A little excursion

Having settled into a new place and a new role, Barsky began to make short excursions to shrines and other places of interest. The first such place was the Monastery of St. Mina, which he visited on 12 November 1734, on the occasion of the saint’s feast day. The monastery still exists today, though it is currently a women’s monastery. Its history is told here in a special story.

Curiously, this was the second monastery founded by Catholics that Barsky encountered on his travels around Cyprus, but he was unaware of this (the first was in Lefkosia, where he spent some time working for Archbishop Philotheus as a Latin tutor).

It is located not far from the village of Lefkara, which Barsky was to visit later…

 And so I began to live on the island of Cyprus with the archbishop from the month of October; when 12 November came, the remembrance of the holy martyr Mina, I went to worship at one of the monasteries there, created in the name of the holy martyr Mina (1), where every year there is a big festival, and many people gather from the surrounding villages and towns, and many receive healing from some illnesses from the miraculous icon of the saint. This monastery is small and poor, and there are few monks in it. It is found between large mountains, in a flat and cheerful place, and has many forest trees around it. In terms of its architecture, it has four walls, the cells are small; it has no running water, but wells; the monks live partly on alms, and in the main from their labours, that is, from tilling, crops and vineyards.

Stranstvovaniya Vasiliya Grigorovicha-Barskogo po svyatym mestam Vostoka c 1723 po 1747 / Edited by N. Barsukov. Part 2. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 241-242.

Location

Coordinates: 34.841200 33.285000 − car park next to Monastery of St. Mina

Notes

(1) Nicholas Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195–1312 (Routledge,1997)

© Yuliya Buzykina
English translation by Alastair Gill