View PDF version of this page

a head : but upon enquiry he was acquitted of these slanderous charges. Yet he was thrust from his see, and a certain drunken youth Neophytus was elected by the said Cypriots, and the Patriarch being compelled to consecrate him, the monster was proclaimed Archbishop. The creature came to Cyprus, and was rejected and shunned by the Christians as an intruder, and no Cypriot; while their own Primate was in chains and prison on their behalf. In no long while, from vexatiou or rather from drink, he spat out his soul, and their champion Philotheos was freed, and set as a. candle in its candlestick in his place. But persecution and fear had brought on an epilepsy, and the holy man, trembling in hand and foot and every limb, until the end of his life could not move without the support of two attendants. Still in this wretched state this good Pastor never lost heart, and in his zeal for the common welfare he crossed to Beirut, and sent thence to the capital Joakim, Bishop of Paphos, Macarios, of Cition, and Nicephoros, of Kyrenàa, with other well-disposed natives: there his friends gave such counsel and aid to the prelates and their companions that they persuaded the Vazir so far to lower his demands that he engaged that from the year 1754 the island should pay yearly on ΙΟ,Ου'β warrants of assessment of 21i piastres, for the mdishet, matti and kha-raj, with this condition however, which was accepted by both sides, that whether thereafter the number of rayahs should increase or decrease the aforesaid number of warrants should be-without fail issued and paid, viz. 10,066 at 21A piastres each. To this agreement the island was bound definitely (mahfind) under an imperial rescript (khatti Jutmayun) signed by the Sultan's own hand. But the four bishops of Cyprus received also from the Vazir a firman recognising them as the qoja-bashis or guardians and representatives of the rayahs, with the perpetual right of presenting directly to the Porte petitions aud complaints on their behalf. About 1741 again an earthquake, and so violent that the minaret of the Mosque, formerly the church of S. Sophia, fell and wrought no small damage. In 1746 Bekir Pasha came to Cyprus, and at his own cost brought in the water which now supplies the town of Larnaca; we have already said enough about this in our account of Cition. About 175Ö the efforts of Archbishop Philotheos obtained an order from the Vazir, fixing the kharaj of the monasteries and monks of Cyprus at 4000 piastres, which the bishops for the time being undertook to pay to the •nihihasull, collecting this in due proportion from the monks living in the monasteries, from whom tho muhaxsil should have no right to demand a pam more. In 1756 a great roar and rumbling of earthquake in the night and morning of January 27, whicli greatly alarmed the inhabitants. In 1757 groat dearth in the island by reason of the drought and the locusts, so that the people were cooking wild colocasia, a noxious root, and eating them, with other wild herbs. A great number fled from the island to Syria and Asia Minor. This dearth lasted nearly into the year 1758. In 1759 the excellent Philotheos died, and the Primacy devolved upon his Archimandrite Paisios. He, poor man, had scarcely begun to rest from the toils of office when there followed the plague of 1760, of such severity that it swept off a third part of the population, Tnrks and Christians, and left whole villages desolate. Kassiin Agha was then Governor, and the bishops and elders, with the concurrence of the Governor, determined to annonnce to the Porte this great destruction, and to beg for mercy and forbearance for the remaining rayahs, if only in öhe matter of the exorbitant rishvet or douceur, which the Vazir exacted, over and above the usnal payment, for Ins naßßaBtov, or investiture. There were sent accordingly Macarios, Bishop of Cition, and Ephraim, a schoolmaster CYPRIANOS. 355

View PDF version of this page