Early Christian

After the empire divides, Cyprus stays with its eastern half. This is the age when the island fills with basilicas and its church wins an independence it still holds.

How the Church of Cyprus became autocephalous

In 431 the Council of Ephesus recognised that the Church of Cyprus was not subject to Antioch. Antioch did not accept it, and the quarrel dragged on for half a century.

Around 478 Archbishop Anthemios announced that the burial place of the Apostle Barnabas had been revealed to him in a dream. The relics were found with a copy of the Gospel of Matthew on the breast, believed to be in Barnabas’s own hand. The archbishop carried the find to Constantinople, and the emperor Zeno confirmed the island’s autocephaly, granting its primate three rights: to sign in red ink, to wear a purple mantle and to carry an imperial sceptre. Cypriot archbishops exercise them to this day. The Apostolos Varnavas Monastery grew on the spot where the tomb was found.

The basilicas

The 5th and 6th centuries are a time of vast building. Great three-aisled basilicas with mosaic and marble floors rise at Salamis, Kourion, Paphos, Soli, and on the Karpas at Agia Trias and Agios Philon.

Two mosaics of this age are worth a journey in themselves. At Panagia Angeloktisti in Kiti the 6th-century apse mosaic of the Virgin between archangels was spared by earthquakes and iconoclasts alike. The second was at Kanakaria Monastery — cut out of the wall in the 1970s and smuggled off the island; some fragments were recovered through an American court.

In 649 the fleet of the Arab governor Mu’awiya reaches Cyprus. Salamis-Constantia is sacked and never recovers. The Byzantine age begins — and for its first three centuries the island will live with two masters.