elite,” in Ottoman Cyprus: A Collection of Studies on History and Culture, 80.
29 John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 212–213.
30 Archimandrite Kallinikos Delikane, Official Ecclesiastical Documents on the Relations of the Oecumenical Patriarch with the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Cyprus, 1574–1863 (Istanbul, 1904), 662–663.
31 Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, IV: 339–340.
32 Ewald Hein, Andrija Jakovljevic and Brgitte Kleidt, Cyprus, Byzantine Church and Monasteries: Mosaics and Frescoes (Ratingen: Melina Verlag, 1998; rpt. Nicosia: Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, 2012), 156; Charles Anthony Stewart, Domes of Heaven: The Domed Basilicas of Cyprus (PhD diss., University of Indiana, 2008), 142.
33 Veronica della Dora, “Windows on Heaven (and Earth),” 94–95 (figure 5). See also A. Papageorgiou, The Autocephalous Church of Cyprus. Catalogue of the Exhibition. Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation (Nicosia: Makarios III Foundation, 1995), 159–160.
34 Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, IV: 342.
35 Kyprianos the Archimandrite, Historia chronologikē tēs nēsou Kyprou (Venice: Nikolao Glykei, 1788; rpt. Nicosia: K. L. Stephanou [Kypriologikē vivliothēkē 1], 1971; rpt. Nicosia: Epiphaniou, 2001), 151.
36 John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 25.
37 Étienne de Lusignan, Lusignan's Chorography and Brief General History of the Island of Cyprus, ed., O. Pelosi [Sources for the History of Cyprus X] (Altamont, N.Y.: Greece and Cyprus Research Centre, 2001), 30–31. For analysis of Étienne de Lusignan's patriotic use of St. Barnabas, see Huffman, Joseph P., “The Donation of Zeno: St. Barnabas and the Origins of the Cypriot Archbishop's Regalia Privileges,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66, no. 2 (April 2015): 254–259CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a modern Greek translation see Stylianos K. Perdikēs, Logizu Skeuophylakos kronika ēgun chronographia tu nēssiu tēs Kypru: Chorograffia dell'isola de Cipro (Nicosia: Museion Ieras Monēs Kykku, 2004).
38 Benedict Englezakis, “The Church of Cyprus in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” in Studies on the History of the Church of Cyprus, 4th-20th Centuries, ed. Silouan and Misael Ioannou (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Variorum, 1995), 245.
39 The modern Greek Cypriot Church as well as modern Greek Cypriot historiography continue to rely on Kyprianos' patriotic vision of St. Barnabas as historical fact, yet Kyprianos himself often wrote in error and had relied on the often salacious and imaginative rewriting of medieval Cyprus found in the seventeenth-century History of the Lusignan Kings, in which its anti-clerical author and iconoclastic Venetian, Giovanni Francesco Loredano, fashioned a history of continual warfare between Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, as Christopher Schabel has so ably demonstrated, the actual evidence indicates that the Greek Orthodox clergy were not crushed by Roman Catholics but rather fared much better under Frankish and Venetian rule than did their Orthodox counterparts in Syria, Palestine, and Greece. See Schabel's recent and rich historiographical investigations: Christopher David Schabel, “A Knight's Tale: Giovan Francesco Loredano's Fantastic Historie de’ re Lusignani,” in Cyprus and the Renaissance (1450–1600). Confrontations and Intersections, eds. Benjamin Arbel, Evelien Chayes and Harald Hendrix (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 1–27; “The Myth of Queen Alice and the Subjugation of the Greek Church of Cyprus,” in Identitiés croisées en un milieu méditerranéen: le cas de Chypre (Antiquité - Moyen Âge), eds. Sabine Fourrier and Gilles Grivaud (Rouen: Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2006), 257–277; rpt. in Christopher David Schabel, Greeks, Latins, and the Church in Early Frankish Cyprus (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Variorum, 2010), study no. II.
