The Life-Giving Cross and the return to his pupils in Lefkosia

Barsky visited the village of Lefkara and its church, which houses a curious relic: the foot of the Cross of the Lord, a small board to which Jesus Christ’s feet were nailed. The traveller remarks that this was a very thin plank of old wood, one-eighth the size of a sheet of paper, with two openings made by nails. After paying his respects to the relic, Barsky dropped into the Monastery of St. Mina (see above) and returned to the episcopal court, to his pupils and Latin grammar. He had spent a total of four days in the mountains. Ahead, an extremely unpleasant surprise lay in wait…

 Setting off for this monastery, I came to a village named Lefkara, that is, “Belyana” [1], which is so called for the white earth on which it stands; there live only Christians, and no Hagarenes [Muslims].

There I stayed with a Christian for one day and one night. There are two churches there of beautiful architecture [2], with domes, one of which is the main one and of larger size, and of greater beauty; it was built in honour and in the name of the Holy, Righteous and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, and it also contains a priceless treasure, that is, a large piece of the Life-Giving Tree, which was given (as is known from legend) by Saint Helena, returning from Jerusalem after the discovery of the Cross of Christ. This part, as they say, comes from the base, where the most pure feet of our Lord Jesus Christ were nailed; it is sawn off like a thin plank, in length and width roughly like one-eighth of a sheet of paper, there are two small holes in it, pierced by nails during the crucifixion of Christ; the wood looks very old and gives off a great fragrance.

To him I, unworthy, bowed and kissed with my sinful lips, and from there set off to the monastery of St. Mina, and bowed there a second time, returning. The aforementioned Righteous Wood is nailed to a wooden cross, which was all covered in silver; only the Life-Giving Cross is not closed, so that people might kiss it.

The Monastery of St. Mina and the Church of the Holy Cross I carefully and faithfully depicted, and put it in this book, so that every reader and listener may see it. Let it be known to you that the aforementioned cross always stands inside the church, but I depicted it outside so that one can see that in the middle of it is the Righteous Wood with two holes from nails [3]. In total I spent four days in my worship, and again returned to the archbishop’s court and taught the Latin language to the pupils entrusted to me.

Stranstvovaniya Vasiliya Grigorovicha-Barskogo po svyatym mestam Vostoka c 1723 po 1747 / Edited by N. Barsukov. Part 2. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 242
See also
https://www.lefkara.org.cy/en/visitors/guided-tour/church-of-the-holy-cross

Location

Coordinates: 34.867950 33.306570 − car park in Pano Lefkara

Notes

[1] Barsky often translates proper nouns. Lefkara derives from the Greek lefkos (λευκός), meaning “white”. Incidentally, St. Neophytos of Cyprus was born near Lefkara in 1134 (Stylianou A.&J., The Painted Churches of Cyprus: Treasures of Byzantine Art, Nicosia, 1985. 2nd edition: Nicosia, 1997, 353).
[2] The first church is the church of the Honourable Cross in Pano Lefkara (Upper Lefkara), which houses a relic – part of the foot of the Cross of Our Lord. As for the second church, perhaps it is the Church of the Archangel Michael in Kato Lefkara, that is, Lower Lefkara (Stylianou A.&J., The Painted Churches of Cyprus: Treasures of Byzantine Art, Nicosia, 1985. 2nd edition: Nicosia, 1997, 447). During Roman Catholic rule, Lefkara was the residence of the Orthodox hierarch, who had been exiled from Limassol and was obliged to submit to the Catholic bishop (see Hackett J., A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus from the Coming of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas to the Commencement of the British Occupation (A. D. 45 - A. D. 1878) (London, 1901),116-117, note 1, p. 316, see also Appendix II).

[3] The sketches, unfortunately, have not survived.

Literature

Bliznyuk S.V., Leonty Makhera i ego khronika “Povest o sladkoi zemle Kipr” / Translated from the Cypriot dialect of medieval Greek, introductory essay and commentary by S.V. Bliznyuk (Moscow, 2018), 61, 67-68, 79, 88

© Yuliya Buzykina
English translation by Alastair Gill