The Legacy of Joseph Barnabas in Cyprus

This photo shows the size of the statue of Makarios. I am standing just under his scepter. Until recently, this huge statue was located in front of the archbishopric in Nicosia.

On Wednesday, Lynne and I went to Kykkos Monastery in the Troodos Mountains.

This mosaic of St. Barnabas is the last mosaic in a long row of saints. His placement right before the tomb of Makarios seems to make an important political statement.

We enjoyed the mountain scenery as we wound our way to the monastery location. The monk who was scheduled to meet us had some health problems and was not there. Fortunately, I knew the name of another monk who is a friend of another friend of mine. So, instead of driving back down the mountain, we had a nice time looking at the impressive collection of artifacts in the museum, looked at the reliquary in the church, and spent the night in a room that is much larger than the one we live in at CAARI.

Thursday morning, we drove up the mountain from the monastery to the tomb of Makarios, the first president of Cyprus. He was the archbishop of the island and the president. A very large statue of him is located at the parking lot of the memorial site. A wide, walking path goes up from the parking lot to the site of the tomb. All along the way are lovely

Lynne surreptitiously took this photo of a monk at Kykkos Monastery talking on his cell phone.

HDR photo of a tree near one of the painted churches that we visited in the Troodos.

mosaics of saints. We noticed that St. Barnabas is the last saint just before the tomb site. We don’t believe that this placement was accidental. I will comment more on the implications in a future post.

On the way to Kykkos, we stopped to see several of the painted churches of the Troodos Mountains. Some are very old and have interesting frescos on the inside. After an “interesting” drive up to one church, we had to recruit help from a road worker, who called the old man who keeps the key to the church. We waited a while for him to walk up the path to the church and unlock the door. On the return trip to Nicosia on Thursday, we stopped at two more churches, but we did not know where to find the person with a key to let us inside. We might get another chance to see them, but I am not pinning any hopes on the possibility.