40 Georgios Frangoudis, a journalist rather than a research historian, followed the majority of published studies on the Ottoman period with stereotyped Turks interpreted solely through an ethnocentric lens. Frangoudis provided no information on the history of the imperial privileges in his popular travelogue history of Cyprus: Κύπρις (Athens 1890; rpt. Nicosia 2001). See Michalis M. Michael, “Introduction: The Unchanging ‘Turkish Rule,’ the ‘Fair Ottoman Administration’ and the Ottoman Period in the History of Cyprus,” 9–10. Neither the school principal Athanasios A. Sakellarios's ΤΑ ΚΥΠΡΙΑΚΑ. ΗΤΟΙ ΓΩΓΡΑΨΙΑ, ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΓΑΩΣΣΑ ΤΗΕ ΝΗΣΟΥ ΚΥΠΡΟΥ, 2 vols. (Athens: P.D. Sakellarios, 1890–1891) nor I. K. Peristianis, Γενική ιστορία της νήσου Κύπρου in 1910 added anything new to this subject in their histories of Cyprus.
41 Benedict Englezakis, “Archbishop Kyprianos's Inkstand,” in Studies on the History of the Church of Cyprus, 4th-20th Centuries, 258 (trans. Russell, Norman from “Τό μελαυοδοχείον τοΰ άςχιεπισχόπου Κυπςιανου,” Kypriakai Spoudai 45 [1981]: 143–160Google Scholar): “These emblems and scenes were in the face of external and internal enemies weapons of defence and attack, of education and propaganda.” The description of the inkstand presented in this article comes from pages 258–263.
42 Ibid., 269: “The inkstand we are examining is on the one hand a new moment in the development of the myth of the imperial privileges of the archbishop of Cyprus, and on the other an apologia of Archbishop Kyprionos for the manner in which he ascended the throne of Cyprus. With regard to the legend of the privileges bestowed by Zeno, here it is sufficient for us to note that the ancient sources make no reference to them—not even the Cypriot monk Alexander, from whom almost everything is drawn—and the first written evidence of such a thing which we possess dates only from 1676,” and 273: “. . . the privileges have no direct relationship with autocephaly. They belong to the temporal power of the archbishops (urban, political, or ethnarchic, according to the needs of the moment) and it is in that area that the creation and development of their myth must be sought.”
43 Theoharis Stavrides, “Chrysanthsos, 1767–1810: Grappling with the Vicissitudes of Ottoman Power,” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 17–40.
44 Michaelis N. Michael, “Kyprianos, 1810–1821: An Orthodox Cleric ‘Administering Politics’ in an Ottoman Island,” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age: The Changing Role of the Archbishop-Ethnarch, their Identities and Politics, eds. Andrekos Varnava and Michaelis N. Michael (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 41–68; Ibid., “Βυζαντινα συμβολα οθωμανικης πολιτικης εξουσιας - Byzantine Symbols of Ottoman Political Power,” TA ІΣТОРӀКΑ-HISTORICA 51 (September 2009): 315–332Google Scholar. Michael sees Kyprianos's use of Byzantine symbols within an imperial Ottoman context as the direct result of lessons learned during his youthful twenty-year sojourn in the Wallachian kindgom of the Soutzos family of Phanariot rulers (first article cites here, p. 44): “It is important to note for Kyprianos's later career that the Phanariot rulers projected an image of themselves as the successors of the Byzantine tradition, and especially the Byzantine rulers as protectors of the Orthodox faith and the race of the Rum. That is, they sought to appear as rulers that, on the one hand, enhanced the Ottoman status quo—where their own power came from—while, on the other hand, they spread the Greek language and the development of Greek civilization.”
45 John T. Koumoulides, Cyprus and the War of Greek Independence, 1821–1829 (London: Zeno, 1974), 17; John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 198; J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann, Religions of the World. A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2010), II: 842.
46 Englezakis, “Archbishop Kyprianos's Inkstand,” 278.
47 Sia Anagnostopoulou, “Makarios III, 1950–77: Creating the Ethnarchic State,” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 240–292.
48 Sia Anagnostopoulou, “The Problem of Identities in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century in Cyprus,” in Cipro Oggi, eds. Giampiero Bellingeri and Matthias Kappler (Bologna: Il Ponte, 2005), 58: “The term ‘Ethnarch’ [ΕΘνάρχής], a term belonging to the Ottoman 19th century, was revived and strengthened in Cyprus during colonial rule. The use of this term is a clear allusion to the existence of Hellenism with national claims.” See also: James Ker-Lindsay and Hubert Faustmann, eds., The Government and Politics of Cyprus (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 134 and Roudometof, Victor and Michael, Michalis N., “Redéfinition des frontières Église—État à Chypre après 1878. Perspective historique sur l’Église orthodoxe chypriote,” Social Compass 56, no. 1 (March 2009): 35–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Tommaso Porcacchi, L'isole piu famose del mondo (Venice: Galignani e Porro, 1572), 147: “V'ha la chiesa di S. Barnaba Apostolo, & il luogo, oue fu martirizato, & sepolto in un pozzo co'l libro del l'Evangelio di S. Mattheo, scritto di propria mano di esso Mattheo, che fu ritrouato intorno all'anno CDLXXIII.” Pages 144–153 contain “Descrittione dell'isola di Cipro,” which has been trans. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 165: “A church is shown dedicated to the Apostle S. Barnabas, and the place where he was martyred and buried in a well, together with the Gospel of S. Matthew, written in the Evangelist's own hand, which was found there about the year 473.” For a linguistic analysis of Porcacchi's text see Annette Gerstenberg, Thomas Porcacchis ”L'Isole piu famose del mondo.” Zur Text- und Wortgeschichte der Geographie Cuinquecento [Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 326] (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2004).
50 George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey Begun Anno Domini 1610 (London: W. Barrett, 1615); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 206.
51 Vasyl Hryhorovyĉ-Bars'kyj, A Pilgrim's Account of Cyprus: Bars'ky's Travels in Cyprus, ed. and trans. Alexander D. Grishin [Sources for the History of Cyprus 3] (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1996), III: 96.
52 An engraving of the crown by William Hogarth is included in Aubry de La Mottraye, Travels throughout Europe, Asia and Into Part of Africa (London: de La Mottraye, 1723), I: plate 9.
53 J. Aegidius van Egmont (Van der Nijenberg) and John Heyman, Travels Through Part of Europe, Asia Minor, and the Islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai, etc., Translated from the Low Dutch (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1759), II: chapter 17. Aegidius was the Envoy Extraordinary from the United Provinces to the Court of Naples, and Heyman was Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Leiden. Their travels took place from 1700–1723 and the book was first published in Dutch at Leiden in 1757. Richard Pococke, Description of the East and Some Other Countries (London: W. Bowyer, 1743–1745); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 256–257.
54 George Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus: Studies in the Archaeology and Architecture of the Island (Nicosia: Government Printing Office, 1918; rpt. London: Zeno, 1983), 37. Rupert Gunnis, Historic Cyprus, 68–70 follows Jeffery. Andreas and Judith Stylianou, The Painted Churches of Cyprus. Treasures of Byzantine Art (London: Leventis Foundation, 1985; 2nd ed. London: Leventis Foundation, 1997), 499 agree with Jeffery and also show an awareness of the historical context for the painting: “It is the first time in the history of Byzantine art in Cyprus, that this representation of the discovery of the relics of St. Barnabas at his tomb near Salamis has been painted . . . The theme is portrayed in four scenes in one panel, but, with no earlier prototypes to follow, the composition is rather poor from the artistic point of view. Its inclusion here reflects the struggle for survival during the Turkish period.”
55 Robert Pierpoint, Notes and Queries. A Medium of Communication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc. Ninth Series 9 (June 7, 1902), 442–443: “I find in my diary of February 1896, a reference to an old Greek church in Nicosia, in which ‘many coarsely painted frescoes, one or two representing the Archbishop of Cyprus receiving his special privileges from the Emperor, e.g. wearing the purple, carrying the sceptre, signing with red ink.’ I have not got the name of the church.” Pierpont was absent-minded about both the church and the mantle's color, but he clearly remembered the central message of the wall paintings. That he should remember the purple mantle of 1902 anachronistically in the mid-eighteenth-century wall painting is easy to imagine.
56 Ali Bey, The Travels of Ali Bey (London: Longman, Hurst, Orme and Brown, 1816; rpt. Reading, Berkshire: Ithaca Press, 1993); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 395. Bey sojourned on Cyprus from March 4-May 12, 1806.
57 John Macdonald Kinnear, Journey through Asia Minor. Armenia and Koordistana in the Years 1813 and 1814 (London: J. Murray, 1818); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 416. Kinnear was a captain of the East India Company, town major of Fort St. George (India), and political agent at the Durbar of His Highness the Nabob of the Carnatic (Kamatika).
58 Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 447.
59 Louis Lacroix, Îles de la Gréce (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1853); rpt. in Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 463–464: “The Archbishop of Nicosia, who had the title of ri'aya-vekili, as representing the Christian subjects of the Porte, had annexed pretty well the whole administrative authority, and not only had made himself independent of the Muhassils, but generally determined on their appointment and recall. From his palace the Archbishop administered the whole island, filled up the offices in every district, assessed the amount of the annual contributions, sent the sums for which the island was farmed out to the Grand Vezir, or the Imperial Treasury. Certain privileges, purposely granted, attached the Turkish Aghas to the support of his authority, and all the inhabitants, Turks and Greeks alike, looked upon him as the real Governor, and grew accustomed to take no notice of the Muhassil. The supreme power of the Archbishops of Nicosia reached its height during the reigns of Selim III. and Mustafa IV., the immediate predecessors of Sultan Mahmud II., and was unshaken until the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 1804, saw an insurrectionary movement of the Turks, the prelude of the bloody catastrophe which was to extinguish it. The Turks settled in Cyprus were deeply hurt at seeing themselves fallen under the rule of men whom of old they had conquered . . . But the intrigues of the chief Turks against the Greek headmen did not sleep, and ended in 1821 in a bloody coup d'etat, which put an end to the administration of the Muhassils, overturned the authority of the Greek clergy, and restored the government to the Pashas.”
60 Michalis N. Michael, “An Orthodox Institution of Ottoman Political Authority: the Church of Cyprus,” in Ottoman Cyprus: A Collection of Studies on History and Culture, 211, 221–227.
61 Excerpta Cypria, ed. Claude Delaval Cobham, 470.
62 The customary fee paid to acknowledge imperial sovereignty over this appointment. An asper was a Turkish silver coin worth 1/120 of a piastre, hence this meant a payment of just over 830 piastres (a relatively modest payment but enough to function as tribute).
63 Sir Robert Hamilton Lang, Cyprus: its History, its Present Resources, and Future Prospects (London: Macmillan and Company, 1878), 166–167.
64 The Westphalian professor of history (Munich and Göttingen), traveler, and 1848 republican revolutionary Franz von Löher was a close observer of things Anglo-American and in this context produced a book on Cyprus which was translated into English. And he too got wind of the Cypriot claims: Cyprus, Historical and Descriptive. Adapted from the German with Much Additional Matter by Mrs. A. Batson Joyner (London: W. H. Allen and Company, 1878), 27: “I afterwards found that the head of the Cyprian Church is a worthy and distinguished man, who well deserves his title of ųακαριωτατος (makariotatos = most blessed) . . . The Archbishop of Cyprus . . . signs his name with the red ink, seals with the imperial double-headed eagle, carries a shepherd's crook, surmounted by a golden orb, and bears a title enumerating his saintly and lordly attributes.” See also Andrekos Varnava, “Sophronios III, 1865–1900: The Last of the ‘Old’ and the First of the ‘New’ Archbishop-Ethnarchs?” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 106–147.
65 W. Hepworth Dixon, British Cyprus (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879), 42–43.
66 Sir William Frederick Haynes Smith, Cyprus, Report for 1900–1901, Presented to Parliament (April 1902), 59 as published in Robert Pierpont, Notes and Queries, 441. Smith had a distinguished career as a colonial administrator: Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, and then Acting Governor of British Guiana (1863–1888), Governor of Antigua and Barbuda (1888–1895), Governor of the Leeward Islands (1888–1893), Governor of the Bahamas (1893–1898), and finally High Commissioner of Cyprus (1898–1904), for which he was awarded C.M.G. (1887) and K.C.M.G. (1890).
67 Andrekos Varnava and Irene Pophaides, “Kyrillos II, 1909–16: The First Greek Nationalist and Enoist Archbishop-Ethnarch,” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 148–176; Irene Pophaides, “Kyrillos III, 1916–1933: Between Sophronios III and Kryrillos II,” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 177–210.
68 Alexis Rappas, “Leonidos and the Archiepiscopal Question, 1933–47: The Demise of an Apolitical Ethnarchy?” in The Archbishops of Cyprus in the Modern Age, 211–239.
69 Benedict Englezakis, “The Church of Cyprus from 1878 to 1955,” in Studies on the History of the Church of Cyprus, 4th-20th Centuries, 430–431.
70 As a most recent example, Rebecca Bryant, Imagining the Modern: the Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 79. Andreas and Judith Stylianou, The Painted Churches of Cyprus, 16 and 499 have also perpetuated the legend of the imperial privileges into the twenty-first century.
71 Sir Harry Luke, Cyprus under the Turks 1571–1878. A Record Based on the Archives of the English Consulate in Cyprus under the Levant Company and After (London: Oxford University Press, 1921; rpt. London: C. Hurst, 1989), 16–17. Luke consulted by his own calculation (mentioned on page 4) some 10,000 documents written in seven languages, yet he was apparently never aware that the claimed privileges evolved over time with their own history in these records.
72 Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des Princes de la Maison de Lusignan (Paris: L'Imprimerie Impériale, 1852–1861), I: 80–81.
73 An alumnus of the prestigous École nationale des chartes, he was elected to membership in the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres in 1885 and was also a member of the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques and the Société de l'histoire de France. He was given an award from the Académie des Inscriptions in 1843, a médaille au concours des antiquités nationales in 1850 and both first (1862) and second (1878) place finishes in the prix Gobert.
74 John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 23–24.
75 Ibid., vii.
76 Hackett's account made its way into popular consciousness through the travel guide genre, for example. Rupert Forbes Gunnis, British sculpture antiquarian and private secretary to the Governor of Cyprus (1926–1932), at the completion of his stint as Inspector of Antiquities for the Cyprus Museum (1932–1935) returned to England and wrote Historic Cyprus: a Guide to its Towns and Villages, Monasteries and Castles (London: Methuen and Company, 1936; rpt. 1939, 1947, 1956), in which his prose on pages 70–71 is a plagiarized lifting of Hackett's own words on the subject.
77 Sir J. T. Hutchinson and Claude Delaval Cobham, A Handbook of Cyprus (London: Edward Stanford, 1900; 2nd ed. 1903; 3rd ed. 1904; 4th ed. 1905; 5th ed. 1907).
78 The Attorney General of Cyprus (from 1960–1984) sustained the insertion of the privileges into the St. Barnabas autocephaly story as a legal precedent for Cyprus's current political and constitutional rights: Criton George Tornaritis, Attorney General of the Republic, Cyprus and Its Constitutional and Other Legal Problems (Nicosia: Proodos Limited, 1977; 2nd ed. 1980), 12, http://www.tornaritislaw.com/home/cyprus-and-its-constitutional-and-other-legal-problems/: “When Cyprus was politically attached [sic] to Antioch an attempt was made by its Patriarch to put the Church of Cyprus under his control but this was successfully resisted by the Cypriot bishops at the Third Oecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431 A.D. New claims were raised later by the Church of Antioch but when the Archbishop Anthemios presented Emperor Zeno (498 A.D.) with a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which was found in the tomb of St. Barnabas and was believed to have been placed there by St. Mark. The Emperor recognised the autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus and conferred on its Archbishop the imperial privileges: to hold a sceptre instead of a pastoral staff, to wear a purple mantle and to sign in red ink. A final resolution settling the question was taken up by the Quini-Sext or Trullan Oecumenical Synod at Constantinople in 692 A.D.” Here are a few additional twentieth-century examples of the abiding nationalist value of St. Barnabas: (1) Archbishop Makarios III signed the document granting Cyprus independence from Britain in 1960 using red ink; (2) President Lyndon Johnson and his wife ritually inserted a stone from the St. Barnabas Church of Cyprus (a gift) into the foundation of their own St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, Texas on November 9, 1964 (AP Wirephoto of the event still exists); (3) the Republic of Cyprus government issued a Kennedy Commemorative Stamp in 1965 with a March 13, 1956 declaration from the then senator John F. Kennedy of “self determination for Cyprus;” (4) the Republic of Cyprus government issued a set of Commemorative St. Barnabas stamps in 1966 celebrating the 1,900th anniversary of the saint's death, using the mid-eighteenth-century images of St John's Cathedral in Nicosia depicting the autocephaly story with imperial privileges from Zeno; (5) the Republic of Cyprus government issued a commemorative stamp in 2008 of the wall painting from the Monastery of the Apostle Barnabas—located in the Turkish-occupied Salamis—which depicts the granting of the imperial privileges by Zeno to Archbishop Anthemios, the wall painting being underscored with the phrase, “Cyprus Through the Ages.” Even as far back as 1928 a commemorative stamp was issued celebrating fifty years of British rule on the island—and its artwork was a scene depicting the discovery of St. Barnabas's remains with the Gospel of Saint Matthew on his chest.
79 Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, I: 277–278.
80 Quoted in John L. LaMonte's review of volumes 2 and 3 of this series in Speculum 23, no. 4 (October 1948): 704.
81 Current standard reference works continue to reiterate the placement of the imperial privileges within the original St. Barnabas autocephaly story, for example: (1) “Barnabas, Saint,” in Farid Mirbagheri, Historical Dictionary of Cyprus (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) 21: “On his second visit to the island, St. Barnabas was martyred (his body was found circa 488 with his own handwritten copy of Matthew's Gospel over his heart). In 488, Emperor Zeno proclaimed the church autocephalous and isotimos [esteemed equal to other patriarchates], and to this day its archbishops retain special privileges; (2) “Cyprus, Church of,” in Ken Parry, David J. Melling, Dimitri Brady, Sidney H. Griffith, and John F. Healey, eds., Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001), Blackwell Reference Online, http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631232032_chunk_g97806312320327: “Discovery in 488 of the apostle's tomb, his relics and an ancient copy of Matthew's Gospel led Emperor Zeno (474–91) to support the Cypriot church's claim to independence from Antioch, capital of the diocese of Oriens. Canon 8 of the Council of Ephesus (431) had supported Cyprus, but Antioch had continued to press its claims. Zeno's decree granted Anthemios, metropolitan of Cyprus, who had presented him with the Matthew manuscript, a sceptre and the right to sign documents in cinnabar and to wear a purple mandyas on ceremonial occasions, privileges enjoyed by the archbishop of Cyprus to this day;” (3) “Cyprus,” in Encyclopædia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/148573/Cyprus/33825/Cyprus-as-a-Roman-province: “In ecclesiastical matters, however, the Church of Cyprus was autocephalous—i.e., independent of the Patriarchate of Antioch—having been given that privilege in 488 by the emperor Zeno. The archbishop received the rights, still valued and practiced today, to carry a sceptre instead of a crosier and to sign his name in purple ink, the imperial colour.”
82 His biographical memoir appeared in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 154, no. 4 (December 2010): 454–459 and in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 92 (1999): 812–816. Beck was Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Munich. His distinguished international career was recognised through membership in the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (1962), the Österreichische Akadmie der Wissenschaften (1966), the Athenian Society (1975), the British Academy (1977), the Belgian Academy (1977) and the American Philosophical Society (1988). He also received the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1981 and induction into the Bayerische Maximilianorden für Wissenschaft und Kunst in 1988.
83 Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich [Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft. Abteilung 12: Byzantinisches Handbuch Teil 2: Band 1] (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1959), 399: “Der zweiten Hälfte des Jahrhunderts gehört wohl auch der Mönch Alexandros von Kypros an, der Verfasser eines berühmten Berichts über die Kreuzauffindung, der eine Art Abriβ der Religionsgeschichte seit der Erschaffung der Welt bis auf Konstantin der Groβen dargestellt und in ein Enkomion auf das Fest der Kreuzauffindung mündet. Wohl im Interesse der Autokephalienansprüche der kyprischen Kirche verfaβste er sein Enkomion auf den Apostelschüler Barnabas, das wahrscheinlich in Salamis vortegragen wurde. Er kennt die Περίοδοι des Barnabas, bringt aber auch Züge, die sich darin nicht finden.”
84 Downey, Glanville, “The Claim of Antioch to Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over Cyprus,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 102 (1958): 224–228Google Scholar. Downey, Professor of Classics at Indiana University and 1956 Guggenheim Fellow, concluded: “Alexander's encomium, in Greek, is obviously a tendentious document composed to support Cyprus’ claim to autocephaly.”
85 Beck, Hans-Georg, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 58 (1965): 447CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Die protokollarischen Privilegien der Erzbischöfe von Zypern, die Kaiser Zenon gewährt haben soll, sind pure Legende.” Beck was reviewing F. G. Maier's Cypern. Insel am Kreuzweg der Geschichte (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964). Byzantinists beyond Beck have not been inclined to study the privileges, since they were not mentioned in Alexander the Monk's Laudatio or in any other Byzantine source. Therefore since any post-Byzantine debates about possible privileges are extraneous to their work, the whole matter is simply left out of their accounts of the autocephaly story. Most recently see: A. H. S. Megaw, “The Campanopetra Reconsidered: the Pilgrimage Church of Apostle Barnabas?” in Byzantine Style, Religion, and Civilization: in Honour of Sir Steven Runciman, ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 400–401. Known better as Peter outside of his numerous publications, Arthur H. S. Megaw (1910–2006) made his career as the Director of the Department of Antiquities in Cyprus (1936–60) and Acting Field Director in Istanbul for Dumbarton Oaks (1961–62), but then remained active as a publishing scholar and in administration as Assistant Director (1934–36), Director (1962–68) and a Vice President (1976– 2006) of the British School in Athens’ Managing Committee. Most recently Rafał Kosiński, “The Emperor Zeno's Church Donations,” Hortus Historiae. Księga pamiątkowa ku czci profesora Józefa Wolskiego w setną rocznicę urodzin pod redakcją E. Dąbrowy, M. Dzielskiej, M. Salamona, S. Sprawskiego (Kraków: Historia lagellonica, 2010), 635–649 ignores the issue of the imperial privileges on page 640 merely states, “Zeno had been greatly impressed by the bishop's gift, and not only had he secured the autocephalia of Cyprus but also ordered that a sanctuary in honour of Barnabas be built there as well.” Rafał Kosiński adds nothing to this account in his book, The Emperor Zeno: Religion and Politics [Byzantina et Slavia Cracoviensia 6] (Kraków: Historia lagellonica, 2010).
86 Maria G. Parani, Reconstructing the Realities of Images. Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconography (11th-15th centuries) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 15–18.
87 Maria G. Parani, “Fabrics and Clothing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, eds. Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, and Robin Cormack (New York: Oxford University, 2008), 417.
88 Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, new ed. (Glasgow: The University, 1945; rpt. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005), 407.
89 Warren T. Woodfin, “Celestial Hierarchies and Earthly Hierarchies in the Art of the Byzantine Church,” in The Byzantine World, ed. Paul Stephenson (New York: Routledge, 2010; rpt. 2012), 311.
90 Warren T. Woodfin, The Embodied Icon. Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium [Oxford Studies in Byzantium] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 175.
91 The most recent Greek-language history of Cyprus does not advance an exploration into the historical origins of the archbishop's regalia privileges, which would prove a sensitive issue given the publishing source of the series: Theodoros Papadopoulos, ed., Ιστορία της Κύπρου/The History of Cyprus (Nicosia: Ίδρυμα Αρχιεπισκόπου Μακαρίου Γ΄, Γραφείον Κυπριακής Ιστορίας/Archbishop Makarias III Foundation, Cyprus History Office): Volume D: Μεσαιωνικόν Βασίλειον – Ενετοκρατία. Μέρος Α΄: Εξωτερική Ιστορία – Πολιτικοί και Κοινωνικοί θεσμοί – Δίκαιον – Οικονομία – Εκκλησία’/Medieval Kingdom – Venetian, Part A: External History – Political and Social Institutions – Law – Economy - Church (1995); Volume E: Μεσαιωνικόν Βασίλειον – Ενετοκρατία. Μέρος Β΄: Πνευματικός βίος – Παιδεία –Γραμματολογία – Βυζαντινή Τέχνη – Γοτθική Τέχνη – Νομισματοκοπία – Βιβλιογραφία/Medieval Kingdom – Venetian, Part B: Spiritual life – Education – Literature – Byzantine Art – Gothic Art – Coinage – Bibliography (1996); Volume F: Ιστορία της Κύπρου: Τουρκοκρατία/History of Cyprus: Ottoman Era (2011).